Story

A young knight was working in the mines to improve his strength when he was dared to use his abilities. He took up that dare; blasted a hole in the wall the leads to a secret area where a mermaid was trapped inside a water bubble. The knight then places his hand on the bubble which bursts; the mermaid was released, still asleep. The next day after she awoken, she appeared before the king and queen; questions were asked to each other. Upon the horror realization that the mermaid was in the water bubble for nearly 5 thousand years; she almost fell into despair when the king suggested that she go see the Oracle who may know the where about of other mermaids in the world. With a faint glimmer of hope, she agreed to go; the king decided that the young knight who founded her should accompany her.

There's more to it, but if I say anymore, then it'll be spoilers.

Game play

Being able to move in 8 different directions instead of the tradition 4 up, down, left, and right is a nice change of pace; makes traveling more convenient. What's even more convenient than that is that once you cleared a dungeon of some sort, if you feel like backtracking to an area before or after it to get to the town on the other side, the game will give you the option to skip the entire dungeon! (Not all dungeons let you do this though) Backtracking has never been so easy fast as most rpg games don't do this!

I need this accessory!!! You'll know why later!

Throughout the game, you'll come across various recipes that you can bring to a shop; craft very useful items and accessories for your characters! Once you successfully gather all the materials; have some gold (which a very good amount will drop in every battle), you'll be able to craft the item/accessory you wanted; will now be able to purchase them with gold normally.

Majority of the materials you need to craft are dropped and or stolen from enemies. You can find out what enemy drops what in your bestiary. Thing is, if you haven't defeated an enemy or used Domino's "reveal" skill, you won't know what enemies drop; other useful information like element affinity. Unfortunately, the bestiary doesn't tell you the location of the enemy you'll be able to find them in so you'll have to go search for them. Some are common sense while others not so much. In fact, there may be monsters living in areas you'd never expect!

Characters

While you may only see them talk once in a while; in important cut-scenes, their personality and interactions are charming in my personal opinion. I just love how Domino jokes about having someone use ice or water attacks to cool off in a volcano!

Battles

There is a rage meter that will gradually fill up as you use regular attacks; get hit by enemies. Once the rage meter is full, you'll be able to use a powerful attack to damage your enemies, inflict powerful status ailments, or buff the entire party. Keep in mind that the rage meter will slowly deplete between battles. When you use regular attacks, there will be a roulette wheel (or ring as it's official name in the game) with 3 areas that you'll need to land on in order to commence the attack.

If you have poor reaction speed, you'll despise using regular attack as the arrow that you need to press z (at least I use z anyways) on the tiny parts of the wheel will only do one round; if you don't hit any of them, then the character won't attack at all! However! If you have good reaction speed and hit 2 or 3 most of the time, the character will be able to attack multiple times which will fill the rage meter faster. There are even smaller areas of the wheel that are colored orange, if you manged to press z on all the orange areas, then you'll be rewarded with 5 consecutive attacks! (assuming that they don't miss). Also, when your character is in critical condition, the ring will only have 1 area of red and orange, hit the red; you'll attack 3 times. Hit the orange area; you'll perform a powerful attack!

About a week after the review for this game had came out, the developer updated the game which allows the player to choose their preferred difficulty level which changes evasion rates (much lower than the older version of the game, even on Epic difficulty) and health of enemies; drastically reduced enemy evasion and critical hit rate! Yes, they're still in the game, but now they'll only happen once in a while instead of 4-5 times in a single battle! Also, it seemed that the additional effect of blind from darkness attack that most common monsters have in the beginning of the game has it's proc rate reduced as well since I don't automatically get blinded by darkness attack almost every time now, (that or I was truly unlucky with darkness attack before the new update).

In battles, you are almost always at an disadvantage. How? Most monsters will be faster than majority of your party members with crippling status ailments such as blind, petrify, confusion, etc. if not status ailments, then with powerful skills that can take more than half of everyone's hp before you get to do anything!!!! But wait! Can't I just grind levels so all of my party members will be faster eventually? Nope! Because enemies level will scale with yours regardless of what area you're in. For instance, if you're level 9, then every enemy and boss will be similarly level 9. If you're level 50, then every enemy and boss will be around level 50, even in the area you start out in! So basically, with the exception of two (who will still be out-sped fairly often), most enemies will almost always attack first!! Which is why you might want to craft shoes that will give you extra speed~

Issues:
-The poison damage in the over world is extremely lethal! A poisoned character with 4,500 hp will go down to 1 hp in just around 10 steps!!!!! Always carry antidotes and magic water so your healer can cure poisoned characters!!!
-Characters with reflect buff will reflect healing magic back at enemies; restore their health instead!!
-Skills that have cool downs used in the end of the battle will have their cool downs carry over to the next battle
-Restore skill, even when used in the field to restore hp, will be on cool down after one use...

I loved how the story changes drastically from beginning to end; the the lovely casts of characters (especially Domino). The major issues have been solved that were present in the older version of the game; the current issues I've mentioned in the updated review are only minor now with proper preparation (besides the one where characters with the reflect buff reflect ally healing skills back at enemies, I still dislike that one...). Overall, this is now a fantastic game to be played with very few frustrations experienced as compared to how it was in the past with its infamous evasion and critical hit rates of enemies.