Platform: Sony PSP/Vita
Developer: World Wide Software/Kemco
Publisher: Natsume
# of Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E10+ (Everyone 10 & Up)
Score: B (80%)
Are you jonesing for some old school JRPG bliss but find yourself pressed for time? Are you one of those folks new to JRPGs (Japanese Role Playing Games) and want to dive in headfirst without much fuss and bother, just a fun and simple adventure to last you maybe a few days if you play on and off to and from work`? Well, Natsume has a little something for you in End of Serenity, a slightly enhanced “port” of an iOS/Android/mobile game from 2013 called End of Aspiration. No, I don’t know why the title was changed other than to guess that since “Aspiration” (which in the case of the game means “a hope or ambition of achieving something”) can also mean “the action or process of drawing breath”, some sarcastic smarty pants out there might think the title could also be read as “End of Breathing”, which isn’t a good name for a game.
Anyway, what’s here is a quite easy to get into game that can be played three ways. You can blow through the game in under nine hours total (a single sitting for those used to blocking out longer stretches of time for more epic length games), missing out on some bonus areas, items and skills. You can easily more than double that time by “farming” up fish to earn ESP (End of Serenity Points) that unlock those extra areas and goodies, or you can simply pay a few dollars more than what you just spent on PSN to buy as many ESP as you need, allowing you to access everything right from the beginning. No, this isn’t a “pay to win” game at all, as even if you’re lazy (crazy? not frugal?) enough to buy up enough ESP to bring the cost of the game up to what a JRPG would cost circa 1990 or so, you still have to play the game to see what you paid for. For my review, I decided to tackle two of the three methods at the same time, but I’ll explain that a bit more below the jump…
As this was initially a game made for short bursts of play while in transit, EoS gets right to things and is a little wonder of minimalism on that front. The game kicks off with a young woman named Eril following some shady types into a cave and after a short tutorial dungeon that ends with a boss battle, introduces Yute, a traveling trader who’s an interesting “lead” because he’s not the usual amnesiac or guy with a shady past found in many other JRPGs. His back story follows one of the other genre tropes, the young kid who follows in his father’s footsteps after his inaction leads to tragedy, but the game doesn’t dwell too long on things as it introduces Kat, the requisite “little girl who’s older than she looks” mixed in with the “cute animal sidekick” because she has cat ears and a tail AND a gigantic smiling caterpillar on her head.
After a tiny bit of adventuring, Yute and Kat meet up with Eril and it’s off to the races as the trio set out to stop a bunch of baddies called the Underworld from unleashing hell on the world through the misuse of Atomigems, powerful stones used for (as the manual says) “simple family heirlooms to even objects of worship”. Two other characters are introduced not too far into the game, an old but powerful martial arts master named Earon and his pretty (and pretty powerful) young student, Kaede. You play as this pair for a short stretch prior to Yute, Kat and Eri meeting them, a nice touch that allows you to level them up and see a few different enemy types (okay, stronger and recolored variants of earlier foes). You’ll need to take everything said in the game at face value, as the truncated mobile format means there’s little to no lore here outside of what’s told through dialog and text. Each of the five characters has a different Familiar Spirit, mystical creatures activated by filling a meter by attacking or taking damage from enemies. Using your collected BP, you’ll be able to unleash powerful attacks, heal your party and a few other handy skills.
Speaking of skills, each of the five party members gets a growing arsenal of them as they discover new towns or other spots where they can learn them for varying amounts of gold. New weapons and armor can also be purchased, and given the relatively short trips between each area, you’ll be swapping out gear and skills fairly frequently. One thing you’ll notice soon enough is initially there aren’t as many skill slots for characters as there are skills. That’s a problem soon rectified if you happen to start unlocking those aforementioned bonus areas with ESP. As noted, you can go “fishing” for a chunk of time if you like, an initially tedious process that’s actually somewhat relaxing once you find the right area and get into the zone. Unlike games with fishing elements (Breath of Fire, Torchlight, Legend of the River King, et cetera), there’s no dinking around with a line or need for a rod and reel. You just walk up to a pond or pool with fish swimming back and forth, press the X button when one stops in front of you and there you go.
