Personally, I enjoy RPGs of a lot of different kinds. Like many gamers, I also have a soft spot for Indie games. When I saw I Am Setsuna, it looked like a perfect amalgamation of the two; a unique RPG with fresh mechanics, made by a small Indie studio. What could possibly go wrong?

Let’s talk about this Tokyo RPG Factory take on an RPG, starting with what went well before talking about what the game doesn’t do so well.

Sense of Identity

If nothing else, this game definitely marches to the beat of its own drum. Particularly in modern gaming, a number of newer games try to fit tropes or directly use other popular video games as a major influence, shamelessly or not. Lords of the Fallen blatantly rips off a boss fight from Dark Souls 3. Fortnite influenced a several year craze where Battle Royale games were coming out left and right for all manner of gaming genres. Similarly, Minecraft spurned a series of random survival games for years after its launch in the early 2010s. However, I am Setsuna. is very much distinct and its own experience. You will never play anything too like it, from the combat mechanics to worldbuilding, and especially to the game’s OST.

Character Building

Like the world around them, characters in this game are distinct. Many of them have been surprisingly well fleshed out for what is supposed to be a fairly short game. Naturally, the player will need to get used to the game’s main character cast, as these faces will be at the forefront in and out of combat for the whole way. Unsurprisingly, the game’s most interesting character is the titular Setsuna, a young woman who has been chosen as the setting’s “sacrifice.” The journey encompassed within the game involves the party escorting Setsuna to the Last Lands, where she would presumably sacrifice herself for the betterment of humanity. That, in itself, creates quite an impressionable character, but the well-intentioned, lighthearted Setsuna faces adversity in admirable ways, but also in manners which breed interesting story conflicts, or present opportunities for others to develop breadth. In essence, the characters in this game narratively feed off of each other in satisfying ways.

Randy Kerber

The way in which this game sets itself apart from the rest of the competition is how it handles its soundtrack. From start to finish, the player’s ears will be graced by the immaculate pianist Randy Kerber. Off the top of your head, can you think of a game, any game, even old games, which featured exclusively hand-designed music? Well, if you’ve played I Am Setsuna., then the answer is now one. Kerber’s talents were on full display from start to finish in this game, adding an even more distinct feel to a game which clearly wanted to be its own thing entirely.

Sadly, this game is far from perfect. Let’s assess its shortcomings.

This game isn’t actually Indie

The game has such a distinct Indie feel to it, I was blown away to discover it was actually developed by a small team from within Square Enix. That means they had the resources and the manpower to make something a bit more grandiose, and they didn’t. . Graphics are very shiny and claylike, which doesn’t synergize with a game featuring frequent combat very well. Design itself is also very monotonous; the entirety of the overworld is a giant snowy wasteland as the player slowly shuffles from yet another town with a bunch of huts and snow, to another dark linear cave, and into the next similar looking town. The game looks and even feels rushed at times and it doesn’t seem there was much of a budget for it. For a game developed by a AAA company to feel unmistakably Indie is reprehensible.

Monotony

This game is extremely monotonous. Tokyo RPG Factory developed a vision, refined it, and then proceeded to never divert from it in any little way at any point. While that makes the game memorable, its mechanics and art design simply don’t hold up if exclusively used for the 30-40 hours this game will likely last. Nearly every single bit of travel and exploration takes place in a snowy wasteland, littered with a myriad of trees to wall the player in and point them in the direction they need to go. Seemingly every combat encounter, whether boss fight or “trash mobs,” is completed by spamming the same two or three skills, oftentimes just basic attacks, all fight long. At no point do the game’s barebones combat mechanics ever try to throw the player for a spin; the most complicated it ever gets is encouraging the player to prioritize spamming the same two attacks at a particular target, instead of just choosing victims haphazardly like 95% of the time.

Dungeons are also fairly bland and uninteresting. Again, the game’s very singleminded approach hinders it here. Dungeons tend to devolve into walking in a straight line, fighting a group of enemies, return to walking in a straight line, maybe taking a minor left or right, then fighting the same group of enemies. Rinse and repeat until it’s boss time.

Plot Points

The narrative itself does everything other than explicitly state that it was hastily thrown together. There are a number of plot points that have some really interesting potential. The player will enter a large town with a ruler the civilians seem to universally adore that seems to offer safe refuge and a great deal of assistance to the player’s party; too good to be true? Not long before that, the player encounters a mysterious figure in the woods, who seems neither friend nor foe and offers indirect guidance on how to proceed; who could this be, and what’s their motive? Points like this had some potential, but they were ultimately shirked over.

The game’s design and combat mechanics absolutely do not hold up for the 30-40 hours this game runs. However, the narrative had some serious potential, which it could have realized if the game was probably about twice the length.

Boss Fights

Boss fights are extremely lame and clearly were not the focus, for the most part, of developing this game. Within the player’s first eight boss fights, four of them are against the same exact opponent who, for the most part, never mechanically changes at all. Even “unique” boss fights quickly devolve into one trick ponies with a different skin from one another. Aesthetically, bosses like the Time Slave are pretty cool. They just don’t hold up at all against even surface level scrutiny.

On the whole, I Am Setsuna definitely can’t be knocked as entirely being an effortless offering, because there are distinctive features the game offers that simply wouldn’t exist if this was a lame cash grab. Having said that, it needed more time in the oven. For $60-70 at roughly 60-80 hour playtime and requisite legwork to develop, this game actually has S tier potential. Sadly, I’m going to give it a C-. For those looking for an RPG with a twist, there are better options but you could do worse with this game.