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Rainbow Moon
Rainbow Moon
is a strategy-rpg game exclusive to the Playstation Network that can be
purchased for fifteen dollars. While I am a fan of strategy games, I
probably wouldn’t have thought to look at it had I not been asked to
review the game. That would have been a huge mistake on my end as the
game surprised me with how entertaining and enjoyable it was.
The game starts off rather slow and combat
begins rather repetitive until you start learning skills and get new
abilities. The first hour of the game is as such rather basic and is
not a good reflection of the game. The more you play, the better the
game gets as you slowly get more units, more turns, better gear, extra
attack abilities, and more that all help add to the strategy aspect.
The game is very long and very filled due to countless side-quest, a
long story, a big world, and more.
The storyline of the game is rather
lackluster, and it is clear the game puts more emphasis on gameplay than
story. While normally this would bother me, in this game I was so
distracted with the gameplay that the very basic storyline was hardly
noticeable. It starts off with a short little explanation of how your
character got knocked through a portal and warped to another world and
that monsters were also warped to this world. As such your character
has to figure out how to get home. The story is simple and mostly gets
split up to things like sending you to talk to one person, but then you
need to gather certain supplies to get to him, and then he needs to be
rescued from some enemy, and so on. Basically it comes up with various
excuses to send you around the world and play. However, that is really
all the story needs in this world and with such an entertaining
system.
As I mentioned, the gameplay is very
enjoyable due to various mechanics. While it is technically a
strategy-RPG, it’s more an RPG element than a strategy game. The
strategy element of the game stems from the battle system where each
fight will warp you to a small tile based system where enemies will move
around and you can move around and throw attacks. Normal RPG elements
exist such as attack, skills, items, defend, and such, but you also have
the ability to move around on the tiles to achieve good positioning to
help you fight. This small element of strategy adds a fun and
enjoyable mechanic that blends nicely with the game thus requiring
strategy, but more on a small scale rather than a large scale.
Speaking of combat, there are two main ways
to get into combat, the first is running into enemies on the map,
similar to Chrono Trigger, which will send you into battle with
those enemies and upon their death will clear up the way. For those
that want to level more than that or need to grind there is also a
random battle option, but the random battles are not forced on you.
Instead when a random battle triggers you will see it appear on the
bottom of the screen and it will ask you to ‘press X’ if you wish to
engage in this fight. This allows a player to explore the world without
interruptions or engage in a battle if they feel like doing that. It’s
a nicely done system that allows people to explore a dungeon without
being constantly sucked into a fight while allowing those that want to
kill more enemies to do so on their terms. The element of choice is
necessary due to the strategy mechanics of the game as it would be
frustrating to have to engage in strategy battles every couple steps in
a dungeon.
In addition to the well-developed combat
system, Rainbow Moon has a very fun and engaging customization
system which allows a player to pick what stats they upgrade, add stats
to their weapons, and make their character play how they want. When
you kill things in battle, the character that landed the killing blow is
awarded a form of currency called ‘Rainbow Pearls.’ These pearls can
be spent at a special vendor that allows a person to pick what stats
they upgrade. Various stats exist that help the player achieve
whatever they want. Tanks can upgrade defense, attack will cause more
damage, speed will allow you to have more turns, MP allows more skill
use, and more. Each time you level up the maximum stat goes up and each
enemy you kill gives you currency to spend on upgrading your stats. In
addition to the rainbow pearls, a normal form of currency exist that
allows you to buy items, skills, weapons, and normal RPG supplies. The
two currencies are nicely balanced and very simple to understand.
The game does have a few small hiccups and
while I don’t feel they don’t detract from the game I still feel the
need to mention. As I stated earlier the game starts off rather slow.
Early on in the game when you have one turn and no skills fights consist
of spending your turn to move or attack and not both. This means the
beginning of a fight is the enemy and yourself slowly walking towards
each other and then doing one basic attack. It can be boring early on,
but as you slowly get stronger and stronger they get more complex and
fun. The other downside is the inclusion of a ‘food system’. On your
characters status bar there will be a hunger meter and you occasionally
have to open up the menu and select a food item to keep that bar full.
While it goes down slowly, it adds nothing to the game and can be
slightly annoying at times having to remember to keep stocked up on food
and to use it.
Overall, I was very surprised with how much
fun Rainbow Moon was and would highly recommend any fans of RPGs
to buy the game. If you have fifteen dollars you will find there is no
better way to spend your money, if you don’t I’d recommend saving up to
buy this game. Normally games on the PSN are small mini-games, but
Rainbow Moon is a long, full, and well-done RPG for an amazingly
great price. There are retail games that go for the full sixty dollars
that aren’t as nicely designed or give as much entertainment as
Rainbow Moon. This is one game that will be staying on my PS3 for
quite some time and I’m extremely grateful that the game was brought to
my attention or I would have missed an amazing jewel of a game.
-Michael Riling |
