Quick Look: I Am Setsuna

Been looking forward to this! This game looks super interesting

Oh, a new bumper!

Time till airship: video thumbnail.

Jason played through FFVI in Japanese? Does that mean he knows (a bit of?) Japanese then?

I Am Brosuna.

I

AM

KIROK

I MEAN SETSUNA

Brad's music comment ~10 minutes in seems spot on.

That dungeon theme really reminded me of a track from the spirited away ost.

Edit:Having played a couple of hours so far I am finding this game a bit dull tbh and hearing that the predictable story, samey environment/music and easy combat persist troughout does not sound great

Chrono Trigger is a Japanese game. The Japanese pronunciation of Chrono is Chroh-no. Therefore, Brad is wrong.

Good game but yeah it could have been better. My biggest complaints are that the music, although good, being all piano arrangements gets really old and drags down any excitement, and the game just lacks polish in ways I didn't expect even from a small Sqeenix team.... stuff like teleporting characters and really stiff and sloppy animation work at times.

I dig the art direction, and I dig the somber story line and world. I know that the story aspects are the LEAST bit of the game like classic mid 90s square games... but I appreciate a different or unique type of story tone for games like this and I'm glad it isn't 100% just a 90s rpg.

Overall its a promising first game out of what I hope is a new directive or continuing experiment for Square Enix. I do find it a bit odd that they seem to be trying to eat Falcom's lunch here with the lower budget but good traditional JRPG thing. If anyone really really want's a company that totally gets what was fun about 90s era JRPGs and has never stopped making quality games of that style check out Falcom's recent Legend of Heroes and Y's games. They are the oldest company still doing this stuff and have never stopped doing it well.

Shit man, they straight up call Setsuna "the sacrifice"? Yuna was treated like the First Lady on a goodwill tour, and she got cool ghost friends like Bahamut to chill with too.

@revulsive: Was going to make this same point, but with a little less salt. It is Ku-Ro-No. Not Ku-Ra-No. It not even a debate.

"Spritnites" sound like the were named by Snoop Dogg.

While I do believe it is pronounced the way you both say, this is a terrible argument. The word Chrono is from the greek Chronos, the greek god of time. It does not matter how the Japanese pronounce a foreign word when that word totally exists in western languages anyways. By your argument we would pronounce "trigger" as toriga.

Anyways Chrono is said like the greek god Chronos.

I was on board with your comment until the last sentence. Thanks for the explanation, but dude chill out.

I do not have much exposure to these kinds of games, but I totally agree with Brad on one point;

THE PIANO...IT DOESN'T STOP!

Honestly there's nothing wrong with the individual tracks - they're well done. It's that there is no dynamic to how the game uses them. Each area has a piano piece playing at all times. It would have been much better if they had no BGM in some areas, or if they had just recorded different tracks with different instruments, or multiple instruments, or even just changed the way they mixed some of the tracks so it doesn't sound so identical. For me the BGM is relentless and exhausting at worst and forgettable and nondescript at best.

None of it is going to be memorable to me. I'm not going to be able to listen to this OST and think "oh hey, this is the song that plays at x" because of how quickly all the tracks run together.

That being said that's how I feel about the environments kinda also. This game is extremely one note.

This whole throwback turn-based RPG thing seems eternally hampered by limited ambition. It's not just this game, but if you look at another like Ubisoft's Child of Light, they act like it's the mechanics of these games that people are nostalgic for, which is just totally wrong. If you aren't going to go for epic and sprawling scope, don't even bother making one of these.

I think I'm going to go play Chrono Trigger again

"I dont know any of these people"

Oddly, I did one of them, heh. What are the odds?

edit: oh god this is going places.

Why would a throwback intentionally date itself going after what it was building towards on the PSX/Saturn? "Why isn't VVVVVV a 3D Super Mario 64-alike?" and all that.

Man...Brad was right about the music...the whole game is like that?!?!

If anything you should apologize for that video description, Drew.

Dear god, that one's on par with a recent Alt+F1 tweet about being Hungary and wanting some al Pastor.

@foxmulder: Yup!

You are satsuma.

The piano tracks in the background remind me of intermission music at a local theatre event.

@bonechompski: Same here, and it's really turning me off from playing this game.

no, I'm Spartacus!!!

I like the music! It feels like how old RPGs use to have limited tones on old consoles like the NES

Soy Setsuna!

Me llamo Setsuna!

Been looking forward to a quick look of this!

No one who talks about games for a living seems to realize that I Am Setsuna is pretty explicitly a game about its own creation and that seems super weird to me. Like, it does everything besides coming right out and saying it.

