Earthlock festival of magic promises to revitalize the RPG genre by drawing inspiration from classic Square RPG’s. Unfortunately, Earthlock proves little more than a failed attempt at Sqaure’s greatness
Plot
Earthlock: The festival of Magic unfortunately doesn’t capitalize on it’s plot, despite an interesting premise. In the old times, there was the first civilization to roam the earth, Powerful beings, who wielded the magical energy of the planets core. In the midst of war, a cataclysmic event brought the world to it’s knees, causing the planet to stop spinning – all but wiping out the first civilization. Thousands of years later, a young scavenger named Amon adventures into an ancient temple only to stumble upon an archaic disk. When Amon is about to sell the disk, a Hogbunny named Gnart stops him and tells him that they must venture to the capital, to find the disks true origins. Like I said earlier, Earthlock doesn’t do much with it’s plot. The majority of the story is getting to that city. You’ll make detours and meet other characters, but they don’t add compelling reasons to really care what that disk is all about. Even when you do finally find out what the disk is, I was so un-invested that I didn’t care. The story tries to create plot twists at the end of the game, but it feels like a cheap attempt to save what little story there was. Throw in an antagonist that just pops up without any strong reason behind what they’re doing, and you end up with an extremely weak plot.
Writing
The writing fares a bit better, but just barely. None of the characters have interesting personalities – they’re all cookie cutter: The strong-willed females, and the nerdy intellect just to name a few. Each one feels as though they don’t have anything unique to their personalities that you would only find in Earthlock. None of them I really grew to care about or felt like I knew. Another mistake is the writing relies far too little on its premise. There are lots of interesting aspects you could explore in a world where the earth has stopped spinning. Why is there not a people that live in eternal night? The lucky civilizations that were in summer when the world stopped spinning – the unlucky civilizations that were caught in the dead of winter and the resentment between them. There are interesting perspectives to explore, but Earthlock is uninterested in doing so. Now, on the positive side, the writing is coherent and does flow. You also do get the occasional wacky character or funny scene, and I did enjoy those.
Voice Acting
Earthlock: Festival of Magic does not feature voice acting
Immersion
Once again, Earthlock just feels bland in the immersion department. The areas of the game are varied, which is a good thing, but most of them feel unimaginative. A castle town is a castle town, a desert is a desert, a swamp is a swamp. There’s nothing memorable about any of the destinations. The only memorable parts are the statues scattered throughout the world dedicated to the old civilizations. It is cool to see that they vary from place to place as each culture has a different take on what the beings looked like. Unfortunately cut scenes feel quite lazy. During cut scenes, characters expressions do not change at all. Characters do little more than turn to each other in cut scenes. More animations would have gone a long way to create a cinematic feel. There are some positives though.The actual character designs were not bad though, they all look as though they belong in a JRPG story. The same goes for the enemies – most feel like they do belong to the world of.
Conclusion
In the end, Earthlock: Festival of Magic feels bland in every way. Cookie cutter personalities with unimaginative destinations do not mix well with an uninteresting plot