Success in toppling your enemies will reward you with experience that will eventually level your party, but there are other ways to strengthen them. It seemed an unnecessary distraction to keep this stocked up, whether that be from crafting or bought from shops, especially with all the other systems that are at play.
But, one element that annoyed me perhaps more than it probably should have is that ranged weapons require ammo. It’s clear that the developer has thought long and hard about the combat system to make sure that it’s different from the crowd, and helps to lend Earthlock its own identity.
There are different damage types and enemy weaknesses to consider, changing stances takes one turn, and your characters are paired up and build a Battle Bond as they fight that will let you access more powerful Super Stances. Whereas you will come to rely on Gnart to heal the party, casting Regen in his Mage stance or boosting their Focus stance, and on Olia for her ability to taunt enemies to draw their attacks. Amon, for example, has a Thief stance where he can steal items and money from enemies and a Blaster stance where he can deal elemental and non-elemental damage at range. The clever part is that each character in your party has two stances, presenting you with different Combat Abilities that you can call upon to suit the situation.
You will then transition into turn-based encounters, with the battle queue down the right-hand side of the screen showing the turn order. The monsters that you clobber can be seen marauding the environments that you wander, and you can hit the B Button when they’re close to gain a First Strike advantage. It’s here that developer Snowcastle Games throws in many of their best ideas that help Earthlock stand out. It won’t come as a surprise to learn that the rest of your time will be in battle, fighting the many beasts that were once tainted by Amri. Here, you can rest to restore your party’s health, craft potions, talents and ammo, plant seeds that you can harvest crafting materials from, and return captured Barnacles to help the infectiously lively Frogboy restore the island. Between your energetic jaunts you can use the Onurasi statues, which are otherwise relied on as save points, to warp to Plumpet Island. Much of your time will be spent trekking across the world map, conversing between characters, racking your brain to solve puzzles in dungeons and looting chests to collect crafting materials, ammo, talents, recipes and whatever else they contain. The events that transpire in this 25-odd-hour quest will eventually bring together a party of unlikely heroes, that aside from Amon, Ive and Gnart, the mysterious protector Olia Alagbato, PAT, an aged machine that was built before the Deadly Halt, and Ive’s loyal pup Taika, who you briefly fight alongside at the start of the game until you cross paths again. Wanting to sell the ancient disk, Amon’s chance encounter with the hogbunny scholar Gnart Tigermoth somewhat innocently sends him on a quest to Zaber in search of an outright cure.Įarthlock is a classic RPG in every sense of the phrase, and it is in this moment that your adventure really gets underway. Looking for riches in Zabirum Temple to sell for money to buy the medicine that his Uncle Benjo badly needs, he happens to defeat the Temple Guardian and retrieve an ancient disk. Your perspective on events then changes to Amon Barros, a desert scavenger who has a bold heart and longs for adventure.
When, after completing her final combat exam, he refuses to send her on her first scouting mission, Ive’s friend Punch lets her go in his place. You start your adventure in Earthlock as Ive Lavender, the rebellious daughter of a House of the Great Wave general. Time has passed since then, and the Suvian Empire now rules in the north while dark whispers stir in the ruins of old. Volcanoes erupted, tsunamis rose and, once the sea had calmed, the mythic civilisation was no more. But, there was an uprising and, as the world’s people fought for their freedom, the Amri core burst and spread across the land. These harsh rulers had learned to harness Amri, a magical energy that they stored in the world’s core. Welcome to Umbra, a magical world in which legends tell that men had once bowed in fear of a mythic civilisation that ruled across it.