StumpChunkman

Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone, a side-scrolling Action "Metroidvania" JRPG produced by Lizbox and localized by Carpe Fulgur can only really be described as 'bipolar.' It seems to swing from one end of things to the other, constantly displaying a stark contrast between it's cute, sugary writing and characters with its quirky, stylish, punishingly difficult combat. Although it's very easy to feel relaxed at the game's opening, with the beautifully stylistic artwork making up the game’s hub world—as well as the main character Arche's playful mannerisms, the combat can take some serious getting used to. Arche and her friends' attacks have a large amount of recovery time, and the flinching, knock-backs, knock-downs, freezing, sleeping and other status effects enemies can dish out blend together with the intelligent AI and variety of enemies to create a perfect storm of crippling, often frustrating difficulty. The hand-numbing frustration, however, has a tendency to result in immense satisfaction. Enemies explode into a hail of sparks and money when they die, and being able to let go of your anal clench when you finally hear the battle music die down to the peaceful, ambient dungeon soundtrack makes my day in a way that's both unique and refreshing. Outside of combat, Fortune Summoners is a game that's rich in flavours. Every NPC in every village, town and city feels as if the creators sat down and wrote a story, culminating in that character's existence. For the first time in years, I've found joy in wandering around a new town talking to absolutely everybody, searching every container and looking at every piece of the environment to soak up staggering amount of charm and TLC the creators have sprinkled around. For all of its charm, however, Fortune Summoners' plot is one-dimensional and reliant on countless anime and JRPG tropes to help the story chug along. The story revolves around a handful of young children and their quest to obtain a few **** of MacGuffins to save their generic High Fantasy Kingdom, warranting treks across the land to many dungeons, wherein the heroes slay many monsters, solve many puzzles and dodge many nefarious traps. Although the well-written, highly amusing dialogue included in every Carpe Fulgur localization makes this story bearable, the term that cannot be avoided is 'dated.' The game is accompanied by an ambient, well-made soundtrack consisting mostly of Baroque orchestration, which, despite its early freshness and appealing melodies, quickly becomes stale and repetitive as the same few tracks are reused throughout the entire game (which may take an upwards of 30 hours to complete.) The sound effects, however, remain satisfying and refreshing from beginning to end. Every slash has enormous impact behind it, every spell has mystery and power surging through it, every clash of steel against steel is tense and climactic. In summary, Fortune Summoners is a game whose deceptive art style may have caused it to miss its target audience. The quirky writing and characters, “Slice of Life” characterizations and humour end up forming a mask that attempts to conceal the fast-paced, punishingly difficult gameplay. Although its music and plot may leave something to be desired and the combat and controls require time to adjust (and are nearly impossible to work with without an Xbox 360 controller due to the various Street Fighter-esque input combos), Fortune Summoners is a satisfying game that's not shy of content by any stretch of the imagination. At a price tag of $20, it provides the player with way more “game” than the average AAA release. P.S. I attribute most of the professional reviewers’ complaints about the combat mechanics to their own ineptitude and unwillingness to tolerate difficulty in games (undoubtedly caused by the recent casualization of most popular franchises, and the generally easy difficulty of modern RPGs.) This is a game that punishes button mashing, and will take advantage of any opening you let the various slimes, bats and kobolds sink their teeth, swords and tentacles into. Again, and again, and again.