Fallen Legion: Flames of Rebellion

Don't hold me to it, but this review is probably going to be a relatively short one.

Some games just don't provide much to talk about. On one hand, you have the classics, those 10's that I keep going on about, and other really good games that offer up all sorts of reasons to sing their praises. On the other, you have the truly awful stuff, the Rocky and Bulwinkles and Rise of the Robots' that are so offensively putrid that you can't help but talk about them, just for how shockingly bad they are. Then, you have games like Fallen Legion.

It's not that FL:FOR is bad. It isn't. It's that it's so, so painfully average that there just really isn't much to say. The graphics are good, but they aren't great. The story has its moments, but it isn't particularly memorable or unique and it tends to hang on insignificant events for too long. The combat is well designed and different from other games in the genre, but its repetitive and often leads to simply smashing buttons until the enemy is dead. At no point did I ever just want to throw up my hands and quit, but I also never looked forward to continuing my playthrough. I can't really talk about much that stood out, for better and for worse.  

Before we get much farther, lets get the basics out of the way. If it wasn't apparent, FL:FOR is an RPG, released for the PS4, Vita And Nintendo Switch, each version coming at some point between mid-2017 and early 2018. It was developed and published by a company called YummyYummyTummy (yes, I'm serious) and was actually the one of the first video games from Indonesia to be released to consoles in the West. It features a 2D, anime art style that kind of reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics. The gameplay is most similar to Odin Sphere or Valkyrie Profile, you enter battles and move to the right, taking on enemies as you go. It's kind of a cross between a turn based an action RPG, you can't really move your characters and dodge attacks or anything like that, but you have to make inputs quickly and you can string combos together with button presses.

FL:FOR is technically a sequel to Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire, though both games were released around the same time. Both tell the story of the Empire of Fenumia, a declining kingdom in the midst of a succession war between reluctant heir Princess Cecile (who the game sometimes calls Octavia, for some reason) and her top general Legatus Laendur. FOR focuses on Laendur's side of the story, as he builds his army and works his way through the empire in an effort to cut Cecile off at the capital. Once a loyal general, Laendur becomes concerned for his kingdom when a (sigh) talking book begins giving Cecile information and allows her to use strange powers. At the behest of his brother and closest confidant, he decides to take matters into his own hands in an effort to do what he believes is best for his kingdom.

The story does play into the battle system a little bit. During most battles, Laendur will be forced to deal with a situation, be it a fight in his ranks or an audience with a local vassal. You will be given three different choices, each pushing you down a certain path, which will determine how you are perceived and your army's morale. Which choice you make will also provide a respective buff to one of your party members or an item, so you need to balance how you want to act with what you actually need in battle. It's a nice diversion, but it really doesn't add much to the actual game. It certainly doesn't break up the monotony of the battles, which are fun at first but become tiresome quickly. There's no world map, not in a traditional sense, and no dungeons to explore, so the battles are essentially the entirety of the game. This can work in a strategy RPG, where every battle is so vastly different, but it doesn't really here.

I will say there were a few things that FL:FOR did very well. The voice acting is pretty good when it's there. The art style is pretty cool, it's got an anime edge to it but it's not that in your face, chibi-riffic look that a lot of the Tales games have. The sound is also excellent, it really fits the vibe and it's sufficiently intense for the fast paced battles. The translation, while not the best, is still shockingly good for a small studio game from Indonesia, especially considering it's the first console effort from that nation. If it weren't for the whole Cecile/Octavia thing, I might have even called the translation excellent. Maybe its her title? Whatever. I will also say that while I've knocked the combat as being repetitive, it is well paced and does offer some interesting moments, particularly in boss battles. They are on to something here, I just don't know quite what. It needs more work, maybe we will see some real improvement in the recently released sequel?

Maybe. I think FL:FOR did enough to maybe make me take a look. But on its own, it just doesn't quite cut it. I don't think it's a bad game, it just doesn't really offer anything worth going out of your way for. It's just another game, average in every way outside its stellar music and surprisingly strong translation. I would probably be a bit more harsh on the scoring if this came from Square or Blizzard, but a lot of times smaller developers are doing the best they can. Still, I can't say I can recommend a game for being competent, though maybe genre fans will find something to like. 

6/10