Lakria Legends

Lakria Legends is a run of the mill fantasy RPG about a boy named Ren who gets swept up into an adventure to save the world from evil. While the premise is generic, there are a number of things it does to be a little more engaging than your average RM game.

Let’s Talk About Graphics!

Mostly ripped/edited from various sources. If I have it right, some of the character artwork is custom-made, but the rest is borrowed. I’m not familiar with their origins, but they come together well enough. There’s some variance to the art style, but it’s only noticeable in certain cases. For the most part, the game looks gorgeous.

Sadly, the pretty scenery is somewhat let down by poor transition handling. Many screens use overlaid pictures to add extra objects or visual effects to a map. These tend to pop into/out of existence during map warps, which is very immersion-breaking. There’s also a high degree of visual clutter in each map. They’re more beautiful to look at than to navigate, as each one is literally crawling with excessive details. No matter where you go, there are multiple types of non-interactive critters moving about. Overlays are common, decorations are placed everywhere, terrain changes frequently, and the end result is extremely busy. This is more characteristic of early maps and it gets better as it goes on, but it never really stops being a thing. It could definitely have done to pare down and apply some practicality to its décor.

In battle, we have heroes with fully animated attacks and monsters with a few animations for idling, taking damage, and dying. Some look more natural than others, but it’s a nice detail that helps combatants feel alive. The fights are sufficiently flashy, but I feel like the hero attacks tend to run a bit too long. Enemies are kinda tanky, so it can take a while to chew through normal encounters when your best attacks require several seconds to execute.

Let’s Talk About Audio!

Sound effects are a mix of RTP and others which are put to fitting use. I didn’t notice anything particularly out of place here.

However, the soundtrack is fully custom. I have to hand it to the composer, because I could easily see this music coming out of a genuine 16-bit RPG. There are plenty of great songs that set the tone for the game’s numerous locations. It doesn’t feel amateurish at all, so it gets a major thumbs-up from me.

Let’s Talk About Story!

Sorry to say, but the story of this game is not especially compelling. This is mostly due to how cliché it is, as the majority of its components are well-known tropes. Ren is your average Chosen One spiky-haired sword-wielding protagonist. He’s tasked with gathering six elemental McGuffins to save the world from destruction. He’s aligned with the Light element and joined by allies who correspond to the rest. They all happen to be Chosen Ones of their respective elements. They each have their tropes and generally adhere to them, rarely branching out (if ever). While they aren’t very nuanced, they are at least likable, so they function suitably for the type of adventure they’re on.

The initial plot is that an evil emperor is trying to gather the elements so he can take over other nations. Ren’s little sister gets kidnapped by his troops because she has elemental power, so Ren sets out to rescue her, but gets sidetracked into gathering elements along the way. Naturally, there’s more to it than that, but nothing you wouldn’t expect out of the genre. Even the top-secret technology segment shouldn’t come as a surprise.

The story’s struggle with originality seems to stem from its sources of inspiration, which are very obvious if you’re familiar with them. There are many noticeable similarities to The Legend of Zelda series; specifically Ocarina of Time. It also borrows some concepts and mechanics from the early Paper Mario games. Those are the ones I picked up on, and there may well be others. It can be nostalgic for this reason and it tries to put its own spin on things, but the ideas are so clearly rehashed, it’s hard to give them much credit.

But as I’ll tell you any day, implementation is what’s important, so how do all these tropes come together? Well, it could be worse, it could be better. If this game is your type of thing, you shouldn’t mind the abundance of cliches. The story is coherent and written well enough. It’s predictable, but only feels scripted some of the time. There are infrequent typos, but they’re easy enough to overlook.

I’d say the most it’s guilty of is being artificially padded out, which is unfortunately a constant thing. For reasons unknown, every dialogue box has a one-second delay inserted after it. This makes conversations take just that much longer to read. There are also times where the text speed is forced to a crawl, which further compounds the excessive reading time. These are usually just mild annoyances, but there are several difficult boss battles that feature both things in unskippable custscenes prior to combat. This makes retrying hard bosses a legitimate chore. Apart from that, the slow text boxes often do away with the text window for dramatic effect, but the text isn’t suited to being displayed over every location. It can be difficult to read the font over busier maps, and you may get tired of hearing disembodied voices due to how often it occurs.

So, while there are significant inhibitors to the enjoyment of the story, it’s written with enough technical skill to be passable. I think it comes down to personal tolerance more than anything else.

Let’s Talk About Gameplay!

This is more where the game shines, but has its own set of complications and caveats. The basics are all there: map exploration and random battles, but it has a lot of additional elements both in and out of combat. Some of these are more compelling than others.

In the field, events have been used to add greater depth to exploration. You’re able to jump small gaps or short ledges by pressing the action button. You will often encounter treasures that require some monkeying around to obtain, and the game does a good job of crafting environments that are straightforward normally, but offer more through nontraditional movement options. This is especially true in dungeons where thematic methods of exploration are used for puzzles. However, these are hurt somewhat by their inconsistency. It’s rare to find exceptions, but there are times when something you should be able to interact with doesn’t work due to oversight. This is less of a problem for navigation, but becomes more apparent in many of the game’s extra functions (more on that later).

