Written by dne27, this is a review of Lost Sphear, available for the following platforms: Windows, Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch. I am reviewing the Switch edition borrowed from my brother, which costed him £18.49. Lost Sphear was developed by Tokyo RPG Factory and published by Square Enix and had a initial release date of the 12th October 2017. It sits at a "Mixed" (93 reviews) on Steam and 69% on Metacritic.
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR PARTS OF LOST SPHEAR, READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
I must add here that this is more of a thought piece crossed with a review of Lost Sphear, I hope that's not too annoying it's just the way my head went when writing this piece.
Here's the tl;dr: For an entrance fee of £34.99 (in some places), Lost Sphear is a decent JRPG that buckles under the weight of self-inflicted limitations that bring it down from being something great.
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR PARTS OF LOST SPHEAR, READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
I must add here that this is more of a thought piece crossed with a review of Lost Sphear, I hope that's not too annoying it's just the way my head went when writing this piece.
Here's the tl;dr: For an entrance fee of £34.99 (in some places), Lost Sphear is a decent JRPG that buckles under the weight of self-inflicted limitations that bring it down from being something great.
Well, with that out of the way, let's relax and review!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I almost never give out a numeric review score because I haven't found a system that can accurately summarise my feelings within a number. Usually I try to express my feelings into a sentence that I feel best reflects my sentiments, hence my tl;drs at the beginning and end of my reviews. But in Lost Sphears' case I find it harder to do that than usual because never have I ever found a game so simply 'normal'. Lost Sphear might be the only game I can accurately give a numeric score and feel satisfied that it reflects my opinion. So I bestow upon Lost Sphear the lovely neutral score of a 5/10 (3/5). Betcha didn't see that coming huh?
In recent years it's been hard to ignore the ongoing trend that is games as a medium turning away from entertainment and into a pitiful yet successful attempt at wringing our wallets till their dead. Games like NBA 2K18 or Anthem feel more like £60 entry fees to a brick wall that you can purchase a hammer to smash down - only to reveal another wall. Stupid metaphors aside finding the content in games and arguably the enjoyment is increasingly frustrating, having to grind out 20hrs+ to be even appropriately matched for fights in games like Assassins Creed Odyssey or engaging in watered down gunfights reminiscent of poor quality action films just so you can unlock a shitty neon pink skin on Normandy Beach. Believing in marketing will only see your wallet shrink enormously and the industry is (intentionally or not) cultivating a community of distrust and cynicism that feels like cold war era politics. Going on youtube and seeing waves of videos yelling against a seemingly failing crusade against companies, which face it, do not give a shit about it's consumer base was thrilling at first and now feels like we're all dying on a burning hill. Discussions about fucked customer service claiming they aren't going to do anything about the blatant lies and false advertising of a product that costed around £200 feels common place amongst the daily reports of anonymous game designers being fired, despite 12 months of record-setting financial performances. Buying a game now not only comes with a terrifying amount of different ways of buying and numerous platforms to buy it on each offering a slight variant but with the added pressure of whether your purchase is even ethical anymore. It's tiring being a consumer of games and games media, everywhere you look it's like looking at a asset-flipped shooting game - boring, overdone and unrewarding. It's becoming harder and harder to trust once-beloved companies and even harder to find promising and fun game. So, here we find ourselves; turning around this loot-filled grind and walking back into the past in search of what was lost - good gaming experiences.
The intensity of the connection between gamers and their favourite games is unlike anything else I've seen before. Some are easily prepared to die on the hill Zelda: Ocarina of Time was made on the way you'd imagine a mother protecting a baby. Exaggerations aside, gaming as a medium has the ability to connect us to a story the way films or books simply do not - mainly due to the fact more often than not, you are the protagonist. Imagine it as if you were Harry Potter, the thought of Hermione or Ron dying would become much more intense and upsetting than if it were you reading about someone elses' experience. In my opinion people will defend the flaws and strengths of a game more readily than any other medium. However, I should probably rephrase myself - people would defend flaws and strengths. I say this because I don't see anyone rushing to the aid of Fallout 76 or Anthem and trying to protect it from the visceral yet well deserved hatred both titles receive. Of course I am also being slightly nitpicky here, ignoring titles like God of War (2018) a much beloved recent title but yet games such as that or Horizon: Zero Dawn feel so far and few in terms of what they offer contextually that I believe my point still stands. People are flocking to older consoles and thus older games because they offer more content and enjoyment at the cost of graphic fidelity. This is where Lost Sphear comes in.
Lost Sphear offers a game that feels like it belongs in the past, rather than game made less than a few years ago. The traditional turn-based combat, the save-the-world narrative mixed in with the typical JRPG tropes of yesteryear makes me nostalgic for a time I was admittedly not really apart of until recent. Lost Sphear is unashamed of what it is, a spiritual successor to the classics of yore (with graphical updates) that revels in it's simplicity and naked attempts to mimic the golden boys of the late 90s. I mean we have it all here folks, evil mechanical empires ruled by corrupt politicians, blinded by their ideals, as they destroy the natural ways of life in attempts of misguided unification. We have the main male protagonist, a good-natured country-bumpkin with a mysterious power in charge of restoring order with his rag-tag companions from various backgrounds united by their need to see justice done unto the world. If all you can think of when reading those sentences was 'jesus isn't this the plot to Final Fantasy 7 or Chrono Trigger' then Tokyo RPG Factorys' plan has succeeded.