Chrono Trigger holds up quite well, having both played it when it came out and again more recently.

Also do the techs seem lackluster to anyone else? CT has some flair and good audio queues, but here there's no oomph. Maybe the later skills look and sound better, but damn. The game needs a contrast to the somber tone and constant piano tinkle.

As neat of an idea that it is to have the entire soundtrack be played on piano, I can't help but feel that it's ultimately making me not want to play the game at all. Maybe that's crazy.

Pertaining to the music, it does sound well performed. One instrument all the time, even with different tracks, sounded (to me) linear still. At least during this QL. But no rudeness to the musician who I have read a bit here about.

I Am Gundam

I Am Setsuna.

As a Chrono Trigger and classic JPRGs fan, this does nothing for me. Either do something original, confident and new or go pure nostalgia with sprites and midi soundtrack. I imagine every JRPG fan has at least 3 classics they never played (including fan-translated Jpn-only games) so why spend time with a game like this. The soundtrack and Vita-tier graphics are dull; aesthetics are such a huge part of these games that I don't think you can get away with doing them on a small budget like this.

Uh, is Drew getting bored or something? First the Blue Swede on UPF, now random explosions.

Can't wait for his Patreon.

I am totally charmed by the piano soundtrack and the art style of this game. Might have to check it out! Also love the tracks you leave in the snow.

Heard something about the dev team playing lots of Chrono Trigger in an effort to recreate a similar experience with I Am Setsuna. How could they so thoroughly miss out on any sense of creativity, optimism, playfulness or charm? This seems ok but if it's really supposed to be a return to what made Chrono Trigger so well loved it hardly seems like much of a success.

Somewhere along the way jrpgs largely appear to have replaced any sense of joy with somberness and melancholy. Too afraid to let loose without going into full blown slapstick. There isn't so much a sense of adventure as there is a sense that the game is much too dignified to allow any personality to creep in.

It's Chrono, not craw-no. When it's its own word, like in the title "Chrono Trigger" with the space in between the two words, it's a strong O sound. This isn't a matter of debate between two camps unless those camps are "Right" and "Wrong." :P

Stopped watching once Brad called it Krawnuh Trigger, like he was the most clever boy who ever lived.

As someone that played Chrono Trigger for my first time this year, I can say that people's reverence for it these days isn't solely based on nostalgia. It's still great and the best JRPG I've ever played.

People should probably just play Chrono Trigger as it still holds up, being the greatest game of all time and all.

The moment they compared this game to CT is where they goofed. Raised expectations too much. Also should've been sprites.

As someone who puts Chrono Trigger up there in my top games of all time I was looking forward to this, but it does not look great. They're certainly going for a mood, but the frigid setting and piano music makes the whole thing seem limited and one note (and depressing). The music in particular sounds like a track that gets put forward 2/3rds through a game in a pivotal scene or environment when you're going for an emotional punch, not something you want the entire game. Even the upbeat boss theme didn't work well for me. And maybe the story is better than lets on, but I can't see any of the things that actually made the old SNES JRPGs great - great characters, huge scope, a big journey with variation in environments and tone.

The only thing they appear to have actually taken from Chrono Trigger is big parts of the battle/tech system (with their own systems layered on), but that's where I'd like to see innovation and further development with modern touches. Say what you will about the direction Final Fantasy has taken in story and characters, but the best thing about the series is its willingness to completely throw out and revamp the mechanics with each iteration. The battle system in Chrono Trigger was great, but pulling out dual/triple techs is not what I remember from that game.

"You should play them in cran-ological order."

Just finished the game last night. Really mixed feelings on it overall. I had fun with the battle system and overall feel of the gameplay, though one of the double techs you learn early on is good enough to annihilate everything on screen in one Blow(beat). You can really play this game the way you want to and never even explore the giant list of double and triple techs teased before you. The battle system also has some kind of convoluted things about it (flux bonus, singularity bonuses).

The aesthetic and scenery definitely wears out its welcome from time to time. When it works it's good, but the game is dreary snow and piano 100% of the way through. It actually makes me wonder what kind of budget they had to work on considering the overall scope of the game is very narrow and focused. So if you're looking for a grand JRPG adventure, this is not it. But if you're looking for something more introspective, thoughtful and somber, this game may be for you. By the end I'd acquired a fondness for it...just wish there was so much more to it, especially for a $40 game.

The Chrono Trigger systems, references and throwbacks are charming without feeling cheap or pandering. But it is nowhere near on that same level of game. Come to think of it, not much else is. This game just kind of lightly scratches the nostalgia itch without ripping off the scab in all its bloody glory.

Saw Jojo at 8:16! You guys gotta quick look it!