Giadon Saga

My playtime: 09:40:43 (game completed, 29/30 side quests completed)

Intro
Giadon Saga is a turn based RPG about a kingdom with unique element type. You'll play as a kingdom of fire son that will have to stop calamity in the world.

Music
The music sounds pleasant and suits with the environment. I can't really say much about this except that i'm enjoying the music.

Graphics
The mappings in this game needs some improvement. Most of the area are just rooms with empty spaces and the dungeon itself is very simple-- it's mostly just a straightforward path with a large explorable area. The game tries to offer some flexibility with puzzles, but it's not changing the fact that the dungeon is pretty much "empty". However, the outer area (forest, highland, swamps) feels more like a dungeon to me; i can get lost if i don't remember where to go.

Story
There are 5 chapters in the game with each chapter having its own objective. I feel the main story is quite rushed, however, like how the mc changed his mind too fast (from not wanting to marry to wanting to marry), and how everything can be resolved in just a few simple talks. Actually i don't really mind with it, although it'll be great if the story can flow smoothly. In fact, i love the conversation between each characters; sometimes they are hilarious to read. I also want to point out that there are some minor grammar mistakes in the game, especially about the usage of your and you're.



Well, the last thing that i want to point out is that i love how the NPC changed their dialogues once you finish a chapter.

The game
The game starts with 5 different difficulties, ranging from the easiest to the hardest. The difficulties will affect a lot of things, such as encounter rate and enemy stats. In this playthrough, i played the easiest one.



Speaking of encounter rate, the game itself has a very high encounter rate, even in the easiest difficulty. I'll have a fight for every few steps and although the enemy are very easy (that i mostly can kill in 1-2 turns with normal attack), having too many battle can break my concentration. This makes me feel lazy to explore the map, especially with the game having a big map (with mostly nothing in it).

There are a lot of dungeons in the game and each dungeon will have at least one boss fight. These bosses, however, die very easily in the easiest difficulty; it only take 1-2 turns to kill it with spells.

The game offers a lot of playable characters that come and go. You'll usually have around 3-4 character in your party which has their own skills and weapon set. The character skills can be learned by level up and i find that the main character skill cost too much MP that the most advanced skill (Fire V) costs like half of his max MP. Although you can buy and equip the equipment to each character, you can't retain the equipment once the character leaves the party forever. Luckily, there are better equipments once you finish a chapter.

As i said before, there are 5 chapters in the game. You'll gain access to new side quests and equipments after you complete a chapter. Each side quests will usually give different rewards; some are easy (where you only have to walk and talk) and some are hard. I have a problem with one quest where you have to look for an invisible special tile that i ended up skipping it, but the rest of the quests are okay for me. The only problem that i want to point out is the game doesn't keep track of the quest log so i can be left in the dark if i'm not paying attention to what the quest giver is saying. Actually, the same thing also happen with the main quest although it's easier to advance since you'll just have to explore the unexplored areas.

There are 3 towns in the game. While the first two towns are connected by road, you can only access the last town by teleporting using the orb in the second town. Actually, these orbs makes traveling easier because you don't have to deal with the high encounter rate in the area between each town. Sadly, there is no teleporter that connects the first to the second town although you'll travel between those places a lot (because of the side quests).

Pros:
- 5 difficulty levels
- Side quests
- Tons of dungeons
- Various playable characters

Cons:
- High encounter rate
- Bland dungeon design
- No teleporters to and from first and second town
- Spells cost too much MP

Conclusion
This is a turn based RPG with a high encounter rate and various difficulty levels. If you don't mind with the bland dungeon and encounter rate, you can try it for fun.