Threw up the search for this after I saw an E3 article about it on IGN.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05...a-is-a-love-letter-to-the-16-bit-days-of-rpgs
the combat borrowing heavy from Chrono Trigger with risk/reward combat techs already has me really interested.
E3 2016: I AM SETSUNA IS A LOVE LETTER TO THE 16-BIT DAYS OF RPGS
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Tokyo RPG Factory revives an epic battle system from one of the greatest games of all time and makes a few changes.
BY
JOSE OTERO I Am Setsuna takes the familiar pieces of Chrono Trigger – its classic active time battles and awesome tech-based attack system – and builds a much darker world around them. Tokyo RPG Factory’s one-hour demo presents environments full of muted colors, a quaint mountain village setting, and depressing consequences. The heroine Setsuna has a major role to play in this dire narrative, as she sets off on a perilous journey to sacrifice herself in order to save the world from the wrath of monsters. “Setsuna means a type of poignant sorrow in Japanese," director Atsushi Hashimoto told IGN at GDC 2016, as he hinted at the project's overall tone.
I am Setsuna -- E3 2016 Trailer
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The development team have never shied away at name-dropping I Am Setsuna’s inspiration, but it’s difficult not to feel poignant sorrow whenever a spiritual follow-up to Chrono Trigger gets mentioned. Chrono Trigger, a one-of-a-kind product of the mid-‘90s RPG scene, has stood the test of time as one of the greatest video games ever made. The fabled Dream Project collaboration brought together the top-talent of the RPG genre to create an utterly fantastic singular work. But feelings of melancholy don’t come from the game itself per se, rather the sad reality that one of the greatest video games of all time never got a proper follow-up. While the sequel, called Chrono Cross, blazed its own trail on the PlayStation, dozens of the first game’s incredibly well-thought out ideas fell to the wayside over the course of 20 years.
If I Am Setsuna’s main goal is to evoke memories for its lauded inspiration, the first hour accomplishes it by presenting a lot of similar ideas and rewards. It has the same real-time take on enemy encounters: If you can approach foes from behind, you’ll earn priority for a butt-stomping first attack. Advanced battle techs like Cyclone, a spin attack where a hero swings his sword wide to hit nearby enemies, and X-Strike, a dual tech where two characters will strike and plow through a targeted foe at the same time, also make appearances and revive one of the best risk/reward attack payoffs for the RPG genre. And it’s all driven by the same Active Time Battle guage that rewrote the rules for Final Fantasy’s aging turn-based systems in the ‘90s.
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If I Am Setsuna’s main goal is to evoke memories for its lauded inspiration, the first hour accomplishes it...
But the hour-long demo does make a few new investments. The first is its darker hero. The demo begins in the middle of a silent snowy forest, as Endir, a mysterious rogue, tasked with recovering a young girl kidnapped by monsters. A non-playable character called Hasper serves as the tutorial voice. As Hasper introduces different elements of battle and gives them context, the silence around who Endir really is hangs in the chilly air. The question is eventually answered after several fights. Regardless, I won’t spoil that or his chilling next mission here.
Combat gets a few upgrades via the Momentum System and a state called Singularity. Momentum, which add various bonus effects to a character’s attacks and techs by sacrificing SP points. You can charge up to three SP points by slowly filling the meter in a variety of ways, either waiting after the ATB meter hits full charge, by performing actions, or taking damage from foes. Tapping the PS4’s Square button when a light appears above the character triggers the bonus effect, which Square tells us vary from tech to tech. Some examples include additional damage for attacks or critical hits. Healing and support techs can recover more health or create long-lasting status effects. Momentum adds a real-time element that the original Chrono Trigger missed out on in the mid-’90s, but the system is trickier than it sounds.
Overall, I Am Setsuna’s painterly graphics craft elegant-looking snowy villages, quiet backdrops for battles, and glittering caves that don’t lean on Chrono Trigger’s in-game sprites or even its iconic box art by Tetsuya Toriyama. The simplified hybrid of 3D and 2D art styles that has more in common with Square’s other classic RPG redux called Bravely Default and, while it could use a few more effects, it does a remarkable job of depicting a dreary world. The enemies don’t look particularly threatening early on, the mix of penguins and a Primeval Tortoise are simple-looking foes, but few RPGs ever show its darker adversaries in the first hour.
The only thing missing from I Am Setsuna is Chrono Trigger’s upbeat narrative and characters. So far everyone I met either hates Endir or doesn’t trust him (with one exception). The demo ends with a teary goodbye ceremony where Setsuna and the party head off into the dangerous unknown, as she clutches her Mother’s keepsake. That dear moment defines I Am Setsuna as a whole: The opening hour reminds you why you loved Chrono Trigger in the first place and sets up its own mysteries. But what comes next ultimately matters most. Setsuna’s first demo evokes plenty of memories for one of the greatest RPGs, and uses them effectively enough to create something interesting, but only more time with the game will tell us if it pans out on the end.
