Originally posted January 18th 2015 on the Seafoam Gaming forums

---

Title: ALPHADIA GENESIS

System: Wii U (eShop)

Price: $14.99

Release date: 11/20/2014

The main game/story

This is a RPG localized for the Wii U by Natsume Inc, developed by Kemco initially. In this game, it takes place after a terrible crisis known as the “Energi War”, which ended with a peace treaty between two regions, but caused clones in the world to be given a bad reception. You take control of Fray, a young swordsman as he and his sister go out to discover the strange occurrences taking place in their world, which seems to have something to do with the clones yet again…

Graphics

Outside of battle, this game looks decent, with good looking sprites and character portraits. However, when in motion, these sprites look a bit stiff, and they don’t seem to move as smoothly as you’d expect them to in a RPG like this.

That would be fine, if it wasn’t for how they look in battle. When you begin an encounter with an enemy, the screen does this really poor animation of glass breaking to transition into the battle, which is by far one of the worst transition animations I have ever seen in a RPG since the Playstation version of Final Fantasy V.

It then shifts to a 3D style for all of the enemies and characters, and they again lack much frames of animations and look quite stiff as a result. Battle animations look rather strange as well, but it’s nowhere near as bad as the idle animations. Not unbearable by any means, but pretty bad for a game like this.

Music and sound effects:

Music is pretty good for the most part, with a catchy normal battle theme, an upbeat and lively field theme and many other good songs to accompany you on your epic journey. There’s some decent voice acting in this game too, but it’s all in Japanese (understandably due to the cost of hiring voice actors to retranslate all of the lines), which may lead you to turn it off considering how it doesn’t even happen that often anyway.

Gameplay

Similar to Pier Solar HD, this is a JRPG meant to mimic the older ones in the past, hence why it has a 2D art style outside of battle. However unlike Pier Solar HD, this game plays much, much better in terms of the difficulty.

Battles are quick and easy, as the animations don’t take too long (Which makes the problems I had with the graphics earlier actually beneficial in a way), and the difficulty is fair for the most part, so you won’t be wandering too far south and suddenly get pulled into a battle fighting monsters not meant until the end of the game.

There’s also a cool way to get abilities in this game, and that is by collecting clear rings found in dungeons and other places and having them converted into elemental rings that give you different abilities if you level up using them. Lots of customization to be found this way, which can help make the game easier for newcomers to the genre.

Conclusion

In the end, Alphadia Genesis is a good JRPG to enjoy on the Wii U eShop. It’s not the longest RPG in the world (About as long as Final Fantasy II on the PSOne for me), but what’s here is a fun RPG with fast and easy gameplay, only hurt by the poor graphical presentation. If you can look past the average animations in this game, you’ll have a fun time with Alphadia Genesis, especially considering how there’s sub-quests you can go on as well to add some replay value. I give Alphadia Genesis a 7 out of 10 and recommend it to all RPG fans wanting a RPG that’s simple and easy to learn.

Thanks to Natsume Inc for the review code.