Just make this week end!
Well, another one for the bucket list. I knew about Ephemeral Fantasia from a gaming magazine back in the day, and had always wanted to play it... and, well, let's just say that there's a reason Konami isn't known for their RPGs, Suikoden aside.
The premise behind this game is actually pretty interesting, as much like their very own Shadows of Destiny before it, this game is all about a Time Travelling, a 5-day time loop in this case, and instead of it being an adventure game... it's a turn-based JRPG. You play as the mute hero Mouse, and we know just how much I like personality-less mute heroes. Each day is divided into four 6-hour blocks, although there are events that happen only at a certain time, at a certain day. Thankfully, you can hold down Triangle to fast-forward any cutscene, something you'll be doing often with certain repeated events as you loop through the week.
So... where to start with? How about the weirdly tight schedule for events? You see, the entire world is open to you pretty much from the get-go, barring some places that may require a certain party member, you can go anywhere. But the entire island is a labyrinth, and you must slowly piece the map by being lucky enough to find map pieces. And even then, it can be hard to know where the landmark you want is. And then you have to get there in time, some events only happen a certain day at a certain time. Get there too late and you ruined the entire week. There's no LOAD option while in-game, and you can't return to the main menu, so you have to get off your butt and restart the entire console if you'd rather return to a previous save-file instead of killing yourself to re-start the loop. If you get there too early... well, run around in circles and grind, money is hard to come by.
The game doesn't even offer you much in the way of guidance or hints, playing this game without a guide is an exercise in frustration. This would be acceptable if this was a NES RPG, the standards were lower back then, but by the time the game released... they should've known better. Even something as basic as improving a character's weapon is made annoying, since every character has a very specific blacksmith that can upgrade their weapon, and they aren't highlighted in the map, so you better remember where these stores are.
And as interesting as the overall plot is, it's not without issues. Most of the party members you can recruit feel like they join your team completely at random. Usually on RPGs, you can tell which characters will join since they have designs that stand out. Nobody stands out in this game, most character designs are forgettable, except, maybe, Rummy, Baltoth and Mouse's friends. And then there's this very dated scenario, and I'd argue that it was dated even when the game released as I despise Japanese 'perverted sexual harasser old men' humor, like Master Roshi, in which you have to 'lend' a female party member to an old guy, KNOWING he will try to touch them, to progress through the plot. And this old guy joins your party. It's baffling how stupid the whole ordeal is,
And if you think exploring the town is a chore, then you haven't even reached the dungeons. Every single dungeon is a maze, full of forks and roads. And with an obnoxiously high encounter rate. I don't remember the last time I played through dungeons that were THIS poorly designed. Once again, using a guide can help, but even then you might get lost. Any of the very frequent random encounters may throw you off your route.
And it's not just the labyrinthic design, as some have other issues. For instance, there's this very lengthy maze that you must traverse as Mouse alone, and every random encounter has AT LEAST 3 enemies, sometimes UP TO 8. And I'm pretty sure Mouse can't learn AoE attacks, so you are stuck fighting what feels like endless random encounters. I almost gave up on the game here. Here I realized that without a guide, there's no way to enjoy this game. Then, a later dungeon, has a giant spiral you must go through, and it doesn't end. Coupled with the random encounters, it takes like a full hour to go up and down through it. And there's no 'quick escape' spell. There are some items, if you happen to find them, that temporarily reduce the encounter rate, but it's still not good enough. I almost gave up on the game here.
Eventually, I got to the very last stretch of the game. After exploring the last dungeon, and going through this extremely lengthy route only to get to an item.... I decided I was done with it. No way I was walking back all the way I came through, enduring the endless enemy encounters. Nah, the game wasn't worth it, I played 90% of the game and I hated it. And don't even let me get started on the camera. There are three camera angles: Too close to be of any use, slightly farther but still not very useful, or even more farther but over-the-top, which is the one you'll use the most. It's almost funny just how poorly designed this game is.
A halfway decent plot just can't make such a poorly made game any tolerable. I have played games with a guide in hand before, and managed to enjoy them, heck, after going through Simon's Quest with a guide... I thought the game was fun. But the game just isn't much fun most of the time, and if this game had released 15 years before it could've been acceptable. But nah, this game has absolutely no excuse being this bad.
2.0
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