For those who don't know, Tokyo RPG Factory are a subsidiary of Square Enix or Squaresoft for those older fans who are best known for their JRPG series 'Final Fantasy'. The company was essentially created to make the kinds of JRPGs Square used to make back in the 90s as the company's interests have seemingly turned elsewhere - an example of this being the latest entry into the FF series, FF15, being more of an action RPG than a turn-based JRPG like it's predecessors. The company first made 'I Am Setsuna' in 2014, a moody romp through a snow-covered land to bring the titular character, a maiden, to a sacred shrine in order to sacrifice herself to appease demons plaguing the land. Upon release, I Am Setsuna received mixed to positive reviews, with most picking up on it's old-school design philosophy and well-written story, and was generally seen as a good first step for the company despite some noticeable problems with the mechanics and difficulty. The game featured the 'Active-Time Battle' system (known as ATB) first introduced by Hiroyuki Ito in Final Fantasy IV. This system is best described as 'a continuous flow of actions and variable wait times in which enemies can attack or be attacked depending on where they lie on the time gauge, which indicates to the player which character's turn is next'. The ATB system was used throughout many of the Final Fantasy titles but more notably it was included in the game Chrono Trigger (1995), arguably TRF's main influence. This system and general design philosophy would follow onto the company's next title just three years later in the JRPG known as Lost Sphear.
Playing Lost Sphear is like watching a baby doe fumble about; at first it's clumsy and it's hard to watch but ultimately it's satisfying to see it's mother nudge it to get up and walk, it's buckling legs unwavering in their determination to get that little sucker moving about. Lost Sphear by no means is a great game but neither is it a bad one. It does the job it was designed to do almost perfectly, even if that job is just to imitate someone else. It borrows a lot from it's predecessor, including a fair amount of assets but creates a world that feels totally different that despite the story progress being similar, it feels like a whole new journey. Let's start with a brief summary of the game and go from there. (Side note: you can change the characters names at any time during the game but for my sake we'll just go with the given names.)
You play as Kanata, a young boy haunted by the same dream every night about a King in despair over his collapsing kingdom. After performing basic errands with his friends, Lumina and Locke, for the village Elder , the trio's return is halted upon the realisation that the town of Elgarthe has completely disappeared into white mist. In their search for a solution, the trio and new-found 'friend' Van stop to rest. During his dreams, a corporeal figure teaches Kanata about his unawakened powers of restoring things that are 'lost' with the power of 'memories'. Upon restoring the man in his dreams, Locke and Lumina suggest Kanata try praying at the alter of their ancestors who built the village in a ruin nearby. When they return to the village covered in mist Kanata uses the power of memories, restoring Elgarthe and it's inhabitants. Witnessing his power, Commander Galdra from the Gigante Empire asks for the partys' help to restore the other places and people who are disappearing in the same fashion across the world. Eager to help, and explore, Kanata and co set off a journey with little knowledge of the twist and turns they'd soon be facing.
The story from there on is really quite simple; the seemingly good-hearted Imperial Command who want to protect the inhabitants of Gigante from the lost phenomenon are revealed to be corrupted by their attempts at saving the world by - no joke - blowing up areas that are lost with terromite (aka this games not-so subtle illusion to nuclear weaponry) and wiping out both human and monster alike. They're also polluting the countryside and exploiting the people of Rahet, a race of humans who can communicate with monsters, aka another not-so-subtle parallel for minorities. You dash around a small map restoring various locations with some admittedly decent twists for this games scope whilst trying to stop the Imperial Command at all costs. You might be surprised to hear that Lost Sphear is quite dedicated to telling you it's story, constantly stopping gameplay to tell you bits of information or engage you long discussions on how you're going to free someone or save the world - y'know, the usual. You will not be surprised however, to hear that the writing for this story is so-so. There's only so many times a game can tell the same story of a boy given the most impossible task of saving the world due to the fact he's the only one who can. Each character follows a similar trope. Kanata is the aforementioned back-water boy with a big heart turned reluctant hero, determined to save everyone and thing; Lumina is the hard, but 'secretly' has a soft side, asskicker who really respects and loves her fellow brothers-in-arms and Locke is the bumbling idiot who's inappropriate comedic timing has never once grown on me no matter how many times a character is written this way. Anyways, I think you get the point. No one especially stands out and each serve to propel Kanata on a quest he cannot do alone. Most dialogue beats consist of someone sprouting exposition or the crew wondering what to do and how to do it. Characters constantly say predictable things, with remarks that would fit in line with a child's book they're that on-the-nose. The amount of 'how could this be?' and 'No way, I don't believe it!' leaves me somewhat bemused at best and sighing with disapproval at worst. But don't get me wrong whilst it might sound like I'm shitting on the quality of writing (which I am slightly) it's far from the worse I've ever seen.
In fact there's almost a beauty in the simpleness of Lost Sphear, especially in the current climate of the gaming world. With predictability comes familiarity and comfort and whilst I typically challenge myself to play games I usually wouldn't give a second thought to - such as Zanki Zero which is a horror game and if you need to know anything about me it's that I cannot stand horror - there's something fun to the way Lost Sphear tells it's tale in the most basic style. I'm not finding that I'm getting lost in bullshit repercussions due to poor writing leading me to pick the wrong choice, nor am I laughing at the ludicrous nature of the extreme character dialogue that leave the plot with more holes than mole patch. I'm not having to read a trilogy of books or watch short films just to have a slim chance of knowing what exactly I just paid £60 for, nor do I have to sit patiently as characters shit out lines like the infamous 'I don't have time to explain what I don't have time to explain' quote from Destiny. With Lost Sphear you're getting what you expect; simple yet engaging enough conversations about why pollution is bad and turning children into experimental warmachines is worse. As always the themes and metaphors are present but mostly Lost Sphear just wants you to have an honestly good time in a medium that equates a 'good time' to spending loads of cash to get past a boss with artificially inflated health. Of course there is always room for improvement and with the upcoming new entry to their collection of games, Oninaki I hope to see better quality in their writing and story. But for what it is Lost Sphear is a decent journey with fun enough characters that will undoubtedly charm you with the power of nostalgia.
