With the new design of GamerTagged.net will also come a new series of columns designed to encourage me to write more, at the very least as a “warm-up” to more substantial material. I’m also hoping the regular practice helps make it easier to “get into the writing mood” and further hones my knitting together of phrases, words, and sentences. Giving people more reasons to actually check the site regularly helps, too.

I first tried to play I Am Setsuna a couple years ago on the PS4. Something about the presentation at the time just wasn’t doing it for me. After playing the Lost Sphear demo on Nintendo Switch, I feel like there’s some lack of urgency or kineticism in Tokyo RPG Factory’s presentation that the old-school games they’re emulating possess. While I disagree with much of Jeremy Parish’s conclusion regarding the Secret of Mana remake, there’s one thing I partially understand.

Secret of Mana’s characters possessed a sort of floppy intensity on Super NES, somehow conveying the sensation of your heroes throwing themselves into every action with just a few simple frames of animation.

While I personally feel this is Jeremy’s nostalgia talking, I can certainly perceive his meaning in certain swings of the blades of Mana. When the hero lunges in the original title for that level-one charged attack with the sword, his body doesn’t just leap forward. His head ducks down aggressively, leaning forward as the sword is held high. I think the lack of frames in the animation allows the player to create an intent and intensity that is not actually there. Meanwhile, in the remake, these animations are running at 60 frames-per-second, filling those previously empty gaps with silky-smooth movement.

Movement that feels less sudden, separated and, perhaps, more rehearsed. It is the difference between watching a clearly choreographed kung-fu action sequence such as any Star Wars prequel lightsaber duel and the hateful rage of Luke Skywalker hacking at his father’s weapon until his hand is severed. One clearly feels rehearsed.

So is that what I Am Setsuna was lacking? Perhaps. When I first executed the Cyclone ability I was disappointed. In Chrono Trigger, the special attack from which Setsuna gets its name is accompanied by a loud and repeated sound whose onomatopoeia I can only pronounce as “CHEOW-CHEOW-CHEOW-CHEOW-CHEOW!”

As primitive as those sound-effects were, they packed a gargantuan punch that has become lost in the world of improved effects and more sophisticated mixing. This is not exclusive to sound-effects, as even music seems to have been toned down in an era where voices must be understood clearly. The ability to pump out recordings of orchestras also means compositions are as trite and repetitive as Hollywood film efforts to sound like one another.

So when I told Endir to strike the carnivorous penguins with Cyclone, I was met with more of a “thunk” as he spun once and the attack was finished. While those old sound-effects and primitive animations could be deemed offensive to the senses in comparison, it at least possessed a substantial power that this new variation lacked.

Nevertheless, I decided to give it a second try on my Nintendo Switch. Ever since I’ve found that lack of punch to be a part of the game’s charm. The soundtrack is limited to the piano, all compositions performed on the singular percussive instrument to match the somber tone of winter. A seemingly eternal winter found throughout the land, perhaps emblematic of a dying world being overrun by monsters.

Or mayhaps reflecting Setsuna herself, the sacrifice journeying on a pilgrimage intended to appease the beasts of the land and send them back into hibernation. Despite this core similarity to Final Fantasy X – and a similarly perfect goodness of Setsuna that, quite frankly, makes her a much less interesting character than I first hoped – I Am Setsuna is much more subdued. Likely this is a result of budgetary limitations, but that limitation is turned into an aesthetic.

Setsuna’s journey is, at best, bittersweet. She believes in her pilgrimage and she believes in the good of the world. This trait would be much less impressive were it full of springtime beauty. That she is able to remain so optimistic in a literally dying land is what makes her shine all the brighter. That her garments are the color of a sakura petal – an emblematic vision of spring – I also believe to be intentional.

I’m a little more than halfway through the game (as of writing the first draft), so it’s possible I’ll find it to be more tiresome or flawed as I progress. Instead, I find the response to it interesting. Many critics and consumers seem to find it disappointing, and perhaps this is the result of Square Enix promising the game shall appeal to fans of old JRPGs.

One such issue is the game’s eternal winter. By recycling the same assets and never changing the environment, the game, to an extent, feels repetitive. I find myself forced to agree to a point. There are certainly efforts to create new types of locations, but that subdued nature of the aesthetic – of a dead and dying world – does not lend itself to pizazz. Any efforts to truly dress environments up would sabotage the mood the developers are going for. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword.

While I cannot speak to the entirety of I Am Setsuna’s narrative, I do know that other efforts to replicate that old school style have a tendency to lack something in the narrative department. As amusing and delightful as I find Bravely Default’s and Bravely Second’s characters, the narratives themselves are tired and predictable. They certainly capture the melodrama of the early Final Fantasy titles they are paying homage to, but they lack much of the narrative ambition found in a title like Final Fantasy VI or Chrono Trigger.

Much, but not all. The final segments of the Bravely games are most certainly ambitious, but more in a technical fashion. They’re great moments, but the surrounding narrative still feels lacking.

So how does I Am Setsuna’s narrative compare? Well, it’s still too early to tell, but I’m curious if perhaps this is also part of the matter of presentation. Others may disagree with me, but I Am Setsuna seems to tone down that melodrama. The stakes are much higher than they feel, though perhaps, again, it’s all in the presentation. A piano can only be so bombastic regardless of how hard you pound the keys. While Final Fantasy VI’s sprites had greatly exaggerated expressions, I Am Setsuna’s character models are – as with everything else – more subdued. While Final Fantasy IV got around this by having their character models leap cartoonishly, such animations would feel out of place and even tonally inconsistent with I Am Setsuna.

In truth, I also think this is partially a result of the perspective. The “top-down” view taken back in the Super NES days was actually impossible. The front and side views of these character sprites were themselves often at contrasting character angles.

It is to this end that I feel more development studios should look into replicating Nintendo’s trick for A Link Between Worlds. By adjusting the character models to slant and tilt, that old-fashioned perspective cannot be fully replicated, but it can look much closer to the original game’s presentation. This is part of what made A Link Between Worlds such a wonderful feeling game.

That I Am Setsuna never changes camera angles for cut-scenes – a trick that even A Link Between Worlds had to take into account – means the game could have easily taken this approach.

Instead, the camera is rather straight-forward, and as a result you don’t really get to look at each character’s face. Expressions are therefore limited, and once again the game lacks the punch of those games of old.

So is I Am Setsuna a disappointment? What would our ten year-old selves think if we transported it back to the 90’s in a time machine?

Perhaps I’ll have a more definitive answer once I’ve completed the game, but for now I think it is primarily our memories of the 90’s that are reducing the impact of I Am Setsuna and not the game itself.