I was asked to play and review this game by “Elispwich”, the translator of this game on www.rpgmaker.net and I’m glad I did. After dedicating 10+ hours to this game in a span of 4 days I feel that I have played enough of Seraphic Blue to give a decent review despite being so far away from the end of the game. After my queue of games to review lowers a bit I will return to playing Seraphic Blue though, that is a promise.

-INITIAL THOUGHHTS-

I immediately recommend this game to anyone who loves story driven JRPG games because Seraphic Blue certainly is that. The initial opening is extraneously long full of information which doesn’t seem to make a lot of make sense until you get further into the game and even after the opening, there is about a good 20 more minutes of dialogue and cut-scenes before the player is thrust into their first battle. That being said though, while I personally feel that the introduction was a bit too long for my taste, I have to say that the story draws the player in almost immediately. This game has a lot of other good features as well including a nice active turn based battle system, wonderful artwork, and unique user interface and equip system match the intricate nature of the story. The story being the best and worst thing about Seraphic Blue, in my opinion. I love a good story, which this game delivers, but I also like my RPG’s to be more battle oriented with the story supporting the action, again that’s just my opinion though. Although I honestly do believe though that a visual novel version of this game could be easily done with the amount of story and dialogue introduced in the game. In either case though, Seraphic Blue is definitely a good game that more people should check out.

-PRESENTATION-

I rather enjoyed the presentation of Seraphic Blue. I’ve already mentioned how I felt about the story, but I feel the need to compliment the retro style graphics of the game as well along with the other artwork. Although I do not know about the originality of the artwork, I will say that I enjoyed the artwork a lot and the mix of hand drawn art mixed in between the scenes really helped to amplify the mood in each scene and made the game that much more enticing. Something that should have influenced the mood and I wish was incorporated more is the music. There are some really wonderful songs throughout the game but a good part of the game is still left in silence most likely due to the music not fitting well in that particular scene. Most of the music is very cheerful and uplifting, but there are some darker pieces in there is as well, reusing pieces of music is very acceptable and silence should be used effectively in order to convey the right tone. One of the IGMC games I reviewed, Never Fallen does this well as there is music in a good portion of the game but when the player goes into a certain boss room, the music stops completely. Some may not catch but for those who do, they understand that something’s about to go down in this room! Unintentional or misuse of silence can give the wrong vibe to a scene and should be addressed more carefully. I will say that a majority of the music used flowed very well and added emotion to the scenes they were used in. Though the story is good on its own, having excellent music and transitions between songs can help add depth to any game.

-ENGAGEMENT/GAMEPLAY-

This game is very story driven and thus the story is the main source of engagement. I will say that the boss battles are also engaging and challenging as well. The minor battles for me though were a bit, off. I say “off” due to the lack of a better word but I found most of the enemies to be either easy or annoying. Towards the beginning of the game in the “Turku Forest” for example there are enemies which can poison the player. Unlike poison in other games I’ve played, the damage is dealt to the player at the beginning of the player’s turn and can knockout the player instead of just reducing the health to 1. This left me in a few odd situations in which I had to choose between healing myself and attacking the enemy. More situations such as this did occur during my play time and while the enemies themselves are generally easy I found some battles to be a bit annoying. As for the battle system itself though, I have nothing but praise for. The action turn based battle system used is much appreciated and the use normal and heavy style attacks helped to make the player think more about their options. The ability to see enemy data is also much appreciated and helps in deciding strategies for attacks. I would like to also add in here that I rather enjoyed the use of spheres in addition to equipment which allowed to player to acquire certain abilities/advantages and the upgrade system also added another layer of flawlessness to the gameplay of Seraphic Blue.

-OVERALL-

Seraphic Blue is a wonderful JRPG that I recommend playing if you have some time on your hand. Anyone who loves a good story or who are into Visual Novel games would enjoy the story driven aspect of the game. I also recommend this game to players who like JRPG’s or are looking for a game with a slightly different battle system. Either way Seraphic Blue is a great game that I regret to have not finished yet, but when I do you can look forward to a follow up review for when I have fully finished the game.

http://rpgmaker.net/games/2727/