Another month, another Kemco JRPG for mobile/tablet platforms. It’s incredible how prolific Kemco’s library of JRPGs has become. This is due to Kemco publishing games from a whole slew of smaller developers such as World Wide Software, EXE Create, Hit-Point, and Magitec. It has, therefore, gotten very easy to predict how any given Kemco RPG will turn out given the developer. The Kemco offerings with the most potential tend to be from EXE Create and Hit-Point. EXE Create’s games often have fun characters, and they’ve even been branching out from 2D to 3D graphics in games like Illusion of L’Phalcia. Hit-Point may not pen the best stories, but their strength lies in experimenting with interesting character growth and other gameplay systems as in Rusted Emeth. World Wide Software games adhere to standard JRPG formulas, though they have freshened up their graphic engines, such as with Symphony of the Origin.
But now, we come to Grace of Letoile’s developer Magitec. Of all the Kemco developers, Magitec has evolved the least. They still use a tired old engine that looks like RPG Maker XP and scrolls jerkily, even on modern hardware. They also tend to design dungeons with overly lengthy, tedious layouts. The one saving grace with Magitec is that their stories are a shade darker than those of other Kemco developers and often have piquant plot twists. For better or worse, Grace of Letoile handily ticks all those checkboxes.
The protagonist, named Vedley, is a teenage boy with a troubled past typical of JRPG heroes. When he was a kid, he ventured off into the woods to try to kill a demon terrorizing his village so that his parents would stop treating him like a child. Vedley’s sensible older sister Moniya told their parents about Vedley’s excursion, and they showed up in the nick of time to save their son from the demon’s jaws. Unfortunately, the demon proved tougher than everyone expected, forcing mom and dad to sacrifice themselves for their kids’ survival.
Vedley has harbored survivor’s guilt for years and still blames himself for his parents’ death. So one fine evening, while he’s alone with his thoughts, a mysterious man named Achieitz emerges from the shadows to tell him he can have his wish to change the past granted. To do so, he needs to find a Letoile (a combat doll/automata powered by the soul of a human), make a pact with it, kill five other Letoiles to get all 6 Letoile “sertz” cores, and fulfill his wish. Vedley jumps at the opportunity, but Moniya is hesitant. She figures that others are trying to fulfill their wishes through the Letoiles as well, so this whole situation could turn really ugly. Moniya’s hope that Letoiles are just a myth is dashed when Vedley forms a pact with a rather bristly one named Ajin and sets forth. Determined to figure out what the powers that be are playing at with this deadly game, and to keep tabs on her younger brother, Moniya follows Vedley and Ajin down the proverbial rabbit hole.
The story does not rewrite the JRPG rulebook, but I liked the Hunger Games-esque plot setup and enjoyed the unexpected twists throughout. I found myself invested in the story and was always curious as to how events would unfold. This is one of those games whose plot gets better as it progresses, and said plot was the reason I remained engaged in spite of the game’s tedious gameplay, bland graphics, and forgettable music.
As solid as the story is, the storytelling is far from perfect. Progression is very linear — to the point where one wrong turn on the overworld leads to a character scolding Vedley for going the wrong way. In addition, though the characters have personalities, the wooden dialogue does not bring out the spark in them. The interplay between Vedley righteously refusing to abandon those in need with Ajin’s insistent drive for victory above all else, should make for snappy dialogue. After all, who doesn’t enjoy some good fire and ice interplay between characters? Sadly, this meeting of fire and ice was wispy vapor rather than boiling steam. I also would have liked more and deeper backstories on the other Letoiles and their hosts. A few were expanded upon, but others were shafted.
The gameplay experiments with a few interesting ideas, but some of these ideas feel tacked on or feel like experiments that were abandoned midway through. I have seen this danger in many Idea Factory and Compile Heart games, and those companies are slowly learning to edit themselves.
Grace of Letoile’s main character growth component is the Chronos system. Various skill and magic gems are placed into numbered slots in each character’s status screen. These gems can either be found in treasure chests or bought in stores, but they are very expensive. During the turn-based battles, a Chronos Gauge fills up as characters use the numbered skill that it asks for in a given turn. Activating the Chronos gauge pauses battle and allows you to pick any character and have him/her perform an action. It’s a cool mechanic, but I rarely “got the planets into alignment” enough to use it, particularly during boss battles.
