Chibi characters, retro graphics, and JRPG gameplay | Full Review - Sephirothic Stories

Sephirothic Stories is a cute budget mobile JRPG featuring cute chibi characters, retro graphics, and turn-based JRPG gameplay.

🟩Pros

+unique gameplay mechanics

+controller support

🟥Cons

-clunky controls

-underwhelming storytelling experience

Sephirothic Stories is a mobile game developed by KEMCO, a well known JRPG developer for the mobile platform, and it is another addition to their fast growing roster. As a japanese role-playing game, it features a turn-based combat experience, exploration with some unique mechanics, and a cute art-style.

The game immediately kicks off to our gameplay and story without any background explanation or lore introduction, and immediately acquaints us with Chibi looking 3D characters Harold and Izzy, and eventually other friendly characters as well. The world is populated by both humans and anthropomorphic animals alike, with Izzy being a humanoid lizard as an example.

The artstyle is kind of a mixed bag for me, while the in-game 3D character models are highly detailed and good looking for chibi standards, the rest of the world looks bland with its dull low poly and low resolution graphics. The 2D portraits for the characters are average enough, not impressive, but not disappointing either.

As for the story, it starts off with a rescue mission of sorts involving mysterious never before seen powerful monsters that roam the land. It's pretty generic, nothing that I’ve never seen before is the kind of deal that I bet after a while it will just blur with other similarly themed JRPG memories that I’ve played.

The exasperatingly slow and lethargic animated cutscenes are rendered in-game with the somewhat detailed chibi-character models and there is no voice acting in this game. The resulting storytelling experience is a bit disappointing, especially with a game featuring the word “Stories” in the title.

The gameplay of Sephirothic Stories is about navigating through various PS1-era looking levels filled with randomized spawn of enemies and loot; trying to go to the next destination or beat the next monster to advance the story.

Bumping with monsters initiates a turn-based battle combat with a typical system of using attack, skills, or items. However one defining mechanic is the Focus system where you can set up a specific combination of skills that you can regularly use.

The random monsters that respawn every time you enter an area are just standing in place, so you can easily avoid them if you want to, as long as they're not directly blocking the path. However the game’s movement controls are so clunky that you’ll often find it challenging to avoid these static enemies, unwittingly adding another layer to the difficulty.

An area where Sephirothic Stories falls a bit short is in the controls. The game can be tricky to navigate at times with the primitive non analog 8-way joystick controls, particularly during exploration when you are trying so hard to steer your player to the right direction. The menus and buttons can also be rather small and hard to tap accurately, which can be frustrating when you are in the middle of a battle.

Sephirothic Stories features unique mechanics in its exploration, where each and every character will have their own characteristics that you can leverage. For example, Harold can easily spot enemies throughout the levels, while others can only see a transparent silhouette, making enemies hard to avoid if you are using them.

Another example is the jump height, at times there are floating coins that you can collect via jumping, and only certain characters can reach those coins. Adding some strategic choice and dynamic elements to the otherwise monotonous exploration parts.

Players can switch off to any character in the player's party at will, to take advantage of each of everyone’s individual skills and talents to help players explore.  While roaming in hostile territory, there is a Murk Meter that slowly increases, filling this up will force their party to retreat to the village to recuperate, adding an exhaustion element that will force players to manage their time and very carefully.

Since the Sephirothic Stories is available for consoles and PC too, I tested it with a Razer Kishi gamepad, although there are no remapping options, it indeed does support it and is playable.

Technical wise,  Sephirothic Stories is honestly just not a fun experience with its low budget animations and bad presentation all throughout. The only saving graces are the unique gameplay elements like the Focus system and the character-centric exploration mechanics, which are then bogged down by an annoyingly clunky control scheme.

Conclusion:

Sephirothic Stories looks like a low budget JRPG that is a lot more closer to an experiment or a practice for the developers than an actual game. Still, it’s free to try so players have nothing to lose to try it except their time.