To Light: Ex Umbra Reviews

Good game and great message. I cant wait for number two or a new adventure by this author. Blessings to you all at Branch Games!

This was a tough game to purchase because there are very few user reviews & I thought "another generic RPG Maker game." And believe me when I say I will not hesitate to refund something. LOL This is a GOOD game. Story is good, simplistic mechanics that remind you of a PS1 / PS2 era game. GREAT at full price. Enjoy.

8 / 10 CAPTIVATING FRANCINE RIVERS TYPE STORY MIXED IN A FAIRLY GOOD RPG Pros + Great emotional and ultimately uplifting story that doesn't sugar coat. A lot of christian media have a vague struggle but here the characters have hectic/complex character arks. Reminded me a lot of the books of author Francine Rivers. + The game has a main mystery of some sorts and the reveal of the truth was really well done. I loved to see how tit bits of foreshadowing has been put in. In my 2nd play through I appreciated the story even more. + Amazing music that can be fun and lighthearted at times, but also melancholy and emotional. It sets each scene perfectly in my opinion. + Decent turn based fighting elements with characters levelling up system. I enjoyed how each character's fighting styles fit with there personalities. The princess for instance had more healing based abilities, while a knight that was escorted to protect the princess had more abilities that is almost self sacrificial to help the party. It made each party member feel unique. + The artwork is great. very varied, from a Castle, forest, to a snow region, desert ect + There are decent amount of side quests. Leads to cool content, like a battle arena area. + To 100% the game is not too difficult. It took me 20 hours and even lead to an epilogue + Easy at the start but at the 50% mark the difficulty ramps up so it didn't get boring. + You can flee from random enemy encounters if you don't want to fight every minute or so you are in a new level + Cool enemy designs and battle visuals Cons: - The tutorial section takes much longer then it needs to. - Side quests can be difficult to complete because of how much you would need to travel. This could lead to missing out on cool content, like the battle arena area I mentioned, that you wouldn't know how to access. however there is a way to go do all quests at the very end. - Like others said random enemy encounters can get annoying, but at least they are not hard. Just long sometimes - Few variety in the battle theme music and sound effects during battles are not the best. - Cut scenes can't be skipped This is a JRPG that is very character/story driven. I was hooked from beginning to end. I have finished the game in story mode about a year ago. I decided to try it again in normal mode. I enjoyed it just as much and even more with second play through. The game has christian undertones. I am christian myself but I think the metaphors of light and darkness is fairly relatable. The game is not preachy for about 95%, maybe just a bit at the end: Story: 9 / 10 Game play: 7 / 10 Music: 9 / 10 Sound: 5 / 10 Final: 8 / 10

This is a well made well crafted indie JRPG. I popped it open on a flight with my 6 year old daughter sitting beside me. We played it for 2.5hrs until we landed. Since we got home, she has asked repeatedly to play it more!

so far i love the story line except the dialog is a little too long winded but sadly the last part to get to the final quest i dont seem to be able to get respond from the developer how to do the champion of the sword.

Absolutely in love with your game. The story and characters are so interesting! OH and the graphics are stunning!!!!!!I haven't finished it yet. I have ONE complaint though, the font size is too small in the "conversation box". I'm playing on a 65' Samsung QLED (core i7 CPU, NIVIDA GeForce GTX 780 Ti).

I feel guilty not liking this game, because it's obvious that a lot of love was poured in. The graphics are particularly good. However, the actual gameplay is no fun at all. From the very beginning, fighting is incredibly tedious, and the story moves very, very slowly. For the first hour, you'll be doing nothing but reading and killing the tutorial-level enemies that we normally find at the beginning of these games. The biggest problem as the game moved on was the random encounters. They were absolutely relentless - spaced about 10 seconds apart. The enemies aren't very difficult, so there's no point using any of your special abilities; the quickest thing is just to keep hitting them until they die, or to escape the combat. I was trying to navigate the maze at the end of the desert section, but gave up from pure frustration because I was interrupted every 10 seconds by yet another encounter. I don't want to invest the time to complete the game, because honestly, it feels like work rather than fun. I'd have persevered if not for the random encounters, but have to admit I wasn't particularly enjoying the very slow-paced story either. The combat style is very unoriginal. There are free RPGs of a much higher standard. I don't like downvoting games, but sorry, I really didn't enjoy it!

