Alphadia Is So Old-School They Tore The School Down

A hundred years after some great war ended and the nations of Alphadia settled into a peaceful co-existence, the vile Schwarzschild Empire rises, as German-sounding empires often do in Japanese role-playing games. They’re tired of peace through being peaceful and would prefer that old standby, peace through tyranny. In the midst of this chaos a mysterious girl meets a band of stalwart heroes and decides to stand with them in a column as they fight their way from city to city, gathering new equipment and whatever quests might further the plot. It’s all just an excuse to get four spiky-haired people on the right of the screen to wade through a colourful array of left-siders for 30 or so hours.

This is the bare essence of the Japanese turn-based RPGs of our youth, brought back to life but functioning only at the most basic level. The developers did try to mix things up by assigning one of six elements to each playable character and establishing a hierarchy of those elements so someone with say, a fire affinity would be weak against an enemy aligned with water, but I’ve spent several hours playing now and have never had to use one of those fancy powers my characters have learned through levelling. Just tap the ‘Auto’ button and watch the little bastards get to work.