Except of course, I kinda just lied to you a bit. Not really but okay let me explain. Most of what I said is true, there isn't inherently anything wrong with what Lost Sphear offers and if you can get it cheap then you'll probably be okay. But we need to take off our rose-tinted glasses and look deeper, beyond the nostalgia and move past the pretty presentation. Now, be prepared, because I'm going to do a 180 and rip this game to shreds.
Sometimes it baffles me just how much a game will struggle against itself for the sake of it's ideals. Persona 5 for instance is so deeply rooted in it's waifu simulator and day to day aspects that giving it's story and delivery more than a couple of seconds of thought reveals a pretty fucking infuriating experience marred by stupid story design that it surprises me how it has such a high rating beyond the cool aesthetics. Lost Sphear is so desperate to have you adhere to it's systems that the moment the games writer finally seems to treat you with a little bit of respect it's immediately shot down as if he were being watched over by his boss - unable to test the waters less you upset the boat. Gameplay for the most part is fine, the ATB system more or less remains unchanged from other titles. You watch patiently as characters awkwardly stand around, devoid of free will or common sense as they wait out their turn to attack. Because, let's be brutally honest here, the ATB system is fine in theory and fucking boring in practice. There's a reason we're seeing a drought of turn-based games, because waiting for something to happen is the most mind-numbing thing ever. Phrases like 'like watching paint dry' apply so perfectly to games featuring turn-based combat because you can't invest in a system that is taking forever to move on.
Fighting low-tier enemies shouldn't take up to five minutes, depending on how shit your luck is, the same way a boss fight does. If you see a rat in a game like Oblivion you should be able to kill it in less than a minute, it's really that simple, because a rat in the grand scheme of things is no more important than the dirt you walk on. If Mehrunes Dagon took less than a minute they'd be something wrong here mainly because a literal demon god is obviously going to be more powerful than that - so why is it that in turn-based combat the rat is no different to the god? Games like the Persona series do do a good job of masking away the asinine gameplay through catchy music, flashy and smooth animations and just a general cool vibe that you for a moment forget you're literally just pressing X and watching Joker gun down a innocent Jack Frost. The flow of animations and music sweep you away and you get caught up in the games fucking awesome presentation that you don't care that you have so little control over the core gameplay mechanic. In Lost Sphear, where everything has this sombre edge to it, you can't help but be aware of what's going on because the game gives you the illusion of active participation. When it's a playable characters turn you can choose where they'll attack. For example, you may want to move Lumina around to the side because that way she'll have maximum range of damage. At first for a little while this is enough of a distraction that you don't really care that you're not really doing anything, but after awhile you'll come to the same horrible realisation that in the end gameplay boils down to you dicking around in menus struggling to keep everyone alive because the arenas are so small that everyone is getting hit all the time and money's scarce because combat is so sparce that there's no real way of making any etc, etc. Oh yeah, I should probably mention that in this JRPG combat feels almost none existent, you walk down linear corridors that have maybe a few groups littered around that don't give out much once you win. Of course grinding is an option if you have the patience of a saint that is, which I don't. I'm not a little girl anymore - time looms over me the same way it does everyone once you hit eighteen and realise that 10hrs of running around a map the circumference of your pinky doing meaningless battles is probably the biggest waste of time you'll ever commit to and now you're one step closer to the grave. Lost Sphear struggles to balance gameplay and narrative, often leaving you pressing A to read through sometimes cringy text (there is no voice acting apart from during combat) with the occasional break in between to fight enemies. Throughout my first ten or so hours I had only managed to level up to level 19. It's not exactly a problem per se, I never felt like I was underlevelled for any of the boss fights and each time a new member joined my team they were only two levels above me, but it's a demonstration of how little you fight considering it's a JRPG.
Boss battles, quite like my life at this point, are one fat joke. Boss battles look good every so often, one design in particular stood out to me as it incorporated the theme of the area into it's appearance, but the infuriating lag spikes every time it goes to bum rush you coupled with the small battle environments make these tedious time wasters that essentially boil down to survival of the well-prepared. Bosses will sometimes come out of left field as well, indicated by a save point just before the boss trigger and I guess for shits and giggles sometimes not. Unfortunately it's painfully obvious which bosses are placed as a progression barrier and time waster and which are story-focused usually because of the care and attention seen in the animations. I never felt especially impressed by the bosses nor arsed about them until I met a certain moth-lady. Oooh boy okay. I just want to preface that I am by all means an okay gamer. I usually finish my games with decent times and minimal grinding and feel that I have gotten all I need or can from them. However, this fucking moth-ass bitch was something else. I feel that Morfos is indicative of all of the problems seen in Lost Sphear gameplay so I'm actually going to try to talk about this boss fight like I'm an expert games designer.