Another battle mechanic to note is that various field effects crop up as turns continue, some positive and some negative. So pay attention to the turn-order ribbon while you’re fighting. Along with HP and MP, characters have an AXL gauge that can be adjusted both in the battle and field menus. Increasing AXL boosts attack power at the expense of defense, whereas decreasing it improves defense but lowers attack.
This is all well and good, but this game is mind-numbingly grindy. My barometer is that if I don’t run from a single random battle, I should be strong enough to go to the next area and have enough money to buy the next tier of equipment and adequate amounts of items in town. Following this modus operandi, I was often underpowered in new areas and would have to grind for levels in the overworld to become strong enough for the next dungeon. Making things worse is that even if you’ve made it through the dungeons with few troubles, the bosses waiting for you at the end can be merciless. The cherry on top is that enemies drop paltry amounts of money, so it took a lot longer than I’d have liked to scrape up enough cash for the next tier of equipment and good skill/spell gems, even late in the game. At least full EXP is granted to all party members after battles regardless of whether they’re in the active party, with level ups restoring full HP. In addition, all new party members start and stay on par with the existing party’s collective level.
Throughout the game, players can grind for “Letoile Points” dropped by specific random enemies called Lanterns to unlock bonus content (additional dungeons and subplots) and items to make the go easier. Technically, players can unlock bonuses without spending a dime, but it takes an obscene amount of time to get Letoile Points in-game, so players can opt to spend real money on Letoile Points.
Dungeons have tedious layouts, and I never really felt the urge to go exploring for treasure. I just wanted to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. One great design choice is the color-coded treasure chests. Blue chests hold equipment, red chests hold consumable items, and green chests hold spell or skill gems. Sadly, treasure chests are sparse and too far out of the way to bother with, even though some hold decent stuff.
Control is insanely slippery and loose, even by tablet standards. With the press of an icon, players can choose between a point-and-touch interface (similar to a graphic adventure’s point-and-click) or a virtual D-pad. Both are clumsy, but I prefer the point-and-touch because the virtual D-pad is like handling an ornery, mucous-covered eel with Teflon-coated hands.
As far as graphics go, the game looks like an RPG Maker XP game with surprisingly choppy scrolling. With today’s hardware and software technology, a basic engine like this should run at a seamlessly smooth framerate. The environments themselves lack variety. For example, every ruin has the same basic visual design as all the other ruins, albeit with slightly different color filters. I’ve seen amateur, freeware RPG Maker games with more environmental variety and stylish flair than this.
Battles are laid out like those in Final Fantasy VI, with enemies on the left and hero characters on the right. The glossy enemy sprites do not animate at all, and the hero sprites have only rudimentary animations. There is also a ridiculous amount of palette swapping among enemy sprites. I know that’s common in many JRPGs, and I can usually overlook it, but I noticed it big time in this game. Dialogue is accompanied by large character portraits that are aesthetically pleasing and nicely detailed, even if not the most original in design. The part I like best about the character designs is their outfits. They are practical, look detailed, possess great colors, and it is refreshing to see female characters not dressed like strippers.
Menu layout is busy, scattered, and not very intuitive. The interface looks more cluttered than it really is, and it feels like the important buttons jump around between menus, especially when shopping. The game does not allow in-store equipping, so it’s a pain to get out of the store menu and back into the regular one to upgrade, then resell, old equipment. Some of the stylized fonts in the menu are difficult to read; and though the Helvetica font in dialogue text is legible, the font is too small for the large dialogue boxes (I despise this modern trend of small fonts in RPGs), and the overuse of Helvetica just feels cheap. A larger, different font would have been nice.
Music stays true to 16-bit RPG style, and the tunes are aesthetically innocuous, but highly memorable. I like the boss theme and maybe one or two other tunes, but the rest of the music is generic, paint-by-numbers JRPG music. Good music can elevate even the most average experience, and I would like to see Kemco seek out more enthusiastic composers for their games.
My final thought is that Grace of Letoile is far from graceful. Effort was put into the story and gameplay mechanics, but execution could have been more refined. On the other hand, minimal (if any) effort was put into the graphics and music. Kemco’s other developers are stepping up their game and putting out better, more polished products, but Magitec, despite delivering games with decent stories, is stagnating and desperately needs to improve its game engines to catch up to its classmates.
