A Glorious Classic JRPG - Earthlock: Festival of Magic Review

SBFord · September 2016

A Glorious Classic JRPG - Earthlock: Festival of Magic Review

Earthlock: Festival of Magic from Snowcastle Games is an absolute nostalgic joy to play. Feeling at once both reverential for classic 16-bit JRPGs and novel due to its western stylized setting and systems, Earthlock is a grand start to an RPG trilogy, and well worth the meager price of admission. Read on for our full review.

Read the full story here

epoq · September 2016

Bill did you beat the game? I heard in a review it gets annoying with unavoidable encounters at one point in the game where you have mobs stacked on mobs that you have to fight all at once, perhaps that should have been organized a little better.

Elvoc · October 2016

The re-population of enemies as you enter and return to areas is kind of annoying especially if your in the area and just running back. I love the ability to teleport to the island to do all the gardening and crafting but hate the fact that you can not teleport to the spot you were in before teleporting back, you have to basically start the whole area over again.

Boss fights are brutal after the first 2, took me a good long time to finally beat the Goblin King..

maskedweasel · October 2016

I got this for free for being an XBL subscriber... haven't gotten into it really.. I did go through the first few encounters, definitely JRPG style.. I haven't decided whether or not I'll go back and play it anytime soon.

Wizardry · October 2016

It sounds "ok" but also sounds like no replay value meaning the value is LOW "4-5" not high "8'
The actual combat is not explained so for all i know it could be bad or just very average/weak.

OLD Jrpg's were great to play but that has worn out as now we have the know how and tech to do a MUCH better job,like a bus load better.My fave game of all time "FFXI" has given us many ideas to improve on both gameplay and combat and characterization yet all i keep seeing from games is ho hum in all areas.

"repop"not sure why that would be annoying,do you really want to enter an area and have it empty,where would the game play be then?
I also used to paint a picture whenever i heard people use terms like "grindy" or now in this case "annoying",that picture i paint is that you really don't like the combat because if it is fun it is NEVER grindy and never annoying.

I do not like the idea of stances,i find that a very old dumb idea.If you want to have roles,which i do approve of that is ok but not stances.A very good very old game FF3 gave us the first game with class changing,but they allowed EVERY character to fully change into another class which to me has always made sense just so long as it is NOT on the fly because it ruins realism very badly.

All in all,we need more information on this game,it just sounds too much like a fast butter me up review.I say this because if i gave a game this high a score "which i never would",i could/would go on for hours with detailed information.Example Mr.Coke used up 10 paragraphs to talk about a mouse "roflmao"that is like 2 paragraphs of instructions on a box of pop-tarts,yet this so called "8/10" game garners little attention?

cheyane · October 2016

As a huge fan of JRPGs I am grateful for any news of games I can play on the PC. Thanks Bill. I have been bitten by the modding bug and I started with Morrowind and I am doing Fallout 3. It is really addictive modding games.

bonzoso21 · October 2016

I just started this game on Xbox. It was given away for free the first two weeks after launch, which makes some of its faults easier to swallow. There's a lot to like for fans of turn-based JRPGs, just as the review said.

The visuals are pretty good and colorful, though the animations aren't the best. The music is great. The combat is pretty good and there are some neat customization systems and a few mechanics that stand out. This is one of those games where you can see the enemies ahead of you and try to avoid them if you want, which is possible on the world map but not really gonna happen in dungeon areas due to the speed at which the enemies close on you once they see you. Anyhow, I played through a few areas so far (3 bosses dead), and was getting into it, despite some bugs and lack of polish, the annoying repops, and the awful camera.

And then the Ympkin came.

This little mage enemy is the point where you will be forced to accept that the game will make you grind battles against trash in order to gain levels, a common occurrence back in the day but still one that the genre should have evolved away from. Up until this point--with the exception of my exploratory foray into a high level area I obviously wasn't meant to go into--combat was challenging while still being level appropriate. You'd still have to make use of combat stance changes and drink potions to heal from time to time, but you should win in the end.

A couple hours in, I hit this wall where I could win the trash fights, but they would leave my party so decimated that I felt compelled to return to an inn and rest. Of course, all the enemies return when you leave each screen, and thus the grind begins.

These issues aren't going to chase me away from the game, mind you. It's been a long time since I played a JRPG, and an even longer time since I played one that I mostly enjoyed. Just be aware that it comes with some caveats.

Warlyx · October 2016

classic Jrpg is insta win on my book

gonna play it for sure

BillMurphy · April 2018

epoq said:

Bill did you beat the game? I heard in a review it gets annoying with unavoidable encounters at one point in the game where you have mobs stacked on mobs that you have to fight all at once, perhaps that should have been organized a little better.

Yes, actually that entire last bit has been re-designed. Loads of fixes like that have gone into this "Director's Cut".