How far did you get: One completion, saw a few extra things
How many hours did you put into it: Roughly 25
That's not to say that I am Setsuna is a bad looking game. The art is pretty and reminiscent of classic jrpgs, but looks really colorful in high definition. About 90% of the game takes place in snow, which may sound a bit drab, but it fits the story well. The world map does it's job, but doesn't really offer anything worth looking at.
The characters in this game are far more interesting than the story they are put in. The overall idea here is that you are leading a girl to a place where she will sacrifice herself to save the world from monsters. That might seem pretty interesting to someone that hasn't played Final Fantasy X, but that doesn't describe me and I found the story to be a bit too familiar. Fortunately, the character dialog is far better. While the game may have a gloomy feel to it, the characters were lighthearted enough to make sure I was still having fun while meandering through snowy wastelands and forgotten ruins.
The creators took a pretty unique approach to the music in I am Setsuna. With the exception of the battle song and maybe one other, the entire soundtrack is made up of piano music. Most of it is quite good, too. The minimalist approach worked really well to enhance the gloomy atmosphere the game seems to be going for. The biggest surprise was how uplifting the soundtrack could sound at times with just one person playing a piano.
The biggest mixed bag in I am Setsuna is it's combat system. The basics are nearly identical to Chrono Trigger, which is a very good thing. However, the more in depth systems in regards to learning skills and powering them up are unnecessarily complicated. The biggest drawback is that the game doesn't do much in the way of a tutorial to help you understand the flux and momentum systems. The basics behind momentum were pretty simple, as you just press a button when your character attacks and you get some sort of bonus attack or spell connected to it. It's necessary to use to make any progress, but it's pretty simple at first. Where it gets complicated is that momentum attacks are tied into additional powers for you skills and spells called flux. These seem to also be tied into what accessory you have equipped and what flux that accessory has attached to it. Powering up these skills with flux seemed almost entirely random for me, and even after finishing the game, I'm not entirely sure if they are random or if I was doing something wrong. In addition to that, your skills and spells are equippable items called spritinite, which is very similar to Final Fantasy VII's materia. In order to get more spritinite, you need to kill enemies and sell what they drop to the vendor that sells spritinite. Using momentum in battle causes enemies to drop more things, and using different types of spritinite causes enemies to drop different things. To make things even more annoying, the enemies don't drop money, so the only way to get it is to sell monster drops. Factor in to that that there are no inns so you have to heal with tents or cabins, you only have two equippable items (weapon and accessory) and the only thing that goes up when you level is your hit points and sp, you may find that you're trying to figure out what gameplay mechanics you can ignore to get by. Personally, I spent little time with the flux system and chose to level my weapons as high as possible, and ended up having a pretty easy time with the game. Thanks to leveling only increasing hp and sp, I didn't feel much need to grind for levels, and instead spent time grinding for money and monster items so I could get more spritinite.
I would definitely recommend I am Setsuna to fans of classic jrpgs, just with the caveat that you may have to deal with some unnecessary and somewhat useless leveling systems. The story didn't hit me emotionally like I thought it would, but it's still a nice looking game with fun characters.
Rating: 74/100
