{"id":4983,"date":"2017-11-11T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/revenant_saga"},"modified":"2017-11-11T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-11T17:00:00","slug":"review-revenant-saga-switch-eshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/11\/11\/review-revenant-saga-switch-eshop\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Revenant Saga (Switch eShop)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"\">\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 1 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85893\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85893\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"NSwitch DS Revenant Saga 05 Mediaplayer Large\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Few systems have been blessed with the sheer number of RPGs of Nintendo\u2019s plucky little 3DS, and perhaps no publisher has been as persistent in its contribution to that collection as KEMCO. It&#8217;s brought more than a dozen titles \u2014 most of them mobile ports \u2014 to the 3DS\u2019 eShop, alongside a smaller number to the Wii U, and now that legacy continues on the Switch with <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/revenant_saga\">Revenant Saga<\/a><\/strong>. An old-school throwback that borrows from both the 16- and 32-bit eras of JRPGs, Revenant Saga offers a functional but ultimately unimpressive take on the genre, and is hard to recommend as a result.<\/p>\n<p>When Revenant Saga\u2019s curtain rises, our hero Albert is in a bit of a bad place. Demonic beings known as \u2018Revenants\u2019 have been terrorising humanity, and a deadly plague is sweeping through the kingdom like wildfire. Albert\u2019s best friend and her parents become afflicted by the disease, and in an attempt to save them he makes a deal with an unscrupulous surgeon to try and scare up a cure. As you might imagine, this doesn\u2019t exactly go as planned \u2014 the experiment ends up implanting a Revenant into Albert\u2019s body, and while he makes it out alive, his friend isn\u2019t so lucky. Now sharing his body with a demon and hell-bent on revenge, he sets off to uncover the truth behind the Revenants, picking up a party of scrappy comrades along the way.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 2 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85894\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85894\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"NSwitch DS Revenant Saga 01 Mediaplayer Large\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>After that initial ramp up, Revenant Saga\u2019s story is fairly predictable, and it\u2019s unfortunately not very well told. The writing is strictly serviceable and the translation seems to have a stake in reviving long-lost English idioms \u2014 combined, it gives the sense of a script that never knows what tone to take. Characters feel flat and generic, and are also surprisingly verbose \u2014 the lengthy, frequent, and slow-moving dialogue sequences drag on well past their welcome.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, JRPGs can certainly rise above their stories, and Revenant Saga hinges its hopes on a classic gameplay template: you\u2019ll move your party across an overhead, Dragon Quest-style world map, heading from town to town in your quest for revenge, fighting random battles in dungeons and the overworld as you go. If you\u2019ve played any other KEMCO RPGs (or really, any RPG) you\u2019ll know what to expect here, and the basic hooks of the genre \u2014 levelling up, following NPC clues, sidequests and equipment upgrades \u2014 are all present and accounted for.<\/p>\n<p>Revenant Saga does add a neat wrinkle to the proceedings by calling back to not one but two golden eras of JRPGs, juxtaposing its 16-bit-inspired overworld with 32-bit battles. As you walk the world map, explore towns and dungeons, and interact with NPCs, everything\u2019s overhead and sprite-based, with SNES-style sprites and tiled backgrounds. When you enter a random encounter, however, the transition to battle triggers a perspective shift to 3D, with your heroes and enemies alike rendered in the chunky polygons of the PSOne days. It\u2019s a cool effect, and helps give Revenant Saga a distinctive visual identity.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 3 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85891\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85891\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"NSwitch DS Revenant Saga 02 Mediaplayer Large\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>The combat itself is turn-based and straightforward \u2014 perhaps a bit too straightforward for its own good. You can choose to attack, defend, use items, or cast skills which consume SP, and while it\u2019s certainly functional \u2014 it\u2019s the standard setup for a reason \u2014 there\u2019s a distinct lack of the nuance that more memorable examples of the genre offer with similar systems. Big damage from attacks and offensive spells is pretty much always the way to go, and enemy AI and attack patterns don\u2019t offer any clever tricks to offset that issue. The result is that battles feel largely ceremonial, and in fact they can be; auto-battle can carry you through the majority of encounters with little trouble.