Story

The game starts off with a heavily injured person coming to Cal to get help for his village which is under attack. Unfortunately the guy was pursued by two enemies, Cal quickly tells the young man that she'll handle his pursuers, but the man refuses; stayed to fight anyway and instantly dies before doing anything. After killing the pursuers, Cal decides to honor his request; goes off to save whoever is left within the village.

I like the story, but there were questionable actions (or inaction) near the end of the game that I will only partially address later on to avoid spoiling the story too much. Also, this is the sequel to the developer's other two games. Thankfully you don't need to play them to enjoy/understand this game, but you might be confused about certain things that are inconsequential.

Characters

Cal - A former head of the Shatter Team Alpha who lives in a cabin away from society with her faithful companion Georgie. Cal is a well balanced sword user with the exception of intelligence and mind as she does not use magic.

Georgie - A direwolf who hits fast and hard. He also has amazing supportive skills such as raising the whole party's strength stat during battle.

Gary - He used to work with Cal when they were apart of the Shatter Team Alpha. Gary is a slow but powerful axe wielder whose attacks miss very often and becomes useless as a result

Shizzie - A sweet little boy who can communicate with animals. He will primarily serve as a debuffer who lowers his enemies' strength and defenses. Otherwise, he will use a whip as his weapon of choice.

Sissie - A mighty warrior who will cut you. Shizzie's twin sister is very aggressive and protective of her twin brother Shizzie. She uses offensive fire magic to decimate her enemies; she can actually back up her threat with a knife, as she has a respectable strength stat. You will find out why during the fight against the final boss.

Aly - A sarcastic and foul mouthed person, but will treat certain people with kindness if they were kind to her. Aly loves to punch people with gloves/claws.

Gameplay

This is a turn based rpg where you're allowed to use all the playable characters in a battle. Of course, this is balanced out by the enemies having just as many or more for their side. There are no random encounters; all enemies will have sprites on the map that you can avoid. However, a battle will still be initiated if they make contact with your party members that are following you; considering that you can have up to 5 people walking behind you, this will occasionally happen. Once the battle is over or if you ran away, the enemy will temporarily disappear from the map; will re-spawn a short time later. Also, there are no surprise ambushes if you walk into an enemy from behind nor when an enemies touches you from behind.

Battle - It's fair; often finished in a decent amount of time with the exception of the final boss. The accuracy rate for everyone's attacks and skills are very good; they will almost always hit the enemy unless your name is Gary. And you will gain a respectable amount of experience and money after each battle which will cut down on grinding.

Skills - For some odd reason, several characters share the same skills such as dual attack and triple attack. And these are the skills that you'll often use as well as they are cheap to use; does respectable damage. Which can get repetitive. Healing skills are useless as they only heal a pitiful amount of health, thus you are better off using items to heal. When using a magical spell, you will need to quickly input the correct arrow keys as shown on screen. The stronger the spell, the more arrow keys you'll need to input.

Other Bugs/Problems

A minor bug where using your lock picks to unlock chests will not use up any lock picks. Not complaining though since I get to save a lot of money

If you've been doing all the sidequests in the game, you will later be awarded with powerful weapons and equipments near the end of the game. However, soon after, one of your party member will permanently leave, for reasons I can give a pass to. Though, there will be a second character who will permanently be unable to help you for the last few fights, which could have been easily avoided had anyone attempted to do anything about it. So two of those new and powerful end game weapons you got from completing sidequests will see little to no use. I don't mind characters permanently leaving the party, but I do mind when and how they leave.

For the final boss itself, every time 1/3 of its health is gone, it will change its elemental weakness and attacks. Of its three elemental forms, one is immune to any fire attacks; a second resists fire. This means that Sissie is forced to slash the final boss with a knife for 2/3 of the fights instead of constantly nuking it with fire spells. This was when I realized why Sissie has a respectable strength stat despite being a spell caster, it's so she can still do decent damage to the final boss that will be immune/resist her fire spells for 2/3 of the fight.

The final boss feels like fake difficulty, as 2 of your party members won't be present for it, Sissie, a powerful fire spellcaster who can't use her spells for 2/3 of the fight. One person is forced to be on reviving duty as the boss will instantly kill someone every turn while its element is fire, even when the person is at full health, fully leveled, geared, and resists the attack! And Gary constantly missing his attacks! Despite all of this, I was able to beat the final boss on my first try, it's not ridiculously hard but the final boss does feel cheap.

Final Thoughts

The story, characters, and progression are very good with minimal grinding. Most of the characters are likable; I was able to complete the game with all of its sidequests in about 7 hours. The few problems within the game are the repetition of certain skills that are also shared among several characters; the other problems only occurs near the end of the game. Despite the problems that I have with the game, it is still very enjoyable to play if you don't mind the problems that I mentioned throughout the review.