The 90´s, sweet 90’s, Nirvana and MC Hammer, Burton and Schumacher, DBZ, Pokemon and games, lots of good games. Rainbow Moon is a love song to those old school JRPGs, and a really good song.
This game was made by eastasiasoft, a European dev team with another underrated jewel under their arm, Soldner, an exclusive shm’up for PSN which also hearkens to the 90’s.
Rainbow Moon tells the story of Balder, a warrior who (un)fortunately stumbles upon a portal that sends him to a distant planet, or rather a moon. Now he must fight his way back home through monsters, wannabe heroes and thieves. Plus, everybody believes he unleashed the monsters on the moon, adding to his troubles, but as any good JRPG; soon he allies with others, travels to exotic lands and gets involved on a wacky conspiracy.
Actually, Rainbow Moon’s history goes to a second plane and only works as a vehicle to get you all over the place fighting monsters and earning experience right and left. The fighting system is what shines on this gem so everything that surrounds it. Leveling and customization on Rainbow Moon are really detailed and immense. Everything on your party can be developed; leveling, attributes, equipment, active and passive skills, and battle formations. Leveling is based on three factors, experience, lunar coins and lunar orbs. Experience defines level which determines the cap for attributes, Lunar Orbs are used to upgrade attributes and Lunar Coins are used to buy equipment and potions and all kinda stuff to help you get through your travels. Furthermore, enemies drop materials that can be fused into armor and weapons to upgrade their attributes (or can be sold). And not forgetting skills, as usual, active skills are used during battles and passive skills are used to buff attributes and out of battles for assorted things (one of my favorites lets you grow fruit to replenish your food bar) and each has it own experience gauge. The only downside is that some are restricted to certain character, effectively limiting job customization.
In battle, the actions develops on a grid where you must displace and position your characters effectively, this simple thing opens a whole lot of interesting tactical possibilities, for example, some enemies will drop loot when defeated, the space occupied by that loot it cannot be occupied by a character so you can decide on leaving it to create a barrier to protect yourself from flanking or getting surrounded, or grab it and claim your prize. The battle system reminded me a lot of games like Valkiria Profile and a bit of Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics. The hybrid works perfectly and feels surprisingly fresh and unique regardless of the comparison. The battled have a really fluid and fast pace and never gets boring. The speed attribute is really interesting since it determines who starts the battle and how many subturns your character gets. The battles, although random, need to be triggered by the player so you can advance at your own pace, a really cool detail indeed. And surprisingly the battles never get repetitive.
FIRST IMPRESSION
Rainbow Moons does not look impressive, in fact that its weakest point. The animation looks awkward and robotic although serviceable; the character design is weak and uninspired. On a positive note, the color palette is eye candy and the environments are really varied. The music is outstanding and some tracks are memorable, the sound effects are really cool and the weird voice effects give Rainbow Moon a very distinctive personality.
CONTROL
The usual, move with the stick, press x for action, inventory to triangle. On the battles things get mixed a little, in fact one of my favorite things is how the attack command works on melee characters. Moving along the grid can be awkward but you get used fast.
IMMERSION
Although its history is not the best thing in the world, Rainbow Moon demands a lot of attention, in fact you get a trophy for playing 100 hours and another to level a character up to level 500!!! But with a platinum trophy, a fun and fresh battle system and a robust and deep customization and leveling system, investing 100 hours don’t look all that crazy.
Rainbow Moon is a love poem to JRPG fans from and to dedicated fans, if you loved SMBRPG, FF Tactics and Valkiria Profile this game is for you, plus is a really complete experience for only 15.00 bucks
-shinkeiDEI-
