The story is essentially told via a series of monologues delivered at the player. I Am Setsuna goes to great lengths to explain to me what’s happening and why I should care, without ever actually making me care. With more care and attention paid to the way the story unfolds, and less manic pacing, it could have hit a lot harder than it actually did. Again it starts as you agree to escort a young woman to her death, a death which is the last, desperate salvation for a world without much hope. If its central storyline had been given room to breathe and develop naturally it could have been a beautiful, haunting tale.

I Am Setsuna simply explains whatever it needs you to understand in the fastest way possible before moving on.Īnd it’s a shame too, because I Am Setsuna begins strongly, with a premise that is ripe for exploration. The plot is never given any real room to grow or expand, there’s never any real room for characters or story arcs to develop.

The game seems to be in a mad dash to sprint from one plot point to the next, dumping rapid fire blocks of exposition on the player before moving on to the next chunk of story. The problem is the pace with which I Am Setsuna blows past a lot of its story beats. While there is some levity to be found in the occasional joke or humourous situation, I Am Setsuna plays its story fairly straight. I mean, you’re basically escorting a girl on a death march. The game commits to a bleak tone that matches its stormy, snowy backdrop and the inherent dour mood of its central premise. There is the barebones of a really fascinating story in I Am Setsuna. Rather than go through with his mission, Endir “decides” to join her quest and, along with a ragtag collection of misfits they encounter along the way, they forge a path across the world. In a world of perpetual winter, protagonist and assassin for hire Endir is hired by a mysterious man to kill Setsuna, a young woman who is about to embark on a pilgrimage to the Last Lands to sacrifice her life to stem the growing tide of monsters rampaging through the lands. The game itself, however, has a few issues. Tokyo RPG Factory was founded specifically for the purpose of creating games that evoked the classics, and in that regard I Am Setsuna is a successful fulfilment of that mission statement.

Within half an hour of starting the game I felt like I was a teenager again, playing an old Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger or any one of the many SNES/Playstation-era JRPG’s that cemented a lifelong love of the genre. That’s one way I’ve heard the game described by a few different people, and it’s probably one of the most appropriate tags for the game. I Am Setsuna is comfort food for fans of classic JRPG’s.

I am setsuna game mechanics