This is a good well thought out game. The combat has some interesting quirks which I enjoyed. This is a good game and I do recommend it. The story is an old one but a good one and the game is well done. However, I am not a fan of flashing lights in graphics, long involved dramatic pauses in dialogue, or dark screens that are hard to see. And this game had all 3 of these, thankfully not all at the same time. I recommend this game

**Update** I just beat the game, and I've updated my review. For a disclaimer, I didn't back this game and went into it fairly blind. Also, due to those asking about the game having Christian overtones to it as noted on its Kickstarter by the dev team (which I had no idea about until I saw the question about it on the Discussions forum)...I'm Pagan myself so let's delve into how this goes from a non-Christian point-of-view. Story The most important thing to me. I'll admit to being a bit torn on this one. The writing itself is excellent, the characterization phenomenal, and the actual storyline that you're involved in is very well-done. This is one of those rare games where the story had me hooked from the get-go. So, why am I torn? It's the heavy-handed writing in reference to Christian religious allegories toward end-game that kinda sucked the wind out of me a little. While I understand what the dev team is going for here, and having read and understood biblical verse back in the day myself, the writing in end-game reads as too...parallel to that, especially when looking at it from a secular sense. You can have a message, and the message in this game is a tremendous one, no doubt about it. Just that especially in end-game there's a sense of "holier-than-thou" (that there is only one "right" path so to speak) with some specific dialogue from certain characters here and there that honestly came across as just a bit overmuch, and might even turn off some players. I was enjoying the story so much throughout 98% of the game that I just made a mental note of it and continued on regardless, because the writing/story is absolutely beautiful. If the end-game had been written and played out like the rest of the game, then to be perfectly honest, this game's story would've been a 10/10 for me. Graphics Absolutely wonderful! The mapping is very, very well done (as are the graphics themselves well-implemented)! The character sprites are defined and you're able to know who's who and what's what. Really enjoyed the lighting and subtle ambiance cues/presentation for certain areas. Animations (especially for boss-types) are nicely implemented as well. What I was surprised with was the custom bust art for both playable characters and some important NPCs. While I do definitely enjoy the art style of the busts, there's a bit of 'sameness' I encountered, but that's my only critique (and art is subjective as well). I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the enemy art, as it's all custom and really great! Music/Sound Effects The soundtrack seems completely custom. Lots of piano, and definitely nice to listen to. In terms of music, if you've played I Am Setsuna then the soundtrack will be a bit familiar in that regard.The boss theme, big boss theme, and another theme that plays during the more darker scenes are my favorites. The regular battle theme is quite nice, and actually has a FF 4-type vibe to it in terms of it being less intense and more melodic. Sound effects are standard RPG Maker MV fare, and while most of them are used extremely well, there is one effect that just feels out of place in the whole game...the decision/confirm sound effect. It's too high-pitched, and a bit annoying especially in battles while I'm listening to a really cool battle theme. Gameplay/Battles Battle system is standard ATB (you can change the speed in Options). UI isn't bad to look at, and easy to maneuver around with. There is a "Surge" gauge that acts like a limit break of sorts, but thankfully, it carries over to the next battles if you don't use it then and there. Otherwise the game is pretty much what you'd expect from a turn-based RPG. One thing I noticed is that I think I used one potion the whole game. I don't know if it's because I'm a seasoned player when it comes to RPGs or what, but as long as you use exploits/weaknesses (especially on random enemies and even bosses) you'll be able to tough out the battles. I liked that status effects on enemies really means something, too. Side-Quests, mini-games, misc. Side-quests are a plenty in this game, and quite a few of them yield some great rewards. I'm not normally one for side-quests, but I found that I definitely completed my fair share of them. No mini-games, and honestly, I don't think this game needed any. One thing I wanted to give extra kudos to the devs for is one of those simple additional details that I really enjoy, and that's that when you encounter a boss. You see its name/title ominously fade in and out with some nice, clean graphical work. It reminded me of Trails of Cold Steel when you encounter a boss. I really loved that little detail in that game, and I was quite pleasantly surprised with seeing it in this one. Nice touch, devs! Overall, this is a game I'd recommend whether you're Pagan, Atheist, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, etc. It doesn't read nor does it play as a "religious" game for about 98% of it, and if you've ever played the Xeno franchise then you'll appreciate the more subtle philosophical cues and symbolic nuances that read as more secular than anything else. It's the more subtle details I really enjoyed in regards to the story, not when it's symbolism is far more obvious and in your face. Just do be prepared for when you get into end-game territory, as things do get just a bit heavy-handed with some of the dialogue, but it really doesn't detract from the wonderful and elegant story that this game possesses. Graphics and music are amazing. The gameplay is rock-solid. 9/10 all day long.

