Stranger of Sword City – by BoxCatHero
Genre: RPG
Developer: Experience INC.
Publisher: NIS America, INC.
Release Date: Jun 06, 2016
Stranger of Sword City is an extraordinary dungeon crawler RPG from NIS America. These are the same people who brought you htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary which I have reviewed recently. The game breathes new life into an old way RPGs were done. I am talking NES/SNES era dungeon crawler RPGs such as Eye of the Beholder. It presents it in a new and refreshing way. When I began playing this for review I was doing it through family share and I enjoyed it so much I broke down, and bought the game. It is a decision I do not regret.
Let’s dig into the story of the game a bit before we get into the mechanics of the game. The game takes place in the world called Escario who shares a weird connection to our earth. Things end up from our world there like books, radios, planes, anything up to and including people. People who find themselves in Escario from Earth are called Strangers. Strangers possess power beyond what they had on earth, and some even turn into something not human. Some turn into elves, others dwarves, and two other races I will cover later when I discuss the character creation process.
Within the world of of Escario there is Sword City, which you find yourself near when you arrive. After you awake in Escario you are greeted by a creepy old man who leads you out of the ruins you are in, and once you’re on the surface, he attacks you. A young woman appears and saves you, and you battle a monster together. Afterwards, she introduces herself as Rui and explains about Strangers, then takes you into Sword City, and thus you begin your amazing adventure in this world.
Now let’s dig into what I found to be one of, if not the most, attractive feature in the game: The character creation system in all its gloriousness. When you create your first character, unfortunately you can only choose human as your race and the Chosen One as your talent. Other then that, the character creation process is the same. So I am going to explain it from the beginning as if you already made it to where you can create other characters. The first thing you are asked to do is choose your portrait, and oh god there are a lot of them. Plus you can upload images into the game to use as well.
The portrait is what shows in battle and when in conversations. Of course, you can select male or female, which has no really effect in the game other then maybe equipment restrictions. From there, you set your age, which can be anywhere from 10-99. Age has an effect on several things; first and most important is your life points. If you lose all of them the character disappears. Of course, the younger a character is, the quicker they can recover lost life points, and from dying in battle. Conversely, the older you are the more bonus points you have for stats. Next, you select your race from Human, Elf, Dwarf, Migmy (kinda a dog-like halfling type race), or a Ney (cat people). Each one has differently distributed stats that are preferable to some classes.
After that, you choose a talent for your character. They are Fortunate (extra bonus points), Educated (item and monster identification bonus), Invincible (paralyze and crit defense), Intuition (treasure find and trap identification.), and Wild Eye (secret sensing in dungeons). Afterwards you get to roll to try and increase your bonus points. It is possible to sit there and keep rolling til you get the maximum. Upon deciding to keep what you have, you can then assign your bonus points to stats. The stats are your standard rpg stats STR (physical damage), INT (magic damage and MP), PIE (holy power and MP), VIT (defense and HP), AGI (accuracy, initiative, and evasion), and LUC (effects many things). After confirming your starting choices you can then choose your class from Fighter, Knight, Samurai, Wizard, Cleric, Ranger, Ninja, and Dancer.
All of the classes are pretty distinct in how they play and what equipment that can use. Here comes a very interesting part the character creation: choosing your voice. There are thirty-six voices in all with eighteen being male and the other eighteen being female. What’s most interesting is that you are not locked into a single voice for your attack, taking damage, or death. You’re free to mix and match as you see fit. After that is just choosing your name and your nickname. The nickname is what you are referred to in text. Then you finalize your character.
To me, that is honestly the selling point of the game. I have not gotten too far into the story, other than finishing the training that takes place in the first dungeon, so I can’t really comment on the story as a whole. However, there are still many features of the game I can tell you about. Like morale, which fuels divinity powers and what I am going to discuss next. There are hiding spots in dungeons that allow you to ambush an enemy for a morale cost for chance at extra treasure.
The music of the game is amazingly well done as are the character voices. Its just the character generation overshadows everything to me. It was truly that amazing. The battle system is fairly simple as well as efficient. You choose your actions then upon confirming everything goes in order of ho has the highest initiative.
Other than that, I feel everything should be enjoyed and learned by playing the game. The only complaint I have is the fact you can only save in your base.
BoxCatHero gies Stranger of Sword City a Drastik Measure 9.9 out of 10 (99).
Pros:
– Amazing character generation
– Brings back old school dungeon crawlers
Cons:
– Can only save in base
