Hope and sadness amidst the endless snow.
Even if I am Setsuna hadn't been sold to the public as a salve for Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 fans pining for the golden age of the JRPG, its many similarities to those two classics would invite comparison. But instead of shamelessly aping those games, I Am Setsuna felt more like its own game the further I got into its deep magic and skills system, and the more I got to know its cast of intriguing characters. Some balance issues come dangerously close to trivializing its otherwise enjoyable combat, but it ultimately pulls through on the strength of its well-established tone and a well-told story.
I Am Setsuna’s greatest strength, by far, is its steadfast commitment to the somber tone it establishes right from the outset. Yes, there are brief moments of levity, but nothing that qualifies as an attempt at comic relief, and the journey is all the better for it. This is a tragic tale of a fractured world filled with people who vainly struggle against a rising tide of danger, and nearly every creative choice properly reflects this. The gorgeous, achingly sad all-piano soundtrack, the muted colors, and the relentless emptiness of the overworld all work in harmonious service to the themes of sacrifice, regret, and hope in the face of cyclical and unending conflict.
The other edge of that sword is a sort of monotony that detracts ever so slightly from the overall sense of adventure. The overworld is just an endless expanse of snowy fields dotted with rickety old towns made up of a mere handful of homes, all of which look like they were furnished out of the same catalogue. And while the piano is no doubt a versatile instrument, that it is literally the only one employed does limit the music’s range of expression a bit. It works for what I Am Setsuna is - this certainly isn’t meant to be high fantasy - but I never felt a sense of anticipation of what might be waiting through the next cave entrance because I usually already knew.
Doomed From The Start
What I was looking forward to, though, was finding out more about my traveling companions, whose tales are at a glance familiar: You are part of a group of adventurers whose main purpose is to help one special individual, the titular Setsuna, complete her journey to a far-off place. But I Am Setsuna betrays this well-worn trope in a number of interesting ways, not the least of which is the fact (revealed in the very beginning) that you are escorting Setsuna to her sacrificial death.
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You aren’t a bright-eyed young man looking for adventure, or even saving the world; you’re a heartless mercenary who’s escorting a young woman to her innevitable death.
In this world humankind scrapes by despite monsters of all kinds constantly hunting and killing them, and the only way to keep that threat somewhat at bay is to send an 18-year-old off to die. You aren’t a bright-eyed young man looking for adventure, or even saving the world; you’re a heartless mercenary who’s escorting a young woman to her death, just so what’s left of humanity can continue to huddle semi-safely in in their little shacks for a few more years.This pervasive sense of inevitable loss, as well as the feeling that humanity’s best days are already in the distant past, casts the actions and motivations of everyone involved in a unique light that keeps the story from feeling like the JRPGs it clearly borrows from.
You will almost assuredly think you know these characters based on superficial similarities between them and characters from your favorite Final Fantasies of old, but none of this cast is what they seem. Don’t expect massive, mind-bending twists, but each of them has a story to tell, and I Am Setsuna does a great job of setting them up, developing them, and letting them have their moments without bogging things down with heavy exposition or 30-minute-long cutscenes. It never feels overly dour or self-indulgent either, which is something of a feat given how heavy the themes are.
Maybe it’s because most of the denizens of I Am Setsuna’s world have long since given up hope or struggle. Their resignation to their circumstances is part of what makes it such a heartbreaking tale, but it also lends a certain serenity to the proceedings. There is no melodrama here, just surrender to circumstance; as sad as that sounds, it makes every character’s personal struggle and their resolve to see Setsuna to her end all the more poignant.
A Bit Too Much Power
Beneath its somber beauty are deep magic and skill systems which provide a wealth of options for party customization. Each character has their own distinct active skills, and a pool of passive skills can be assigned to anyone, but you have a limited number of ability slots to work with. Individual skills can be further altered with repeated use over time by a variety of bonus effects, and potential skill modifiers. I could end up with a provoke ability that heals me in addition to forcing monsters to attack me, or a fire spell that temporarily increases all of my stats. Add in the fact that characters don’t generally fit the traditional tank/healer/dps model of modern RPGs, and that specific characters have combination attacks together, and you have a ton of permutations at your disposal.
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Beneath its somber beauty are deep magic and skill systems which provide a wealth of options for party customization.
I Am Setsuna thankfully does a good job of rolling this stuff out slowly and in digestible bites. Its core might be ripped almost entirely from Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6, but all these other elements really set it apart, ramping up the complexity considerably. The same goes for the combat, which employs a third resource to manage on top of mana and health, other new wrinkles in the form of timed button presses, and randomly occurring events called SIngularities which temporarily alter a variety of properties such as base character stats, elemental damage, and many more. All these systems work in tandem to provide a constant stream of interesting decisions to make, to a far greater degree than in the games I Am Setsuna walks in the footsteps of. I had a great time figuring out new, crafty combinations of party members and abilities to annihilate groups of enemies with.
For as deep as this system goes though, it allowed me to amass a little too much power too easily. From an early point, I was able to identify skills that, with just a little tweaking, let me basically one-shot entire encounters. As long as I kept up with my gear (which is a disappointingly simplified series of straight-line upgrades) and kept making slight changes as needed, I was able to fly through fight after fight with just two or three different abilities. By sticking to these strategies, I blew through I Am Setsuna in around 20 hours, only dying once or twice on one particularly tough boss about two thirds of the way through the campaign. I kept waiting for my tactics to stop working so I’d have to rethink things and try new approaches, but they never did; even in the final areas I felt like I was on nothing more than a routine farming run.
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I kept waiting for my tactics to stop working so I’d have to rethink things and try new approaches, but they never did; even in the final areas I felt like I was on nothing more than a routine farming run.
Instead of balancing those abilities out by reducing their power or increasing enemy resistance, I Am Setsuna puts a Band-Aid on the problem in the form of a unique system that changes item drops based on the types of attacks you use to defeat an enemy. For instance, kill a monster with with a fire spell and you’ll receive one item; kill that same monster with lightning while they are under the effect of a debuff will net you something else entirely. This is meant to encourage build variety by incentivizing you to use other, less expedient tactics. Each monster has 12 different potential drops depending on how you slay them, and each of those drops is a vital component for unlocking new spells and abilities, so theoretically if you want to see all that your characters have to offer you need to experiment with different abilities. The turn-based battles are far more interesting when played with that in mind, forcing you to exhibit an understanding of I Am Setsuna’s thoughtfully interlocking gameplay systems. Sadly, all of that depth is undermined by the fact that you can power through with the basics, and there’s no way to pump up the difficulty either.
Nintendo Switch Version - March 7, 2017
The only difference between the PS4 and Switch versions of I Am Setsuna is the frame rate. Despite having a visual style and level of fidelity usually associated with a PlayStation 2-era game, the Switch version runs at 30 fps, as opposed to the PS4 version’s 60. Though it doesn’t hamper the turn-based gameplay in any way, it is disappointing considering that the Switch’s hardware should be more than up to the task.
The Verdict
A lack of balance robs the combat of much of its fun and renders many of the more interesting gameplay systems moot, but it didn’t dampen the emotional impact of I Am Setsuna’s heartfelt message for me. Few story-driven RPGs are so thematically focused or so gleefully disinterested with being “entertaining” or “fun.” To say it attempts to stand on the backs of giants is disingenuous really. I Am Setsuna isn’t a “Chrono Trigger-like;” it’s just a game that might easily have existed in the same time, if a creator with different storytelling sensibilities had been around. Its strength comes not from the ways in which it emulates the conventions of the classics, but in the ways in which it defies them.
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