Shrine’s Legacy is a Retro-Styled Action RPG to Watch

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me a new game was inspired by important — if not defining — games from my childhood, I’d have a lot of nickels! However, if the same payment system were applied to the number of times a game lived up to that comparison, it would result in a more lateral financial change. While it’s too soon to say with certainty that Shrine’s Legacy will earn me those five cents, I’ve rarely played a game that seems to have so strong a chance of pulling it off.

Don’t get me wrong — a game doesn’t have to best my nostalgic feelings to be worthwhile. Shrine’s Legacy is clear about its inspirations, but based on my half hour or so with the game on the PAX East show floor, nothing about it feels derivative. It’s an action RPG inspired by SNES classics like Secret of Mana, but it never feels like it’s trying to replicate its predecessors. I didn’t experience any of those “oh, this is a nod to that moment” feelings, or even any one-to-one comparisons in gameplay, which is refreshing. The pixel art and environmental design are excellent, feeling nostalgic but never limited, and the music is fitting and often catchy in the areas I played through.

Jumping into the game world, I had control of Rio and Reima, and while whichever character I wasn’t playing acts on their own, I could also freely switch between them. And, crucially for us Secret of Mana kids, you can bring a friend and play Shrine’s Legacy co-op, an option I miss in most post-Secret games in that series. Combat and movement already feel solid, weapon swings (and a cool dash attack) are fluid, and there’s not even a hint of SoM’s worst mechanic, that stamina meter. Sorry, I’m drawing more comparisons than I probably should here, but that last one is worth highlighting! But the main takeaways are that the game feels good to play, and I love that co-op is an option.

One key differentiator in Shrine’s Legacy from many games of this type are the overworld puzzles. In the forest area I played, there were a few locked areas, making me take alternate paths to search for a key. In doing so, I met some enemy knights searching for my heroic duo, and several enemy types, each with unique behaviors and requiring different combat tactics. For instance, fire-based slimes take very little damage from a sword swing, but freezing them first allowed me to deal significantly more damage.

Beyond its combat applications, the ice spell was instrumental in puzzle solving too, as I had to freeze some stationary gray slimes and discover the pathway to slide the ice block along to land on a switch. Pushing these ice blocks even deals damage to enemies. From what I’ve seen, there’s clearly going to be a focus on the elements in the full game. I only had access to ice in this demo, except for the very end, where I used fire magic to burn away some withered vines blocking my path. Some areas also feature that classic “defeat all nearby enemies to proceed” mechanic, and while my logical brain doesn’t know why beating up three slimes causes a wall of thorny vines to explode, it evoked beloved memories of Zelda and Soul Blazer — again, without feeling derivative.

One last aspect of combat and growth I need to mention are the Jewels. As you can see in the screenshot below, there are many of them, even if I only had a few basic ones in my demo. Rio and Reima each have several “slots” for Jewels (presumably which increase when leveling up), and each Jewel’s cost varies based on its potency. Based on the number of available Jewels, I imagine some potent effects and combinations await discovery!

RPGs are tough to demo at conventions, because time is so limited and you rarely want to spend it reading a lot of dialogue, even if that’s hugely important to me (and most of you!) as an RPG fan. But I enjoyed the dialogue and story sequences I saw, the interactions with NPCs, and the chat and occasional banter between Rio and Reima. It’s not enough to know how in-depth the story will be in the finished product, but both protagonists seem likable, and I appreciate having multiple dialogue choices during some conversations.  The fact that the dialogue and some other UI elements also use the same font as my beloved Quintet classics like Terranigma and Illusion of Gaia is just icing on the cake.

I’d seen Shrine’s Legacy before PAX, and have even seen some of the devs’ updates along the way, and my impression is that this is a project they truly care about and definitely sweat the details. From what I’ve seen so far, that care and attention show through. Shrine’s Legacy went from something that seemed like a cool retro indie project to one I’m highly anticipating, especially for its co-op experience.

Shrine’s Legacy is coming to Windows via Steam later this year, currently anticipated sometime in Q3 2025.