RECOMMENDED Ratings 7/10 (Excellent Story, Exquisite Game World, Excellent Game Mechanics) This is another highly successful Kickstarter Project that is successfully completed and now make its way to Steam. For 33 hours I was glued to my computer to play the game from beginning to end. This game has a lot of Pros, and the only Con that I can think of is that it does not have steam achievements. But again, this was a Kickstarter project that was initially not meant for Steam sales, and that is why achievements were not designed. Now comes all the good stuff. What makes this game special? Firstly - excellent story. Playing this game is like watching a thriller movie, where the producer expertly uses misdirections and let you form the wrong opinions, etc. It is only about 2/3 into the game that I realized that I have been looking at things the wrong way. There were 4 murders, and the game expertly mislead you into forming the wrong conclusion about who the villain is. This game primarily deals with the struggle between light and darkness.and successfully explored many of the darker emotions in life like grief, anger, hatred and revenge. It also shows me that your team members can be in different shades of grey. An innocent boy walking in the light can be so consumed by the loss of a loved one that he wallow in grief, burnt up by anger, consumed by hatred and fixated by revenge that he lost himself in the process. Similarly a murderer may have been misguided or tempted in the first place, and later regrets the mistakes. So, playing this game you can vicariously experience how your team members may struggle between right and wrong, good and evil, forgiveness and revenge. Well, I even unequipped all the weapons from a particular team member because I thought that he was going to flip. Wow, that is intense. The game mechanics is good, the fights are interesting, and the rewards are attractive enough for me to continue grinding my team from level 1 to level 99 (maxed). There are many sub-quests to do and many puzzles to solved. Each of the 6 team member use a different weapon type, and there are also sub-quest to get all 6 legendary weapons. These weapons do not come easy, as you need to go through hoops to get the crafting components for them. Money is tight and one of the quest require grinding for 500,000 gold pieces to buy an essential equipment part. There is also an arena with lots of monsters to fight and you need to become Arena Champion to get another component. The game world is large and it takes a long time for you to get from one place to another. You are usually kept in suspense about when the next monster will strike and usually stay at healing crystals. This goes on until late game, where you will learn (though the story) about the power to teleport between various crystal. At that point, it was a fantastic relieve to know that all your hours of careful mapping and searching for healing crystals are not in vain. Wonderful. Oh... another really good thing about this game is the existence of a very detail community guide written by Firefly. Without his excellent guide I would missed many of the treasures and will be stumbled by several puzzles too. Anyway, let me strongly recommend this game to my fellow old school rpg gamers. Please enjoy this successful Kickstarter project that is now release on Steam.