Journey On Reviews

[h1]Story[/h1] Selena and Shirley must journey to the fallen Kingdom of Askhar to defeat the source of the Darkness, or demons will eventually become too much for their village to handle. While Selena can receive blessings from the Goddess of Light, Shirley is a practitioner of dark magic and is disallowed from entering holy places. However, she can increase her powers by corrupting in soul in the Dark Sanctuary, a place that functions as a sort of shared spiritual world for all dark magic users. The game is touted as having moral choices and soul corruption, but I found this to be very weak in comparison to games with similar plots. For one thing, the protagonists are silent, so it's very difficult to tell how the soul corruption affects Shirley's personality or her interactions with Selena. Additionally, there aren't that many opportunities to make moral choices, at least for mandatory events, though this may be due to the story's short length. The are two major moral choices concerning brainwashing and ironically enough, obtaining the final light power up. The game has multiple endings depending on Shirley's corruption and a certain side path right before the final boss. Unsurprisingly, the ending is happier if Shirley isn't corrupted, but the no corruption and partial corruption paths only differ in small ways, which made the morality system feel underutilized. The full corruption route can branch in an interesting way that makes the player question if their choices were worth it and there is an interesting twist for the light power up. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] The game features a standard turn-based system, but bosses are heavily evented so that there's a puzzle aspect to their fight. While their gimmicks are fair and victory is fairly reproduceable once the player figures them out, it can take a bit of trial-and-error to realize what is going on in the first place. My least favorite boss is the Corrupted Assassin, since his gimmick has more of a luck factor compared to most other bosses. That may explain why there's a secret way to skip his fight. Selena has no MP or magic, but she can learn physical skills that have their own cooldowns. While this made resource management simpler with her, I feel that her accuracy isn't high enough to make up for the cooldowns, especially for life-saving skills like Shield Bash. It's entirely possible to see an enemy charge a strong attack, use Shield Bash in an attempt to stun them, miss, and eat a ton of damage. Shirley seems like a standard mage at first and her kit covers all offensive and support needs, but she has no MP growth, which means the player will have to use her MP carefully. Soul corruption can increase her max MP and give her more perks, which means the party doesn't have to spend as many turns using MP items, giving them better turn economy for difficult bosses. Most enemy attacks are survivable and fair, so it's entirely possible to cheese even the no corruption route with a big bag of consumables. However, the 2100 Darkness Affinity achievement can make the resource management aspect of the game much harder. DA is accumulated for every point of MP spent by Shirley, which means to get the achievement, the player must minimize their MP usage. This can also make it more tedious to grind for resources, though the middle section of the game does mercifully have physical-vulnerable mobs that drop Toka Grass and Soul Essence. There are occasionally campsites that the player can visit to cook healing food items and rest. Cooking requires ingredients, and only Toka Salad is infinitely farmable if you're a hoarder. Resting requires one party member to stand guard while the other one sleeps. The guard has a chance of having to fight an enemy, though I have yet to get into a situation where the enemy can be immune to one of the party members' attacks, so it seems to be balanced. If Shirley is the one who sleeps, she can visit the Dark Sanctuary, and the closer the party is to the final boss, the more corruption Shirley can gain, though it does require DA thresholds. [h1]Verdict[/h1] 7/10 The gameplay is balanced enough that it's possible to beat the no corruption route even with sloppy gameplay, albeit with trial-and-error for some bosses. The story and morality system are lacking, but there are some interesting plot elements that could be made better if the protagonists had properly written dialogue, enough that it could have bumped the game to 7.5/10 or 8/10.

This is a fun but short little adventure. Pros: +Some boss fights are challenging but fun to beat. +This game is more fast paced than most turn-based JRPG. +Charming style. Cons: -Not a lot of dialogues, simple story and silent protagonists. -Short -Minor technical issues. Such as stuttering or mouse target selection overriding keyboard.