A Norwegian-eyed Norwegian

Earthlock festival of magic review

Funded through earthlock festival of magic kickstarter and published quietly, Earthlock: Festival of Magic is the classic Japanese role-playing game developed, however, by a Norwegian software house. His other peculiarity is that of being released in preview through the Games with Gold service but the title Snowcastle Games will also arrive on Steam on September 27 and will be released later on Wii U, PlayStation 4, Linux and OSX.

That said, Earthlock leaves, like a thousand other titles of the same genre, with a catastrophic event that puts at risk the existence of the entire planet and that sees us protagonists of a rescue on the wool thread.The world in question is that of Umbra and it took us five years to bring it up to us. Earthlock’s pre-alpha arrived in May 2013 and after just under a year the title appeared on Kickstarter. U

nfortunately, the campaign started slowly and so Snowcastle Games decided to postpone it in March 2014, but publishing a demo concept for Windows, OS X and Linux that was fundamental to the success of the financing. The works, at that point, actually started but given the troubled genesis and the little publicity we are not surprised by the fact that Earthlock has passed in a muted state despite being, as we shall see shortly, an interesting title.

Between highs and lows, Earthlock: Festival of Magic manages not to go unnoticed

THE UMPTEENTH END OF THE WORLD

Earthlock: Festival of Magic opens with a parenthesis that presents us with a young rebel pilot who is trying to escape the authority of her father.Having found the way to sail the skies, the brave pilot leaves the stage to the equally young Amon, a treasure hunter who lives and works with Uncle Benjo.

The guardian of our hero is an anthropomorphic hammerhead fish that we can use for the first mission but that is kidnapped after a few hours of play because of a powerful artifact found in the first mission. At this point we enter into the heart of the story that sees us committed to save Umbra along with a swine robot, a warrior with big hair and the pilot above, accompanied by a faithful quadruped.

Earthlock xbox one

Looks good, plays well and it’s quite fun. It’s not unforgettable, but there aren’t many games like this on Xbox One, so make sure you have a look at it if you are a Gold subscriber.

Earthlock festival of magic gameplay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TvCUeLIyik

As you may have guessed characters and plot are the most classic for the genre and cosmetics, partly European and partly clearly inspired by the JRPG genre,

The first is the system of stance that allows you to access different skills by changing, in the middle of a fight, the specialization of a hero. The protagonist moves from an agile thief to a shooter, while others gain access to buff buffs, thus multiplying the possibilities for action and, consequently, making Earthlock’s tactical dimension more complex.

Earthlock festival of magic characters

The other particularity is the coupling system that, by unlocking talent points and speeding up the charge of the ultimate, adds a further pinch of identity to Earthlock.

Earthlock festival of magic release date

To increase the link between our character and one of the companions it is sufficient to place the two in the relevant section of the menu that also allows us to see the entity of the link reported first with a blue bar and then with golden stars.

Initially the skills available are few, even counting the stance of the characters, but grow with the evolution of the characters through a chessboard that allows you to spend the talent points to fill the boxes with certain bonuses until you unlock the different skills that culminate in a skill special.

The simple boxes are filled with skills that improve statistics and are found rather easily while to unlock the other boxes instead are necessary shrines, obtainable with the crafting that is also very useful for bullets and potions, which are characterized by more important bonuses often inclusive of very useful resistors. All this gives us back a system that does not revolutionize anything but allows a good personalization and guarantees a rather deep gameplay.

There are also puzzles, simple but made interesting by the ability to change character to overcome certain obstacles, and other activities around the board, such as tournaments, which guarantee a little ‘break of monotony in a world that, like in most RPG of this type, it is definitely not very interactive.