The Fool

A mysterious power that´s emitted trough Atsuma´s arm, the power to negate all golems powers. How will this change the history of man?

Story

I´ll say one thing, cliché. It´s a JRPG with all of its usual clichés.

• Stupid Hero who gets treated badly but has a dirty secret
• The first lovely(and same age) lady you get to know is the love intrest
• This lady has a strong bodyguard that serves her
• Every character has her/his own problems that gets sorted out. From losing a loved one to being a princess or being a apprentice for a Sage, it´s all here.

We get introduced to Atsuma, student at the Enchant Academy in Yokohama, he´s sleeping during a class while his best friend Toya tries to wake him up and his other friend, Makoto is irritated by Toya´s actions since he loves Toya.

The teacher cathes on to Atsuma sleeping and goes to wake him up. Here you get a choice to either lie to the teacher or be honest, the dialoge changes partly from the answer you choose. I choose to be honest and get the usual “atleast you´re honest” cliche answer.

Then after this lecture we get to Atsuma´s good part, physical lectures as he´ll show the whole class how to fight. Getting help from Toya if you want to read the “how to” of battles.

After and easy battle it´s of to the cafeteria for lunch. True to his manners Makoto has cooked a meal for Toya, Atsuma intercepts and gets some of the food, or rather said most of it since eating is also one of his qualities. After feeding Atsuma´s dog Coto they then prepare to skip the afternoon classes to go to the festival that´s arranged every year in Yokohama.

Here we get into battles with seniors and teachers since they knew Atsuma was going to skip school and bring Toya with him. The battles are explained with basic stuff like opposite elements, with Atsuma being fire he will take twice the damage from a water based character/golem and will do twice the damage to them and such.

Finishing these battles quite easily Atsuma & CO go to the festival, there Atsuma want to join in the Golem Tournament where you fight against eachother with ones respective Golem. But here is one catch, Atsuma doesn´t have a Golem. Of to find then the three get to know that by collecting cupons they can get a golem. Eating Pizza is the one thing Atsuma does, the other three tickets are won by Toya.

After battling it out with one contestant and being the the battles with another a quake strikes the tent. Outside all the golems have gone berserk. Saving people at the townsquare Atsuma then is worried about his dog Cota, since the golems are going in the direction of the academy.

Searching for Cota they go deeper and deeper, untill finally they appear in a chamber with a mysterious ice column.“Listen to my command, advance!” is heard from within Atsuma´s head and he reaches his right arm out and touches the column, in a nice shower of ice a Golem emerges from within the column, calling herself the Queen of Ice, one of three devil Golems…

Characters

Nothing new. Atsuma is the naive, honest, stupid hero with one thing in his head, to have as much fun as possible. Then with what happends he gets down into a slump and can´t think straight. This is where the female lead, Karin comes into the space to knock some sense into him, basically since she´s very violent and has a strong mind and her goals set.

They meet in a prison cell, where Karin wants to be treated like a Lady… after spending some “quality time” with eachother the prisonwall brakes down, Raigar, Karin´s bodyguard and dear friend has come to save them both. Or rather Raigar saved Karin since she rushed of without thinking it trough.

Atsuma first met Toya, genius and ace of the enchant academy, good at everything he does along with his transvestite friend Makoto they make a quite odd couple. Makoto is over his head in love with Toya and doesn´t miss a chance to proclaim his love for Toya, which in turn freakes Toya out…

In every game we must have a golden crazy character, Yuki, the “number one golem hunter” fits that role. She´s young, spunky and wield two guns to fend of her opponents.

Music

Not Ar Tonelico material, but still it has proper settings for the places you visit and when things get though for the characters the music is well made, but not something you´d listen to outside of the game.

Battles

Well, random encounters still do exist and it´s quite obvious why people dislike them. Swimming in lake and all of a sudden you´re on fast land and fighting of enemies? Enemies on screen thank you!!

When in battle your team(which consists of 4 characters/golems) are placed random at a 4×3 field and the enemies being introduced the same way. Every character has stats like HP, EP, Direct, Ranged, Support, Size, Movement and more.

What´s vital is HP and EP. HP is your life and EP is vital since every attack you do costs EP. With no EP all you can do is either use items or standby.

Attacks can be direct or ranged, where direct are usually more effective they have one setback, if one enemy is hiding behind one other enemy the damage is halved, if yet another enemy is hiding behind those two the damage is nullified. Ranged doesn´t care about this, but is almost every time weaker.

All attacks has their own attack range, a big sweep with Raigars sword takes three squares starting with the middle as the place where he stands. Yuki with her guns are either widely, a whole 3×3 squares wide or a stunning 4 squares long.

Every character has it´s own innate element as well, where Atsuma has fire he and his attacks are either neutral or firebased he can does a lot of damate. The only enemy who can hurt him really bad is a water enemy with a direct water based attack, since then Atsuma if he isn´t powerleveled or is out of harms way he´s most likely dead.

You can enhance your characters/golems with SP, raising the HP and EP of the low HP minded Karin is a great way of keeping her alive. Having lots of EP allows for lots of attack, thus making damage.
After battle your VP is lowered if you didn´t finish the battle in one round. When this VP is lowered to zero you start the battle with the character having zero VP at 1hp and 1 EP, thus making him/her a easy target to kill. There are items who restore VP and there are skills as well that cut down the EP use, which is vital on longer journeys.

Graphics

It´s for PS3, can´t say much about it than it looks and plays really nice. We can see grass turn at the wind, water moves away when you swim. Gorgeous buildings and the ordinary areas.

Gameplay

Not a lot of loading time. Every new enviroment is loaded only once. Some FMVs and scenes need loading but all in all the game flows on without that much time being spent on loading. So it floaths on nicely. Or I´m just used to having longer loading times than this.

Since the placement is random when the battles start sometime it can get irritating since if you´re out of luck it´s game over, you can restart the battle with your characters being placed on different squares but it´s still some irritation.

Grade

Not a true next-gen experience, but still a good RPG, sure it has it´s flaws and it´s cliché to the bottom but still, the characters make the game worth playing. Not something you might spend 100 hours on but still, it´s well worth the 30-40 fours it takes to finish.
7/10