Out of every genre of game that you can get turn-based RPGs seem to be one of my least favourite. That’s not to say that I dislike every turn-based RPG, there are some I absolutely adore such as Earthbound, some of the earlier Pokémon games or the original turn-based Fallout titles. Just like with any genre, the greats shine through but with turn-based RPGs, the bad ones and the mediocre ones are some of the most unforgettable experiences in gaming. Not in a good way.
Pacing is an important part in any game and especially in a turn-based game. For a game that is essentially a stop-start experience the whole way, the majority of great turn-based games have a nice flow to them in order to help alleviate some of the boredom found in waiting turn-for-turn throughout what is usually a twenty-to-forty hour experience. This is my problem with the majority of turn-based games where, unless the flow of battle is down to a point, the game experience as a whole is brought down.
Earthlock: Festivals of Magic is a boring game, to an extreme. As someone who finds the majority of turn-based games to be lower on my list of preferred genres, I was surprised that the rest of us at ICXM.net also feel the same. We loved games like Child of Light but this is just unbearable. Earthlock’s boring battle system is also marred by the battle effects and audio. Whereas the music is passable, albeit generic, the sound effects for each attack have very little impact which, when combined with the underwhelming, wimpy battle effects, leads to a very underwhelming battle experience.
Earthlock does offer a system created to add a bit of spice to their battling system in the form of stances. Different stances allow characters to use different move sets which could turn characters like the thief class Amon into a long-range character, however, changing stances takes up a turn. By taking up a character’s turn to change stance, utilizing this feature needs to be done at the right time unless you’ve spent time grinding out for experience to boost up your character’s health. Characters have little health compared to enemies’ damage output meaning that grinding is essential and travelling to and from town to pick up resources like healing items is a frequent necessity in order to have enough resources to move throughout areas.
Level design is also a simplistic aspect of Earthlock with the majority of areas being near-straight paths with very little deviations apart from heading back to place an item somewhere. The game’s visuals, however, do help to distract you during the boring treks through the game world. While, again, simplistic, Earthlock’s visual style is nice enough and character designs on both enemies and friendlies are pretty good for the most part.
Whilst visuals are on the better side, the narrative and the dialogues are not. As with a lot of indie games, specifically indie RPGs, names of places and characters feel very forced and the lore of Earthlock’s world is incredibly generic. The narrative is not helped by having all dialogue told through simplistic text bubbles above the heads of characters instead of being voice acted or even having a simplistic mumble like, say, Mumbo from Banjo-Kazooie.
Summary
Earthlock is one of the hardest games to critique. Whilst everything works and is at least competent, everything feels very lacklustre and underwhelming with Earthlock only offering the bare minimum of what a turn-based RPG can offer. Unless you pick it up on Games with Gold, I would advise you spend your money on something more exciting.
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.