<\/p>\n<p>There is one standout feature of combat, however, which injects a bit of personality into the system: Transformations. Each party member can choose to \u2018Transform\u2019 during battle, which changes their appearance \u2014 Sailor Moon or Super Saiyan style \u2014 and sends them into an altered state, where they\u2019ll deal more damage, receive less in return, and have access to special, more powerful skills. The catch is that they\u2019ll be unable to heal (or be revived) while they\u2019re going wild, so you\u2019ll need to keep an eye on HP, and spend a turn \u2018untransforming\u2019 if anyone needs a top up. It\u2019s a great concept, but in execution it feels under-baked. The ability to cancel the transformation whenever you like effectively kills much of the risk-reward dynamic, for one, and while we enjoyed using transformations for the visual variety and fun of it, they never really felt necessary; most normal battles could be won just as easily \u2014 not to mention quicker and with less SP spent \u2014 without transforming at all.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 4 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85895\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85895\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"NSwitch DS Revenant Saga 06 Mediaplayer Large\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Unfortunately, that sentiment sums up Revenant Saga as a whole: there are some nice ideas here, but they\u2019re let down in the details, and especially in the presentation. The graphics have bright spots, for instance \u2014 large, crisp character portraits, cute sprites, and weather effects on the world map \u2014 but the 2D backgrounds are heavily tiled and achingly bland. The 3D battles have the opposite problem, with interesting, varied backdrops but stiff character models and animations that could generously be described as \u2018sparse\u2019; most attack animations boil down to a party member moving towards, through, and then away from an enemy as if on wheels. The soundtrack is similarly uneven; the rocking overworld theme is an excellent, electric guitar-fronted call to arms, but much of the music you\u2019ll hear elsewhere is generic fantasy fare, noticeably compressed and very MIDI.<\/p>\n<p>There are also some significant issues with the interface and controls. The most noticeable of these is the movement, which feels oddly out of sync. Albert tears across towns, dungeons and the overworld at a way-too-quick clip, and the controls can\u2019t quite keep up, making for an unwieldy journey. Text delivery, meanwhile, sits on the opposite side of the speedometer, and there aren\u2019t any text speed options \u2014 it\u2019s either agonizingly slow, typewritering out letters one-by-one, or fast-forwarded by holding down the \u2018X\u2019 button, and then much too fast to read. Finally, there\u2019s a chat log feature, which lets you look back at any dialogue or narration, and while we found this quite handy \u2014 using it to fast-forward through the slow-paced cutscenes and then read them at our own pace after \u2014 it\u2019s mapped to the same button (\u2018L\u2019) as \u2018Party Heal\u2019, which means you can only access it if you\u2019re already talking to another NPC. To be fair, that wouldn\u2019t normally be much of an issue, but the ticker-tape speed of text delivery meant we found ourselves using the log more often than we otherwise might, and so this limitation stuck out.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 5 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85892\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/85892\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"NSwitch DS Revenant Saga 04 Mediaplayer Large\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>To give credit where it\u2019s due, however, we absolutely have to call out a very welcome feature in Revenant Saga: single-hand control options. A toggle in the menu lets you use a single Joy-Con held vertically to control the whole game, by mirror-mapping the face buttons to the left Joy-Con\u2019s D-pad, and enabling the right Joy-Con\u2019s analogue stick for movement. Being able to control the whole game one-handed is peripheral bliss, and a perfect fit for kicking back with an RPG \u2014 a fact borne out by the brief golden era one-handed controllers meant just for JRPGs enjoyed in the PSOne days. It\u2019s also a significant boon for accessibility, and that\u2019s well worth celebrating; we\u2019d love to see one-handed Joy-Con control in more Switch RPGs going forward.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"conclusion\">\n<h2 class=\"heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>Revenant Saga sets out to offer a simple, throwback JRPG on Switch, and while it certainly ticks those boxes it doesn\u2019t actually end up being very fun to play. An unremarkable story, uneven presentation and interface issues hold this already unambitious effort back, and while it brings some excellent ideas to the table \u2014 like battle Transformations and single-handed control \u2014 they\u2019re not enough to recommend the experience. If you\u2019re starved for an old-school RPG on the Switch, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/i_am_setsuna\"><strong>I Am Setsuna<\/strong><\/a> is still your best bet at the moment \u2014 otherwise, the 3DS\u2019 treasure trove of turn-based adventures awaits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Few systems have been blessed with the sheer number of RPGs of Nintendo\u2019s plucky little 3DS, and perhaps no publisher has been as persistent in its contribution to that collection as KEMCO. It&#8217;s brought more than a dozen titles \u2014 most of them mobile ports \u2014 to the 3DS\u2019 eShop, alongside a smaller number to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}