[Review] I Am Setsuna

I am Setsuna is here and this is what it packs. There's a lovely symbolism to the fresh-fallen snow, as it turns out, as I Am Setsuna channels the glory days of the simpler Japanese RPGs of the early '90s, when roleplaying games in general weren't so pressured to cram their releases with convoluted features.  Regardless of the title, this is really Endir's tale, as he's the one escorting Setsuna to her doom after first being hired to kill her. I Am Setsuna's other characters boast personalities that let them flourish in meaningful contrast to the snowy wastes around them, but Endir, the leader, might as well be the ice beneath their boots.

Perhaps the lesson is that he's the right hero for a world as bleak and sad as this. Setsuna herself is a girl whose purity matches that of the surrounding snow, but she's willingly chosen to bow to local tradition and sacrifice herself at a faraway altar so the world can live in relative safety from monsters. As Endir, along with some other somber guards, you must escort her through the beasts and snowfields of the world so she may do her duty. There's not a one among her companions who isn't flawed and tragic and some way, but there are some standouts who thankfully remind us that our existence is one worth fighting for. I especially enjoyed the scenes with poor Nidr, a swordsman who battles both with the monsters in his past and those in abandoned villages, as well as the roguish spellcaster Aeterna, who looks after Setsuna as though she were family.

 Eventually I came to appreciate the single track as a further embracing of the purity of that first image. It emphasizes that nothing is more important than Setsuna's grim duty. Much as in the sumi-e artwork that first image so richly evoked, the surrounding chalky void highlights the characters and their quest, lending an urgency and meaning that might have been robbed with detours to help troubled farmers.I get it. But given enough time, the appeal of even this gorgeous setting begins to melt away. Such intensity of focus is fine for a stationary artwork designed for static contemplation, but at the tail end of Setsuna's 23 or so hours I felt a weariness of setting I haven't felt since reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I realize now why I've never really tired of the scenes at The Wall in Game of Thrones, as Martin has the good sense to punctuate those scenes with the bickering greenery of the sunny south. It doesn't help that there's no world map, as getting lost brings the torment of finding your bearings among the same models of trees, the same buildings, and (but of course) the same snow.

But it's also true that I Am Setsuna starts to lose its way whenever it strays from the lessons the simplicity of the snow imparts. It embraces them in some unexpected ways, such as how gear stays limited to weapons and amulets, thus minimizing the time you spend in menus min-maxing. It extends to combat, which starts only when you actively engage an enemy you found bobbing around the dungeon maps, and which unfolds with the "Active Time Battle" system that maintains the action even when you're digging in menus for specific spells and potions.

The business of brawling is also more complicated than it was in the days of JRPGs past, as there's now a "momentum" system that rewards waiting for the action bar to fill up and executing perfectly timed button presses, sometimes resulting in a random "singularity" that grants your whole party, says, a boost to the number of points you're getting to build more momentum.

A beautiful JRPG that captures the spirit of the genre's early hits while playing things a tad too safely.