Morfos is, in one word, shit. The story surrounding her is shit, her character design is shit, her boss fight is shit and the level she's in is shit. Okay, again spoilers but were we go. Along the way the gang and new-found friend and traitor-enthusiast, Galdra, have stopped at a little village which is seemingly stuck in a time loop. The astute back-water lads have seemingly figured it out that the really not subtle at all dancer who is insisting that you watch her dance is the one somehow trapping the villagers in this loop. Needing the loop to stop so that the gang can cross an unfinished bridge, Van and Diantos (who is he, who even cares) accuse the dancer of being a time manipulative bitch. She gets angry, shoots a laser at Van and speeds off before anyone can stop her. Understandably annoyed, Van suggests they find and kill her so that they can free the villagers and move on. Now here are where things start to fall apart. For no determinable reason, your party of seven agree that FIVE of them should go look for her when in the past they've previously sent one or two to scout when necessary. Kanata agrees this is a sound idea and stays with the wounded Van. Sometime later Van and Kanata grow concerned over the length of time the others have been gone and set off to find them with a one-time only ability of somehow tracking them through their vulcosuits (robot suits that are personalise based on each character's personality but in reality act like a physical defence buff) which will not make sense in a moment. After arriving to a marsh, Kanata and Van have some admittedly fun bonding that's marred by Kanata unable to hold in a bout of unnecessary exposition about Luminas origins and why he'd never fuck her (poor lass) that was so shockingly awful and came out of nowhere that I began to question whether or not the story had been handed over to a twelve-year old child taking their first creative writing class. The troop continues to a tunnel in which they fight chickens because fuck you I don't know and finally we get to Morfos. Morfos is a moth-lady who can inexplicably transform into a human and has the ability to lure villagers into a groundhog day, which she does because they killed her children for no reason and now she needs to trap them for a hundred years as she sucks their lifeforce. Talk about extreme fermentation. The vulcosuit tracking device is now made redundant because Morfos has also trapped your friends in cocoons - so how did you track their robot signals if they're not in their suits?
Now, if you're like me then Van might not have been in your party for sometime. And if you're also like me then you probably wasted a lot of items on those goddamn chickens previously. You might also have 'neglected' Van's armour and weaponry because there is not enough money in the world that you could pay me to grind out the necessary amount of cash needed to continuously stock up all characters with max equipment. Already, we're off to a bad start. Now I should mention that not only does Morfos have a regen ability that, to the best of my knowledge, has no way of being prevented - every time this motherfucker gets to half health she has a move that gives her 1,260 health back: aka, half of her health. She's level 26, I was playing on normal at the time and I had reached an impasse. Unless you admit defeat and lower the difficulty you will slowly begin to lose your mind as did I because she is literally god. The strategy to beat her is to simply have one character attempt to tank all hits and heal or fling items at the other character who needs to dish out damage whenever. Except neither of these two characters are remotely designed for that type of combat regardless of what moves they're equipped with. I freely admit I struggled with this boss because apparently someone thought it would be a laugh to have a winged-bum rushing boss with infinite regen abilities to also be the boss who confiscated my precious characters I had actually invested in. It's so hard to root for a game like this that even includes the arbitrary walls that should have died a long time ago and only live on spiritually in online mmos specifically designed to have you lob real cash at the infinite health boss instead of magical spells. Nothing quite shouts user-friendly experiences quite like an insane difficulty spike at the most irrelevant part of the main game. This wouldn't even matter so much if this didn't feel like a tacked on segment designed to inflate run time and adds nothing to the story other than letting us know that Kanata is a goddamn martyr and he wouldn't fuck his childhood friend.
I said earlier that this game seems to have this struggle against itself, this internal conflict. It wants to be more than the shell of a bygone era but wants to throw itself onto the feet of the greats that Lost Sphear loses all sense of identity and relevancy that I cannot justify myself giving a shit anymore. This might sound so intense and all over the place and I think I meant it to be like that. Because in a way the five out of ten represents the rigid line that slashes down the middle of Lost Sphears offering. On the one hand Lost Sphear represents the potential for bringing old aspects of games and re-purposing them for both a new generation and the current one, reminding ourselves that it's okay to kick back once in a while and let go of the obnoxious and obscene one-up-manship modern games find themselves in that frankly is an extremely unhealthy attitude. And on the other hand Lost Sphear represents the failure in realising the potential of that previous sentence and unfortunately falling down the hole of self-limitation and low self-esteem that leaves us with a half-baked game, a middling experience and shallow story. There seems to be nothing sadder than seeing the smouldering ashes of potential, seeing a project that appeared so hopeful yet now lies in the garbage heap filled with the carcasses of projects too rushed or too ambitious for their own good. Lost Sphear enters this pile with a slight bow as it walks past the graves of fellow lacklustre titles such as Anthem or Vampyr, knowing that it almost made it past the hole of boring over-priced over-hyped bollocks but just missed the mark by a smidge. It's unsurprising that Lost Sphear undersold I Am Setsuna, selling about only 20% of its initial shipment. Whilst the previous game was a refreshing revitalisation of a dead system, people soon realised that sometimes the past is better off staying there. Heck, even Tokyo RPG Factory have realised this themselves, with their next title being an action RPG ala FF15 - and how sad is that, a company deliberately designed to recreate the past is now moving on.
And maybe, we should all too.
