Spirit in the Mirror

It's hard to not comment on the very fact that this is indeed made in rm2000 and such a choice nowadays is interesting. I yearn for some RM games to simply go back to that old distinguished feel without the need to impress with fancy custom systems or glorified SNES assets. I was drawn to this game out of nostalgia I'll admit, the game's modesty and lack of visible over-polish is strangely a strong point for me to give this game a shot. However that is not the case when it comes to playing it.

You start out as a young girl named Anthea who is essentially a caged girl in an overprotective village. She's not exactly sure why she is sheltered and the elder simply mention their simple ways are to keep away from wars and other country affairs. Anthea is bored despite her living conditions being quite good. But hell, given the NPC dialogue and the slow start the game has, I can't really blame her. But what I will blame her for is her flat personality. She just giggles a lot I guess. She talks in such a standard manner like "Mother I am going out to play." That there's no soul inside of her. Compare this to the protagonist in Ara Fell who can tell you why she's bored if ever in a situation and still be entertaining about it. That character blossomed in the first message box.

One day Anthea wanders in an old church and finds herself transported to another world, or dimension. She quickly bumps into monsters and is saved by Luthar, some spirit who seems to be more boring than Anthea. He talks in a standard manner and is just a servant. This doesn't really change throughout the story.

The mapping is about as middle of the road as you can get. I can't really complain about the visuals in that regard. It doesn't try to be busy and yet has enough trees and foliage to break up any monotony. Functionally however the maps feel empty. The chests are distributed rather evenly and aren't really hard to find. The more I think about it, the more I realize I probably take chest placement for granted. Most RPGs and RM games usually tuck their rewards places in out the way areas and send the player at least on some sort of hunt for them. In this game maps are wide open for no real reason other than to pad out the random battles I guess. In towns you will find houses with empty rooms, no chests, and useless NPCs that have one thing to say that provides nothing entertaining, useful or telling anything about the world. The mapping looks sufficient but the actual space you travel is bare and un-interactive. I can't even compare it to other old RM2000 games because even the bad ones would stuff their towns full of secrets and NPCs with information, lore, and jokes to boot. I'm not even asking for much. In the first real dungeon you are treated to one puzzle where you must travel back and forth between a slog of random battles. The random battles didn't bother me at first, but when you combine them with a really huge map for such a large puzzle I start to groan. The dungeon is designed to simply pad out the length with something that can barely be called a puzzle. The layout even started to remind me of the forest in a very grid like way.



The combat is very simple, you can pretty much spam attack or autobattle. Some enemies will have elemental weaknesses but that's about it. Eventually the customization of this game comes in when it informs you that you can summon spirits (other party members) with their own elemental weaknesses. It's somewhat of a watered down Persona (the music is there to remind you) but the thought is nice. The main problem with the elemental weaknesses is that it really doesn't change anything, Even with 2 new members of varying elements I just resumed auto battling like I always did until the occasional boss. Even if you find a resistant enemy there aren't any drawbacks to simply having 3 other people with different elements, not to mention that one of them can use 3 different elemental spells. You can also equip other elemental spells to make up for any character selection strategy.

In Persona 3, elements played crucial role in that supporting characters were restricted to one element with good reason. Enemies would also be ruthless if you did not pick your characters well or didn't defend your weak link. Not to mention your main character could switch elements and if you happened to equip the wrong one with the enemy attacking then you'd have a valuable turn taken away. But in this game there's none of that as in there's no real risk. You may think it's unfair to compare it to Persona 3 but this game mimics the battle mechanics that it's worth spelling out why Persona 3 has them in the first place.

Later on our protagonist happens to find a wounded man on the road, he is to be an important character (Mehrdat) later on but for some reason Anthea really wants to help this guy, this reminds me of any anime protagonist with the burning desire to help characters no matter what. I can only assume she is attracted to him but yet when they finally speak there's no indication of chemistry or hint of a crush. It just comes off as cheap when Athea says she'll do anything to save him again, even if it means traveling to a dangerous city full of wretched villainy. There's not even a plot reason as to why Anthea follows Mehrdat around, other than she devotedly helped him for no reason or gain. I guess we can say she's stupid and will get attached to the first person she sees. This ties in later on when she gives all of your money to a beggar. There's nothing redeeming about it. Yes there are stupid lovable characters but usually their incompetence catches up with them or their dialogue is usually framed with comic relief.

When you get to the city you are treated to some rather thick atmosphere that contrasts well against the previous forest/towns, however my gripes about the functionality and staleness of the NPCs come back again. The best thing NPCs can do is compliment the atmosphere if random bums asking you for change and a bar full of people saying absolutely nothing counts as such. Eventually Mehrdat gets imprisoned and we zoom back to Anthea with the goal of finding and rescuing Mehrdat. Again the story is so void of anything except this. It's like she has nothing to do other than her chasing Mehrdat.

But before we can even go after him the game tells me I need to get 2 more party members. One back at the town and one where you essentially have to backtrack. My motivation to play the game faltered because the story is so uninteresting that it tops it off with a filler activity. I then realize just how spacious and useless the world map is. There are no random battles thankfully, but there's no reason not to tuck all the available avenues a little closer. Chrono Trigger did that and didn't suffer from it. It would help if Luthar mentioned anything about them because I didn't know what I was looking for. I eventually found a grave at the town but interacted out of almost giving up. It wasn't so much where the placements were that were frustrating but what I was actually looking for.

The characters you meet aren't so interesting though. I can't really expect them to be. They give a few message boxes of dialogue and are awfully nice. There's no real back story behind them though and it doesn't really help that the main characters are just as flat as them. Then eventually I get to the first real dungeon and boss only to be greeted with a one note plot advance and a sewer level.


Spoiler: She has no soul.

My interest faded at this point. I think it says something when the advantage of nostalgia can't even help this game. The plot has like one thing going on, and there's nothing in it for the gameplay. When the villain finally appeared and inferred some kind of idea that Anthea was a demon as an attempt to provide a weak twist, I honestly didn't care. The protagonist is the biggest flaw, the only thing I know about her is that she's nice and read a bunch of books. Everything seems laid out before and events just occurred while she has no real control or understanding of what's happening. She is treated like a disney princess all while in this vacant setting that's just as uninteresting as the village she's confined in. All of the NPCs with the exception of the Sanctuary's, have nothing to say.

All of that combined with the autobattling gameplay and bare level design stopped me from playing. I can't recommend it.