Absinthia

I was hesitant to buy this game, but so glad I did. It became one of my favorite JRPGs of all time. The story took me by surprise, given its unexpected twists and turns. The humor was on point with all characters being likable. Absinthia is such a hidden gem so it saddens me it's not as popular as it could be. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Absinthia is a game that is difficult to recommend simply because of how odd it can be. To start with, this RPG doesn't tell a massive story but a much more personal one. The story is largely about Freya, one of your party members, and Lilith, a woman who is out to destroy lives for whatever reason. Lilith is constantly attacking a single town, Katti Town, and largely ignores the rest of the world. Freya is training three children of Katti Town to help defend it. Sera, the knight's apprentice, Jake, the thief, and Thomas, the wizard. These three make up your party for the majority of the game, playing as Sera.

First up, the combat. The combat is unique in that the entire thing is a balancing act. You can attack, use skills, use items, and flee in most battles, with every character having a sort of 'defend' action in their skills menu. This skill will typically give some sort of self-buff for a few turns and regenerate MP. Every character has the same maximum MP and you regenerate some of it per turn. This means combat is a dance of sorts; balancing offensive actions with defensive ones to keep your MP high so you can keep using skills. This also means going all-out can often be a difficult choice, as it leaves you basically helpless in following battles until you get your MP back. As you play it a lot, you get the hang of this system and get a good sense of when you should go offensive and when you should fight strategically, especially on higher difficulties.

The characters are a part that is... difficult to talk about, since they're handled a bit differently than most RPGs. Characters aren't really explored too deeply; while everyone has some elements of depth to them, characters are much more grounded in this world. You get just enough personality to get an idea of how they're like, but not much more than that. What's a little harder to swallow for some is that every party member is some element of LGBTQ+. Jake and Thomas are a couple, Freya is a lesbian, and Sera is asexual. I bring this up because these are things that will come up in conversation. However, this is also where I applaud the game as they're treated less like they're a big deal and just aspects to the characters; small parts of the whole. Sera struggles the most with her asexuality and, even then, merely coming to the conclusion that it's okay to have no real attraction to anyone as of now, nor drive to change that. She accepts it, which is fine.

The one downside to this is that it does come across a little like 'if everyone is special, no one is special', but, like I said, these relationships are downplayed as much as possible not to be a vocal point of any one character or their interactions with others. Jake and Thomas get the most exploration of their relationship and, even then, they have their minor issues between them; moments of trust needing to be built upon. Freya's relationship with Ruthea, doesn't get quite as much development as it probably needed to have, but I can't hold this against the game. None of the interactions overstayed their welcome, as far as I'm concerned.

The soundtrack is also quite good, though I wish some themes would show up more often. Certain boss themes are amazing, but only show up once and only in side quests, making them really easy to miss. The world also feels a little small, making it feel like there isn't much to find, but considering this is a shorter RPG, I feel that's to the game's strength.

If I had to say something negative about the game... the story isn't great. It gets a little generic and, by the end, I felt like Lilith's motivations weren't explored enough. For how well the main cast is characterized, the villains are significantly less so. There is also a later curveball about Freya that gets dropped and... basically never brought up again.

All in all, a very good, competently made RPG. I'd recommend it for the gameplay alone; the combat system is pretty interesting and is the reason to play it.

Safe and fun little recommendation if you like classic RPGs. Despite its short length of 10-15 hrs its paced extremely well and doesn't feel rushed anywhere. A very small amount of map puzzles, mostly lever pulling jumping ones that can expand two rooms at times. The story does has some interesting twists that make it more unique than the normal tropes you often see as well. I would suggest reading the manual key item to learn about status effects and know that your characters actually have elements they are weak to and also some they resist!

Finished this yesterday and overall I'd say I like it.
The combat mechanics are really solid, having to do a balancing act between regular attacks, skills and MP regeneration made the combat consistently engaging, I was playing on Normal, but even with that the regular encounters never felt mindless. I'm not too familiar with RPG Maker so I don't know how much this deviates from the usual, but it felt pretty unique to me at least. The areas you explore were all right, pretty standard but definitely not bad. I wasn't a big fan of most of the lategame sidequests(with one exception) since they felt kinda short and didn't tend to move the characters forward or even let them interact all that much, the main story locations were generally good though.
I generally like the cast of characters here, the main cast are very enjoyable and I really enjoy the dynamic the have with each other, their interactions were generally the highlight of the game for me. All of them are queer which is generally something I like and I feel it's handled well here, their identities are all important to their character and come up a quite a bit, but they've got plenty going on besides that.
The side cast fares a bit worse unfortunately, I'm not big on Lillith, she feels a bit too generic to me. I like what the game was going for with her interactions with Freya, but I just felt like the execution wasn't all there. Ruthea is also not great, I like her when she shows up, but she really needed more screentime. Despite being important to Freya's backstory she only shows up a couple times which makes the resolution between them feel a bit undercooked.
As for the general plot, this game is really going for something more character centric which I like and it's well executed, but the general plot beats are pretty generic, basically just a compilation of fantasy tropes. I can't say I found this world or most of the major events all that interesting, the interactions between the main party was the thing keeping me engaged, not so much the story around them.
The game tries to have comedic moments pretty frequently and these are a mixed bag to me, generally it's great when it's not relying on reference humor or memes which is unfortunately pretty often. Still got a good amount of laughs out of me, but also quite a few groans.
Visually the game looks pretty good, not blown away by the pixel art, but it does look pretty nice. The OST is also really good. I did notice some performance issues during battles in the late game side quests, the laptop I played this on is pretty old so maybe that's the reason, the issue was also generally resolved by quitting to the title screen and reloading so it ultimately wasn't that big of a deal.
Overall I'd say I definitely have my issues, but I still had a very good time with this and would recommend it if you're looking for a good indie RPG.

the best of the series so far excited to see what comes next

Excellent and heart breaking story featuring a transfem main character

So gay and i like it