For an entrance fee of £34.99 (in some places), Lost Sphear is a decent JRPG that buckles under the weight of self-inflicted limitations that bring it down from being something great.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nintendo Switch: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch/LOST-SPHEAR-1316162.html
PS4: https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/product/EP0082-CUSA09346_00-SKI0000000000000
Tokyo RPG Factory Homepage: http://www.tokyorpgfactory.com/
Lost Sphear Homepage: https://lostsphear.square-enix-games.com/home/
Lost Sphear
I almost never give out a numeric review score because I haven't found a system that can accurately summarise my feelings within a number. Usually I try to express my feelings into a sentence that I feel best reflects my sentiments, hence my tl;drs at the beginning and end of my reviews. But in Lost Sphears' case I find it harder to do that than usual because never have I ever found a game so simply 'normal'. Lost Sphear might be the only game I can accurately give a numeric score and feel satisfied that it reflects my opinion. So I bestow upon Lost Sphear the lovely neutral score of a 5/10 (3/5). Betcha didn't see that coming huh?
In recent years it's been hard to ignore the ongoing trend that is games as a medium turning away from entertainment and into a pitiful yet successful attempt at wringing our wallets till their dead. Games like NBA 2K18 or Anthem feel more like £60 entry fees to a brick wall that you can purchase a hammer to smash down - only to reveal another wall. Stupid metaphors aside finding the content in games and arguably the enjoyment is increasingly frustrating, having to grind out 20hrs+ to be even appropriately matched for fights in games like Assassins Creed Odyssey or engaging in watered down gunfights reminiscent of poor quality action films just so you can unlock a shitty neon pink skin on Normandy Beach. Believing in marketing will only see your wallet shrink enormously and the industry is (intentionally or not) cultivating a community of distrust and cynicism that feels like cold war era politics. Going on youtube and seeing waves of videos yelling against a seemingly failing crusade against companies, which face it, do not give a shit about it's consumer base was thrilling at first and now feels like we're all dying on a burning hill. Discussions about fucked customer service claiming they aren't going to do anything about the blatant lies and false advertising of a product that costed around £200 feels common place amongst the daily reports of anonymous game designers being fired, despite 12 months of record-setting financial performances. Buying a game now not only comes with a terrifying amount of different ways of buying and numerous platforms to buy it on each offering a slight variant but with the added pressure of whether your purchase is even ethical anymore. It's tiring being a consumer of games and games media, everywhere you look it's like looking at a asset-flipped shooting game - boring, overdone and unrewarding. It's becoming harder and harder to trust once-beloved companies and even harder to find promising and fun game. So, here we find ourselves; turning around this loot-filled grind and walking back into the past in search of what was lost - good gaming experiences.
 |
| (Credit: Tokyo RPG Factory. Kanata (left) and Van (right).) |
The intensity of the connection between gamers and their favourite games is unlike anything else I've seen before. Some are easily prepared to die on the hill Zelda: Ocarina of Time was made on the way you'd imagine a mother protecting a baby. Exaggerations aside, gaming as a medium has the ability to connect us to a story the way films or books simply do not - mainly due to the fact more often than not, you are the protagonist. Imagine it as if you were Harry Potter, the thought of Hermione or Ron dying would become much more intense and upsetting than if it were you reading about someone elses' experience. In my opinion people will defend the flaws and strengths of a game more readily than any other medium. However, I should probably rephrase myself - people would defend flaws and strengths. I say this because I don't see anyone rushing to the aid of Fallout 76 or Anthem and trying to protect it from the visceral yet well deserved hatred both titles receive. Of course I am also being slightly nitpicky here, ignoring titles like God of War (2018) a much beloved recent title but yet games such as that or Horizon: Zero Dawn feel so far and few in terms of what they offer contextually that I believe my point still stands. People are flocking to older consoles and thus older games because they offer more content and enjoyment at the cost of graphic fidelity. This is where Lost Sphear comes in.
Lost Sphear offers a game that feels like it belongs in the past, rather than game made less than a few years ago. The traditional turn-based combat, the save-the-world narrative mixed in with the typical JRPG tropes of yesteryear makes me nostalgic for a time I was admittedly not really apart of until recent. Lost Sphear is unashamed of what it is, a spiritual successor to the classics of yore (with graphical updates) that revels in it's simplicity and naked attempts to mimic the golden boys of the late 90s. I mean we have it all here folks, evil mechanical empires ruled by corrupt politicians, blinded by their ideals, as they destroy the natural ways of life in attempts of misguided unification. We have the main male protagonist, a good-natured country-bumpkin with a mysterious power in charge of restoring order with his rag-tag companions from various backgrounds united by their need to see justice done unto the world. If all you can think of when reading those sentences was 'jesus isn't this the plot to Final Fantasy 7 or Chrono Trigger' then Tokyo RPG Factorys' plan has succeeded.
For those who don't know, Tokyo RPG Factory are a subsidiary of Square Enix or Squaresoft for those older fans who are best known for their JRPG series 'Final Fantasy'. The company was essentially created to make the kinds of JRPGs Square used to make back in the 90s as the company's interests have seemingly turned elsewhere - an example of this being the latest entry into the FF series, FF15, being more of an action RPG than a turn-based JRPG like it's predecessors. The company first made 'I Am Setsuna' in 2014, a moody romp through a snow-covered land to bring the titular character, a maiden, to a sacred shrine in order to sacrifice herself to appease demons plaguing the land. Upon release, I Am Setsuna received mixed to positive reviews, with most picking up on it's old-school design philosophy and well-written story, and was generally seen as a good first step for the company despite some noticeable problems with the mechanics and difficulty. The game featured the 'Active-Time Battle' system (known as ATB) first introduced by Hiroyuki Ito in Final Fantasy IV. This system is best described as 'a continuous flow of actions and variable wait times in which enemies can attack or be attacked depending on where they lie on the time gauge, which indicates to the player which character's turn is next'. The ATB system was used throughout many of the Final Fantasy titles but more notably it was included in the game Chrono Trigger (1995), arguably TRF's main influence. This system and general design philosophy would follow onto the company's next title just three years later in the JRPG known as Lost Sphear.
