Without wanting to sound too tired of it all, there is another KEMCO game heaving its way onto the Xbox. Going by the name of Journey to Kreisia, it is, just for a change, a retro styled RPG. I am honestly running out of ways to describe these games, having reviewed over thirty of them, so I find in cases like this it is best to just fall back on the old journalistic traditions of just stating the facts.
So, here we go – this is a game from KEMCO, and in the course of this review I will be attempting to discover if this one of the better examples of the company’s prodigious output.
Narrative is always an important part of any RPG, and despite the fact that there have been about a squillion RPGs coming from this publisher, the story here is distinct and stands out.
We play as Yusis, an ordinary boy who is summoned to the world of Kreisia. One minute he is planning to meet his friends and play video games, and the next he finds himself in a world where fantasy is reality. All the while, Yusis is constantly comparing what is happening to him to being in a video game; it’s all a bit Inception to be honest. When he finds out that one of the races of the world of Kreisia has green hair, of course he compares it to anime, and so on and so forth. Anyway, the reason Yusis has been summoned is to defeat the evil Overlord, a bad guy who resurrects every ten years and has to be defeated by The Savior: a hero summoned from the outside. And this decade? Well, it’s our turn. So, can we take down the Overlord and save the world for ten years? Well, that’s up to you and your choices!
Presentation is next, and you could pretty much copy and paste any paragraph about this subject from any of the other KEMCO reviews. Journey to Kreisia is retro styled, with characters designed with an anime bent, and the rest is all standard. There is an overworld to wander about on, there are various dungeons to enter and explore, and above all there are enemies that pop up to have a go at us. The design of the creatures is again very familiar, with designs I swear I have seen before, and as is usual with this genre, the same enemies appear later in the game, just with a different colour palette, being treated as new creatures. Presentation of the story is done via the medium of a series of cut scenes and text windows, with a nice picture of whoever is speaking at the time shown, making the narrative easy to follow.
And yes, you’ll not be surprised to hear that the sound is the usual kind of thing – stirring battle music, battle sound effects and that is your lot.Â
So what about the gameplay? At risk of sounding like a broken record, it is again business as usual. We start off as a duo, and as we go along, we recruit more companions to our cause, making the party stronger. The story is very much step by step, with clearly defined objectives to keep us bowling along. There are also a few side quests to find and fulfil, as usual, and so there is never a shortage of things to do.
Wandering around the overworld, or through any of the dungeons that we are sent to, means that you can barely go more than about five steps before a random battle starts. As each character is brought to the end of the timeline, allowing them to act, we have a few choices – attack, use a skill, an item, guard or run away. Choosing the right attack at the right time is key, such as using a healing item just before one of your characters is defeated.
And there are also attacks that are super effective against enemies. This is particularly important in boss fights, and can make the difference between success and failure. Keeping fighting leads to leveling up, which in turn makes us stronger and opens up new skills. Interestingly, the skills are linked to the weapon that we are carrying at the moment, so upgrading and buying new weapons when we can adds more offensive capabilities.Â
So, as we have seen, the action is pretty much the same as always. Are there any drawbacks? Well, again, it’s pretty much the usual stuff that plagues a lot of these games. Trying to line our character up to walk through a doorway is quite difficult and a lot more frustrating than it needs to be, and so is the unfortunate tendency to get caught up in the scenery, especially when walking around corners. Trying to walk diagonally is also impossible, harking back to the game’s mobile routes.
But Journey to Kreisia is a middle of the road affair; planted much like any other KEMCO RPG. It isn’t the worst game out there, but neither is it anywhere near the best. It is very much just some RPG, and if you’re in the mood, it will scratch that itch. Just let it be known that there are better KEMCO games out there.
Journey to Kreisia: A Classic RPG Adventure Summons Players on Consoles and PC – https://www.thexboxhub.com/journey-to-kreisia-a-classic-rpg-adventure-summons-players-on-consoles-and-pc/
Buy Journey to Kreisia on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/journey-to-kreisia/9P67GM6VG33Q/0010
