Paradise Blue

Battle System- 4/5
Combat is strictly traditional old school, though you'll be able to customize your characters a great deal. The game essentially uses FFT's job system in which you gain normal exp and job exp for every battle. Normal exp simply increases your stats, while job exp will grant new abilities. The game begins by allowing you too choose from all the default FF1 classes, and items you acquire throughout the game will unlock plenty more. You can switch your class at any time simply by equipping any you have obtained through the status menu, which will immediately change your stats and abilities to reflect the new class. Gaining experience in a class also allows you to equip its ability set, allowing you to create characters such as a Black Mage with a full arsenal of White Magic. Some classes also learn supportive abilities as well, which act as an accessory of sorts. Most of these tend to increase a stat or provide a constant buff that is active throughout all battles. There is one extra twist in the form of mercenaries you can hire which will follow your party around. They do not appear in battle but provide a constant supportive effect, such as casting Haste on the entire party before battle or allowing your group to gain a First Strike every time.

Balancing is one of this game's strong points, and it is accomplished with a rather unusual method. The game has no random encounters, so you'll be choosing whether to fight or run through monsters in any given area. What's unusual here is that once an enemy group is defeated it is gone forever, which means there's a limited amount of exp and gold to go around. If you just kill enemies as you follow the main storyline the game ends up being challenging for the most part, but if you break off from the main path to explore optional dungeons and seek out extra bosses the game's difficulty begins to fly out the window rather rapidly.

Not everything is perfect here, however. The one flaw with the system is that certain classes and class combinations tend to be ridiculously more effective than others. Whether you stumble across them or actively seek them out, you'll likely end up with a character or two who can completely decimate every enemy entirely on their own. There is some extra challenge thrown in with the addition of super powerful optional bosses, but it does detract a bit from the experience when you're plowing through the normal game.

Storyline- 2/5
You are participating in a rebellion of some sort to overthrow a kingdom. The game is extremely light on dialogue, and what little is present is often spoken in an unnatural and confusing way. There were several points in the story in which I wasn't exactly sure what my characters were doing, but since the script is light and nearly every scene in the game includes a Skip Scene button, you won't be dwelling on this aspect of the game much.

Characters- 3/5
A bit of a departure from the norm here. The game's storyline follows two characters who are instrumental in carrying out the aforementioned rebellion. One seems to be a lazy swordsman of some sort, and other is a hyper violent short tempered assassin. Most of the game's dialogue is provided by these two and it's often entertaining enough. However, you do not play those characters. Your party is a group of mercenaries hired to guard these two, and never speak a single line during the entire game. It's an interesting way to allow for a character driven story while allowing the player to build their own party. It would have mattered a lot more in a game with a stronger narrative, but then again this game does not spend much time dwelling on its story.

Level Design- 3/5
Mostly average in this department. Levels rarely consist of anything except wide open areas filled with various enemies and treasures scattered about. The game does change things up every once in a while, but it doesn't make up any significant part of gameplay. One nice thing about the design here is that you'll never be lost in this game, even with the occasionally confusing writing. A handy Quest Log is included which will update you on all optional quests you've taken as well as point you to your next objective in the main story. Since the game also allows you to rapidly travel around a world map with conveniently labeled areas, you're never more than a few minutes away from your next objective.

Graphics- 5/5
The game tries hard to capture that late era NES feeling, and with that goal in mind it succeeds flawlessly. Everything from the tilesets to the battlers have been ripped and in some cases heavily edited from Final Fantasy games. There was plenty I didn't recognize as well, so I'm not ruling out the possibility that several graphics have been drawn exclusively for this game. One thing I appreciated here is that the game includes a unique battler for every single character class, both male and female, which helps give your nameless heroes a lot more personality. The bottom line is it looks and feels exactly like a game from the era it is trying to emulate. Knock off several points here if you like fancy new graphics, because you are going to hate the look of this game.

Music/Sound- 3/5
All the sound choices here have been selected with that 8 bit theme in mind. Most of the music consists of fairly repetitive midis, and all the sound effects appear to have been ripped from various Final Fantasy games. None of the songs are annoying, but none of them are particularly memorable either.

Random stuff I liked-
The skip scene feature. Sure I never used it, but it's something I love to have available.

Searching a shell and being given four choices regarding whether I should loot it or not. All of them were different ways of saying yes.

Random stuff I hated-
Not a thing.

Final Thoughts-
A solid traditional RPG experience. For fans of NES era RPGs this game is a must, though some people may not appreciate this style.