 |
| (Credit: Tokyo RPG Factory. Brilliant use of 2D background with a 3D environment that never gets old, the art in this game is phenomenal.) |
Playing Lost Sphear is like watching a baby doe fumble about; at first it's clumsy and it's hard to watch but ultimately it's satisfying to see it's mother nudge it to get up and walk, it's buckling legs unwavering in their determination to get that little sucker moving about. Lost Sphear by no means is a great game but neither is it a bad one. It does the job it was designed to do almost perfectly, even if that job is just to imitate someone else. It borrows a lot from it's predecessor, including a fair amount of assets but creates a world that feels totally different that despite the story progress being similar, it feels like a whole new journey. Let's start with a brief summary of the game and go from there. (Side note: you can change the characters names at any time during the game but for my sake we'll just go with the given names.)
You play as Kanata, a young boy haunted by the same dream every night about a King in despair over his collapsing kingdom. After performing basic errands with his friends, Lumina and Locke, for the village Elder , the trio's return is halted upon the realisation that the town of Elgarthe has completely disappeared into white mist. In their search for a solution, the trio and new-found 'friend' Van stop to rest. During his dreams, a corporeal figure teaches Kanata about his unawakened powers of restoring things that are 'lost' with the power of 'memories'. Upon restoring the man in his dreams, Locke and Lumina suggest Kanata try praying at the alter of their ancestors who built the village in a ruin nearby. When they return to the village covered in mist Kanata uses the power of memories, restoring Elgarthe and it's inhabitants. Witnessing his power, Commander Galdra from the Gigante Empire asks for the partys' help to restore the other places and people who are disappearing in the same fashion across the world. Eager to help, and explore, Kanata and co set off a journey with little knowledge of the twist and turns they'd soon be facing.
The story from there on is really quite simple; the seemingly good-hearted Imperial Command who want to protect the inhabitants of Gigante from the lost phenomenon are revealed to be corrupted by their attempts at saving the world by - no joke - blowing up areas that are lost with terromite (aka this games not-so subtle illusion to nuclear weaponry) and wiping out both human and monster alike. They're also polluting the countryside and exploiting the people of Rahet, a race of humans who can communicate with monsters, aka another not-so-subtle parallel for minorities. You dash around a small map restoring various locations with some admittedly decent twists for this games scope whilst trying to stop the Imperial Command at all costs. You might be surprised to hear that Lost Sphear is quite dedicated to telling you it's story, constantly stopping gameplay to tell you bits of information or engage you long discussions on how you're going to free someone or save the world - y'know, the usual. You will not be surprised however, to hear that the writing for this story is so-so. There's only so many times a game can tell the same story of a boy given the most impossible task of saving the world due to the fact he's the only one who can. Each character follows a similar trope. Kanata is the aforementioned back-water boy with a big heart turned reluctant hero, determined to save everyone and thing; Lumina is the hard, but 'secretly' has a soft side, asskicker who really respects and loves her fellow brothers-in-arms and Locke is the bumbling idiot who's inappropriate comedic timing has never once grown on me no matter how many times a character is written this way. Anyways, I think you get the point. No one especially stands out and each serve to propel Kanata on a quest he cannot do alone. Most dialogue beats consist of someone sprouting exposition or the crew wondering what to do and how to do it. Characters constantly say predictable things, with remarks that would fit in line with a child's book they're that on-the-nose. The amount of 'how could this be?' and 'No way, I don't believe it!' leaves me somewhat bemused at best and sighing with disapproval at worst. But don't get me wrong whilst it might sound like I'm shitting on the quality of writing (which I am slightly) it's far from the worse I've ever seen.
In fact there's almost a beauty in the simpleness of Lost Sphear, especially in the current climate of the gaming world. With predictability comes familiarity and comfort and whilst I typically challenge myself to play games I usually wouldn't give a second thought to - such as Zanki Zero which is a horror game and if you need to know anything about me it's that I cannot stand horror - there's something fun to the way Lost Sphear tells it's tale in the most basic style. I'm not finding that I'm getting lost in bullshit repercussions due to poor writing leading me to pick the wrong choice, nor am I laughing at the ludicrous nature of the extreme character dialogue that leave the plot with more holes than mole patch. I'm not having to read a trilogy of books or watch short films just to have a slim chance of knowing what exactly I just paid £60 for, nor do I have to sit patiently as characters shit out lines like the infamous 'I don't have time to explain what I don't have time to explain' quote from Destiny. With Lost Sphear you're getting what you expect; simple yet engaging enough conversations about why pollution is bad and turning children into experimental warmachines is worse. As always the themes and metaphors are present but mostly Lost Sphear just wants you to have an honestly good time in a medium that equates a 'good time' to spending loads of cash to get past a boss with artificially inflated health. Of course there is always room for improvement and with the upcoming new entry to their collection of games, Oninaki I hope to see better quality in their writing and story. But for what it is Lost Sphear is a decent journey with fun enough characters that will undoubtedly charm you with the power of nostalgia.
 |
| (Credit: Tokyo RPG Factory. I haven't mentioned this throughout the review but sometimes this game is fucking gorgeous, seriously.) |
Except of course, I kinda just lied to you a bit. Not really but okay let me explain. Most of what I said is true, there isn't inherently anything wrong with what Lost Sphear offers and if you can get it cheap then you'll probably be okay. But we need to take off our rose-tinted glasses and look deeper, beyond the nostalgia and move past the pretty presentation. Now, be prepared, because I'm going to do a 180 and rip this game to shreds.
