Remnants of Isolation

The following review was bought on Steam. I don't know if there's any difference between the two but I'm just going to review the Steam version

Story:
Our story begins as a girl is playing on her magical piano when her cell opens. After some exploring, she meets a boy called Melchior who was recently threw into the prison and is thrilled to meet someone who isn't trying to kill him and together decide to find a way to escape.

One if the interesting things about the the story is that the only voice for most of the game is Melchior who tries to be optimistic with his new friend but those feel the dread and is only holding on because of his friend. And while Celesta doesn't talk(either because she's a mute or she doesn't know how) I do like that shes doesn't fully understand whats happening and immediately gets attached to Melchior because he the first person shes ever met and I love her expressions she makes, my favourite is when she looks confused or curious as it just looks cute.

The relationship between the two leads is very sweet and is clearly the "heart" of the story.I mainly see it as true friendship with Melchior telling her about everything he knows and wants to show her and shows and wants her to have a life and Celesta helps supports him and stops him falling into despair and would give her life to make sure he can be happy. This is also seen in gameplay and I'll wait til I talk about gameplay before I explain

And one final quick point is that I really liked the Sentinel but wished the other bosses were had a personality like him mainly his motives and goal made him an interesting anti-villain and his last moments were nice.

Gameplay:
Lets get this out of the way. Yes the game is very short. There's even an achievement for speed running this game in a hour and a half. I don't have a problem with that.

The main feature in this game is the spell fusion and its a very good system and fits with the whole partnership. Just use a characters innate ability followed by a magic card and then watch the fireworks. I would admit this makes the game a tiny bit easy...if it wasn't for almost every enemy hitting like a truck and aren't shy about poisoning the two. I see it as one of the more balanced combat systems I've played as its more about strategy: weaken and attack when possible and turtle and heal in an emergency. And that's the simple way of explaining. I admit there was one boss that was ridiculously easy but I just exploited his weakness. Another was easy for story reasons.

But what shows how hard this game can be is when your alone because even the first fight in the game is brutal by yourself before you get your partner and learn magic. Some people might say this is a bad thing but I like to think of it as Story-Gameplay integration showing how powerful you are together but alone, your as weak as a biscuit in tea.

Presentation:
Lets start with the music. There no doubt the music is beautiful, but I eventually got bored of it. The music Celesta plays on her piano is a lovely song but when I realised the dungeon song was the same song, I just stopped paying attention. Its not bad, just not my kind of music.

The art is pretty good. The two leads and the bosses are all look lovely and are very colourful which contrast the monster which are mostly fleshy things that came from Silent Hill. I liked the character portraits but I wish they were bigger since its just the two of them and Celesta mainly communicates through her expressions and I feel that they were too small for her.

Verdict:
Despite the length this is a nice short story and a pretty good battle system and I don't regret buying it.

9/10