The game uses a lot of special items from the inventory that let you perform specific tasks. In terms of the environment, this is a simple matter of lock and key recognition. Sometimes you can check an object on the map for a prompt to use the correct item, but most of the time, you have to stand in the right place and select the item in your inventory. It can serve as a sort of puzzle for you to choose the correct thing to use, but most of these functions are uniquely marked on the map, so there’s no reason you couldn’t press the action key while standing in the designated spot. This wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t so many different ones or if they were better organized. The game’s item list was populated as development continued, meaning there is no rhyme or reason to item order, and the things you must use out of the menu are in a big mishmash with everything else. It only further complicates a process that could already be simplified.

Beyond mere navigation, this game is a victim of feature creep. It has several systems tacked onto it that aren’t fully integrated or developed. One of the most apparent is Fishing Mode. There’s a fishing rod item you can use to turn the mode on and off. While on, you can fish at the water’s edge to get random fish as items. The idea was that you could use it anywhere there’s water, and when Fishing Mode is off, you can jump small gaps of water instead of fishing. The execution is that you can fish on exactly two maps in the entire game, and there is no need to ever turn Fishing Mode off. Similar circumstances exist for a crafting system, which you often find materials for and can eventually mine for, but I only found one craftsman in the whole game (you can’t do it yourself), and there are early mineral deposits that can never be mined, though they are signified in the same way as later mineral deposits when you first gain the ability. Cooking recipes are in the same boat. These incomplete systems feel even more so due to their handling, which is through clunky text box menus. They are also subject to the one-second gaps mentioned earlier, so engaging with the systems is a hassle, and the rewards are rarely worth it.

Further making these systems look like afterthoughts is the existence of custom menus for party management and upgrades. Unlike the others, these are necessary for coordinating your heroes and improving their abilities. The party manager is mostly fine. You’re stuck with Ren, but can bring any three of your other five companions. It tells you their general stat spread and weaknesses so you can more easily tailor your party. The only odd thing about it is the confirmation box, which asks if you want to make changes, thus resulting in “No” being the confirm choice. Saying “Yes” wipes the party and you have to choose them again.

The upgrade menu lets you spend items called Fairy Inks to bolster a hero’s existing skill. The move is replaced with a new one that usually has more power or an additional effect, though some change in function entirely. The only problem here is that most of your upgrade options are not very useful and the inks are hard enough to come by that there’s no point in upgrading everything. The reason why some skills aren’t worth it is related to the battle system.

This game uses the Cherry battle engine with a four-hero party limit. Battles start out pretty tough and level off over time, though some bosses remain challenging well into higher levels. The system is put to decent use, but isn’t living up to its full potential due to handling of status problems. All statuses have an invisible timer for how long they will last which ticks down by one for every turn taken, but every action taken by a combatant counts as a turn. So, if you have an Attack buff that lasts for three turns, and your three fellow party members all go before you move again, that Attack buff wears off before you can use it. Enemy turns tick it down as well, and this could be compensated for, but the game doesn’t do that, and any status buff is bound to run out before you can effectively use it. The only one it’s nice for is HP regen since you get your healing faster.

Apart from statuses, there are several gimmicks a battle may employ. Some bosses have “field effects” which work as additional rules applied specifically to that battle. They’re usually significant enough to be conscious of, and they help spice up the more dramatic fights. Even so, your best strategy is usually to spam whatever is currently your strongest attack. This goes back to the upgrade issue, as anything that’s status-related is generally wasteful, but there’s also no real reason to improve a skill if it won’t become stronger than your current options. While enemies have weaknesses and resistances, there’s no reason not to use your strongest skill if it’s not being resisted. The skills you learn by level-up so often outclass the earlier ones that the old skills are best left in the dust while you hold out for stuff at the top. Ideally, the upgrades would take these past skills and make them relevant again, but most of them just stay obsolete and become poor choices.

However, there are other methods of obtaining skills beside upgrades. There are ones you can unlock through sidequests or by equipping certain items on specific heroes. It’s hard to weigh their value since you can’t check their stats on the upgrade menu, but MP cost is usually a good indicator. These are more useful on a current basis as they have value around the time when you find them. The game is much better about that type of thing, though it isn’t always true. Depending on what order you do quests in, you may get the best rewards ahead of time, causing later finds to be unhelpful. It’s also possible to earn powerful items by fully completing dungeons, which you are graded for after beating the boss. That’s easier said than done, as you have to be very observant and search thoroughly. I didn’t mind those rewards eclipsing some upcoming items as you feel like you deserve it.

Let’s Wrap This Up…

Lakria Legends may have its share of flaws, but I wouldn’t say any of them are so severe as to ruin the game. There’s a lot one may have to put up with, but only a little at a time, and it does enough to remain entertaining. I think your enjoyment will depend heavily on your tastes. It’s a specific kind of RPG that draws inspiration from many well-known sources, but those sources are popular for a reason. If you’re looking for a 16-bit RPG with some play enhancements, this might do it for you. Sadly, it’s a bit too buggy and messy to give any more than a…

2.5/5


Nobody tell him, just see how long before he notices…