Sometimes it baffles me just how much a game will struggle against itself for the sake of it's ideals. Persona 5 for instance is so deeply rooted in it's waifu simulator and day to day aspects that giving it's story and delivery more than a couple of seconds of thought reveals a pretty fucking infuriating experience marred by stupid story design that it surprises me how it has such a high rating beyond the cool aesthetics. Lost Sphear is so desperate to have you adhere to it's systems that the moment the games writer finally seems to treat you with a little bit of respect it's immediately shot down as if he were being watched over by his boss - unable to test the waters less you upset the boat. Gameplay for the most part is fine, the ATB system more or less remains unchanged from other titles. You watch patiently as characters awkwardly stand around, devoid of free will or common sense as they wait out their turn to attack. Because, let's be brutally honest here, the ATB system is fine in theory and fucking boring in practice. There's a reason we're seeing a drought of turn-based games, because waiting for something to happen is the most mind-numbing thing ever. Phrases like 'like watching paint dry' apply so perfectly to games featuring turn-based combat because you can't invest in a system that is taking forever to move on.
 |
| (Credit: Tokyo RPG Factory. The blue represents Kanata's final location, which you can move around the field in order to get maximum surface area damage.) |
Fighting low-tier enemies shouldn't take up to five minutes, depending on how shit your luck is, the same way a boss fight does. If you see a rat in a game like Oblivion you should be able to kill it in less than a minute, it's really that simple, because a rat in the grand scheme of things is no more important than the dirt you walk on. If Mehrunes Dagon took less than a minute they'd be something wrong here mainly because a literal demon god is obviously going to be more powerful than that - so why is it that in turn-based combat the rat is no different to the god? Games like the Persona series do do a good job of masking away the asinine gameplay through catchy music, flashy and smooth animations and just a general cool vibe that you for a moment forget you're literally just pressing X and watching Joker gun down a innocent Jack Frost. The flow of animations and music sweep you away and you get caught up in the games fucking awesome presentation that you don't care that you have so little control over the core gameplay mechanic. In Lost Sphear, where everything has this sombre edge to it, you can't help but be aware of what's going on because the game gives you the illusion of active participation. When it's a playable characters turn you can choose where they'll attack. For example, you may want to move Lumina around to the side because that way she'll have maximum range of damage. At first for a little while this is enough of a distraction that you don't really care that you're not really doing anything, but after awhile you'll come to the same horrible realisation that in the end gameplay boils down to you dicking around in menus struggling to keep everyone alive because the arenas are so small that everyone is getting hit all the time and money's scarce because combat is so sparce that there's no real way of making any etc, etc. Oh yeah, I should probably mention that in this JRPG combat feels almost none existent, you walk down linear corridors that have maybe a few groups littered around that don't give out much once you win. Of course grinding is an option if you have the patience of a saint that is, which I don't. I'm not a little girl anymore - time looms over me the same way it does everyone once you hit eighteen and realise that 10hrs of running around a map the circumference of your pinky doing meaningless battles is probably the biggest waste of time you'll ever commit to and now you're one step closer to the grave. Lost Sphear struggles to balance gameplay and narrative, often leaving you pressing A to read through sometimes cringy text (there is no voice acting apart from during combat) with the occasional break in between to fight enemies. Throughout my first ten or so hours I had only managed to level up to level 19. It's not exactly a problem per se, I never felt like I was underlevelled for any of the boss fights and each time a new member joined my team they were only two levels above me, but it's a demonstration of how little you fight considering it's a JRPG.
 |
| (Credit: Tokyo RPG Factory) |
Boss battles, quite like my life at this point, are one fat joke. Boss battles look good every so often, one design in particular stood out to me as it incorporated the theme of the area into it's appearance, but the infuriating lag spikes every time it goes to bum rush you coupled with the small battle environments make these tedious time wasters that essentially boil down to survival of the well-prepared. Bosses will sometimes come out of left field as well, indicated by a save point just before the boss trigger and I guess for shits and giggles sometimes not. Unfortunately it's painfully obvious which bosses are placed as a progression barrier and time waster and which are story-focused usually because of the care and attention seen in the animations. I never felt especially impressed by the bosses nor arsed about them until I met a certain moth-lady. Oooh boy okay. I just want to preface that I am by all means an okay gamer. I usually finish my games with decent times and minimal grinding and feel that I have gotten all I need or can from them. However, this fucking moth-ass bitch was something else. I feel that Morfos is indicative of all of the problems seen in Lost Sphear gameplay so I'm actually going to try to talk about this boss fight like I'm an expert games designer.
