In a sense, it’s a modern RPG, but in many ways, it harkens back to the RPGs of old.
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From Square Enix’s Tokyo RPG Factory comes Lost Sphear, a spiritual successor of sorts to I Am Setsuna, and like its predecessor, Lost Sphear is a nod back to the popular, and often lauded, ’90s RPGs such as Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger. This isn’t only in style but in substance too, as everything is catered for in varying degrees, like strong characters, the age-old battle of peace versus tyranny, large open worlds to traverse, and dungeons to explore. The battle system is also derived from the classic ATB (Active Time Battle) setup in which each character needs to charge up before taking their move, whether it’s an attack, skill or item, and the same also applying to foes.
Lost Sphear is set in a world where memories are being forgotten and whole towns and villages are disappearing into a white mist as rogue monsters start to roam the landscapes. After a vivid dream our young adventurer, Kanata, wakes to find his village missing, and with the aid of his misfit group of friends he discovers that memories, cast into stones, are hidden and that he has the ability to restore the lost memories back into the world.
The game is beautiful to behold as the pastel watercolour palette breathes life into the world, and even from the home screen, which constantly adapts as you play your way through the story, you can see the effort put into making the world feel alive. Lost Sphear runs at 60 FPS on PS4 but is locked to just 30 FPS on the Switch, and while this is slightly noticeable side by side, the gameplay doesn’t falter (the turn-based battle system doesn’t need all those frames). Lost Sphear sets out to try and recreate the look of those classic SNES and PS1 JRPGs and uses a 3D engine to create a fabulous-looking world that could easily be an HD remake of an older game. Gone are the pixelated characters and clunky controls, but don’t be fooled, there are no glorious cutscenes that we have been spoilt with from the like of the Final Fantasy series.
All of Lost Sphear’s storytelling is all done through text-based dialogue, and there’s still a lot of reading to be done, as we’re missing voiceover for the story. In fact, other than a small amount of Japanese spoken during combat, which can be turned off at the start if you wish, there’s no audio dialogue at all. While the older fans amongst us may be accustomed to this early style of storytelling, many modern RPG players may find this particular step back a little harder to enjoy. Don’t fret though, because if reading vast pages of dialogue isn’t your thing, you can speed up the text and even skip whole sections. In the configuration settings there are a number of other time-saving options too, including adjusting event time, difficulty, and even the Active Time Battle system can be adjusted to suit your playing speed. This being said, a lot of time has been spent getting the story right and it would be a shame to skip it and not enjoy the well-written and funny script.
The story is accompanied by a wonderful soundtrack, including an amazing mix of piano and strings that can be wistful, haunting, and at times quite powerful. We have to admit that the main melody has become something of an earworm that we find ourselves humming along to even when not playing the game, so that’s when you can tell it’s a good tune.
As mentioned, Lost Sphear utilises the ATB system and is very similar to that of I Am Setsuna. One standout feature though is that the actual positioning of the characters in the battle can greatly affect how successfully they fight. With each character comes a different style of combat, as some are close range, others can operate from a distance, and some have huge areas of effect. Take, for example, Van, who’s ranged attack will pass through multiple opponents so, if lined up correctly before attacking, he can unleash his barrage on a whole line of baddies maximising damage across your foes. Each character also has a momentum skill, much like the limit breaks in Final Fantasy. This fills up as you battle and when activated with a well-timed button press it can unleash an extra attack.
The fighting system isn’t all fun and games though, as there’s a complex skill set that each character can explore but with very little explanation and high cost, meaning that experimenting with these is hard. Each skill is activated through Spiritnite, a magic-imbued crystal which can be obtained from shops, and these can then be added to with sublimation effects (another form of the Spiritnite) which add a secondary effect such as fire damage or healing to your initial skill.
Even more complicated and expensive than the skills are weapons and armour. Each weapon and piece of armour can be fortified with coloured Spiritnite, and stacking the different colours can greatly increase damage and defence from its base value. This is where it gets tricky, though. Find another weapon and you’ll only see its base value, and with no way to see your current weapon’s original base value you have to guess whether the new item is greater or not. If you do decide to take it, to boost it up above your current weapon’s stats can often cost many thousands of coins, and multiply this over five or six characters with both a weapon and armour, and you could soon be spending hundreds of thousands to fully max out your current stats (that is until you find the next slightly better piece). Had they put in the ability to move Spiritnite across when upgrading or just reducing the initial costs, this dilemma could have been avoided.
There are also a couple of features that really needn’t have been shoehorned in… like fishing. We know fishing is a staple of JRPGs but in Lost Sphear it really has no real function other than adding to the list of ingredients. As for ingredients, every village and town has a restaurant in which a chef will sell you cooked meals, each with a buff that lasts for a limited time, but with the huge range of ingredients available, the hefty cost, and the small advantage gained from meals, this feels like a largely redundant feature.
Lost Sphear is, for the most part, a greatly enjoyable game and we found its relatively short story (around the 20-hour mark) just right to avoid getting bored of the huge amount of text. But for every positive like the story, graphics, music, and battle system, there are slight oversights, like the overly complex system around skills and the needless addition of weapon and armour upgrades bogging the game down and taking a chunk of the fun back out. While many old-school JRPG fans may really enjoy Lost Sphear, ourselves included, the game unfortunately doesn’t quite merit the nostalgia it aims to provide.
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Keyword: Lost Sphear