I Am Setsuna attempts valiantly at presenting interesting tweaks on classic systems, but ends up making things feel just a bit more 'off' than usual. Luckily an excellent piano score aids in keeping things from becoming stagnant. There aren't any opportunities for RPG fans to be subjected to horrible voice acting in this case, but it would have been nice to have a Japanese voice track at the very least. While they'll vocalize in battle, it's up to players to give characters their own voices.

There are no character voices for the playable party members, and you can name each one of them to make them your own. Even though they're predictable in the end too, the tale is familiar in warm and comfortable ways. As the journey unfolds there are plenty of reasons to care about your party members as twists and turns abound. It communicates this feeling quite well, even if it isn't the most engaging narrative you've ever seen in a game. It's not especially novel, but the game's overarching theme is sadness, after all. Despite the game's name, protagonist Endir takes center stage, a mercenary charged with protecting a young woman named Setsuna who's poised to become a sacrifice to appease the evil that's threatening the land.

The world itself is snowy and melancholy, trapped in a nightmarish perpetual winter. I Am Setsuna begins as you might expect, with a world on the brink of the end, suffering routine attacks from a monster whose appetite for destruction can't quite be sated. That's not to say I Am Setsuna is a bad game, but it suffers from bizarre design decisions that force it to deviate from the path that so many other games have walked down with no issue. Unfortunately, gaming has evolved in several ways since then, and even classics should be held to a higher standard.

It's a tribute to an age where all you needed for a narrative was an amnesiac protagonist and a reason to tug at players' heartstrings to make for an entertaining narrative. Square Enix was obviously hoping to cash in on the nostalgic rush we often feel when casually speaking on the games we grew up with, as I Am Setsuna is a love letter to a simpler time. Back during the Super Nintendo's heyday we saw several games of that ilk come and go, and many of them remain hallmarks of the golden age of role-playing games to this day. If you grew up with formidable role-playing classics like Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy, you know all about the tropes and rigid mechanics that often comprise a traditional JRPG.

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