 |
| (Credit: Tokyo RPG Factory. This is the cool boss I was talking about, incorporating the wreckage of sunken ships to form it's body. Neat.) |
Morfos is, in one word, shit. The story surrounding her is shit, her character design is shit, her boss fight is shit and the level she's in is shit. Okay, again spoilers but were we go. Along the way the gang and new-found friend and traitor-enthusiast, Galdra, have stopped at a little village which is seemingly stuck in a time loop. The astute back-water lads have seemingly figured it out that the really not subtle at all dancer who is insisting that you watch her dance is the one somehow trapping the villagers in this loop. Needing the loop to stop so that the gang can cross an unfinished bridge, Van and Diantos (who is he, who even cares) accuse the dancer of being a time manipulative bitch. She gets angry, shoots a laser at Van and speeds off before anyone can stop her. Understandably annoyed, Van suggests they find and kill her so that they can free the villagers and move on. Now here are where things start to fall apart. For no determinable reason, your party of seven agree that FIVE of them should go look for her when in the past they've previously sent one or two to scout when necessary. Kanata agrees this is a sound idea and stays with the wounded Van. Sometime later Van and Kanata grow concerned over the length of time the others have been gone and set off to find them with a one-time only ability of somehow tracking them through their vulcosuits (robot suits that are personalise based on each character's personality but in reality act like a physical defence buff) which will not make sense in a moment. After arriving to a marsh, Kanata and Van have some admittedly fun bonding that's marred by Kanata unable to hold in a bout of unnecessary exposition about Luminas origins and why he'd never fuck her (poor lass) that was so shockingly awful and came out of nowhere that I began to question whether or not the story had been handed over to a twelve-year old child taking their first creative writing class. The troop continues to a tunnel in which they fight chickens because fuck you I don't know and finally we get to Morfos. Morfos is a moth-lady who can inexplicably transform into a human and has the ability to lure villagers into a groundhog day, which she does because they killed her children for no reason and now she needs to trap them for a hundred years as she sucks their lifeforce. Talk about extreme fermentation. The vulcosuit tracking device is now made redundant because Morfos has also trapped your friends in cocoons - so how did you track their robot signals if they're not in their suits?
Now, if you're like me then Van might not have been in your party for sometime. And if you're also like me then you probably wasted a lot of items on those goddamn chickens previously. You might also have 'neglected' Van's armour and weaponry because there is not enough money in the world that you could pay me to grind out the necessary amount of cash needed to continuously stock up all characters with max equipment. Already, we're off to a bad start. Now I should mention that not only does Morfos have a regen ability that, to the best of my knowledge, has no way of being prevented - every time this motherfucker gets to half health she has a move that gives her 1,260 health back: aka, half of her health. She's level 26, I was playing on normal at the time and I had reached an impasse. Unless you admit defeat and lower the difficulty you will slowly begin to lose your mind as did I because she is literally god. The strategy to beat her is to simply have one character attempt to tank all hits and heal or fling items at the other character who needs to dish out damage whenever. Except neither of these two characters are remotely designed for that type of combat regardless of what moves they're equipped with. I freely admit I struggled with this boss because apparently someone thought it would be a laugh to have a winged-bum rushing boss with infinite regen abilities to also be the boss who confiscated my precious characters I had actually invested in. It's so hard to root for a game like this that even includes the arbitrary walls that should have died a long time ago and only live on spiritually in online mmos specifically designed to have you lob real cash at the infinite health boss instead of magical spells. Nothing quite shouts user-friendly experiences quite like an insane difficulty spike at the most irrelevant part of the main game. This wouldn't even matter so much if this didn't feel like a tacked on segment designed to inflate run time and adds nothing to the story other than letting us know that Kanata is a goddamn martyr and he wouldn't fuck his childhood friend.
 |
| (Credit: Tokyo RPG Factory) |
I said earlier that this game seems to have this struggle against itself, this internal conflict. It wants to be more than the shell of a bygone era but wants to throw itself onto the feet of the greats that Lost Sphear loses all sense of identity and relevancy that I cannot justify myself giving a shit anymore. This might sound so intense and all over the place and I think I meant it to be like that. Because in a way the five out of ten represents the rigid line that slashes down the middle of Lost Sphears offering. On the one hand Lost Sphear represents the potential for bringing old aspects of games and re-purposing them for both a new generation and the current one, reminding ourselves that it's okay to kick back once in a while and let go of the obnoxious and obscene one-up-manship modern games find themselves in that frankly is an extremely unhealthy attitude. And on the other hand Lost Sphear represents the failure in realising the potential of that previous sentence and unfortunately falling down the hole of self-limitation and low self-esteem that leaves us with a half-baked game, a middling experience and shallow story. There seems to be nothing sadder than seeing the smouldering ashes of potential, seeing a project that appeared so hopeful yet now lies in the garbage heap filled with the carcasses of projects too rushed or too ambitious for their own good. Lost Sphear enters this pile with a slight bow as it walks past the graves of fellow lacklustre titles such as Anthem or Vampyr, knowing that it almost made it past the hole of boring over-priced over-hyped bollocks but just missed the mark by a smidge. It's unsurprising that Lost Sphear undersold I Am Setsuna, selling about only 20% of its initial shipment. Whilst the previous game was a refreshing revitalisation of a dead system, people soon realised that sometimes the past is better off staying there. Heck, even Tokyo RPG Factory have realised this themselves, with their next title being an action RPG ala FF15 - and how sad is that, a company deliberately designed to recreate the past is now moving on.
And maybe, we should all too.
For an entrance fee of £34.99 (in some places), Lost Sphear is a decent JRPG that buckles under the weight of self-inflicted limitations that bring it down from being something great.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Important Links:
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/525240/LOST_SPHEAR/Nintendo Switch: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch/LOST-SPHEAR-1316162.html
PS4: https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/product/EP0082-CUSA09346_00-SKI0000000000000
Tokyo RPG Factory Homepage: http://www.tokyorpgfactory.com/
Lost Sphear Homepage: https://lostsphear.square-enix-games.com/home/