Where it gets sticky for some players is the cost of those new areas and the amount of time it takes to fish for those ESP. The first pool you can fish from has a single fish and can only be accessed from two angles. It’s a bit frustrating to fish here thanks to that fish sometimes not wanting to be caught and hanging out at the top of the pool. That would probably have made me buy up ESP after about twenty or so minutes, but I’d heard that other fishing spots opened up as the game progressed. Sure enough, there’s a lovely Oasis a few towns and dungeons over where you can nab two fish relatively quickly and if you get fast enough, in under an hour you can have the 150 ESP needed to unlock the first area. I think the developer consciously placed that first pond with the quirkier fish at the beginning to bump impatient users into buying into the paid content, but I don’t fault them at all for that decision.
If you choose to skip the farming, you may not initially care about those bonus areas you keep getting prompted to purchase before you’re gently kicked out. The manual doesn’t even mention fishing nets you 1 ESP per fish caught, but if you have Yute speak to a man in the first village he starts off in, he says that he’s buying fish, which should clue you in to perhaps wanting to get some for him at some point. Given that he pays 1300 Gold for ten and that money does come in mighty handy early on, you’ll see that as soon as you catch your first fish that you’re also collecting ESP. It doesn’t take the smartest person playing this to put two and two together and one you do, that formerly “short” game takes on a whole new tone as you spend time fishing just to unlock all six bonus areas.
As the main story is so straightforward and predictable, there’s not much suspense other than worrying about some new enemies and bosses the first time they’re encountered. Once you get enough levels under your belt and are properly equipped, the only thing you need to fret over is getting hit with the occasional elemental spell or status effect that keeps your party out of action. That said, it’s entirely possible to complete the game without losing a single battle (even against an “unbeatable” boss around the midpoint provided you know what to do), something that might rankle the nerves of those looking for a challenging game. Granted, there are some post-game bosses that will test your skills if you complete the game at a low enough level and are surprised at how strong these two meanies are.
Nevertheless, thanks to the ability to save anywhere when not in combat, plenty of health restoring points in dungeons and those permanent stat-boosting Gems you find that work all too well, the game is very much a pretty looking entry level experience that’s going to go down easy. I completed the game at around level 150 and messed around post game until I hit level 160-162 with my party before I stopped, saved and started up an entirely new game. I was missing three enemy types and drops from two types I encountered late in the game, but I was too tired to go flying or warping around to go hunting for those missing list items. Also, I found out that the only way to COMPLETELY fill that skills list is to equip every skill in the game on someone. I missed out on a handful by not doing this, which made my compulsive collector side a bit annoyed.
As I noted above, I decided to play the game two of the three ways concurrently, and as I have a PSP and Vita registered to my SEN account, I loaded the game onto both and handed the PSP off to a friend who wanted to try EoS out. He’s new to the JRPG scene and doesn’t own either handheld, but his wife is a huge genre fan (but only has a 3DS), so they both got to see and play the game. Their time was a respectable 9:02:41, while mine was closer to 14 or 15 hours. I wasn’t exactly sure because I played late into the night fishing a few times and fell asleep with the game running, so I know I added a few hours to the game that were actually napping times. I was going to compare this not quite epic to my review of the longer and actual epic length Mystic Chronicles with its optional cash shop content, but I see that that old review has mysteriously vanished and was most likely accidentally overwritten last year when the site had an odd hiccup that had me rewriting and re-posting a bunch of stuff. Oops. well, guess what’s now up on my plate to rewrite this week, folks?
Some people who’ve played this on their phones or other devices will wonder about that $14.99 price point (where the mobile versions were much less), but I’d say that’s all re-localization and improvements to the PSP plus whatever it costs to get the game up on PSN, I suppose. I did notice that the text font is different in the PSP version and “Underworld” makes for a less eyebrow raising enemy name than “Mafia” (which in my book is just too real and bizarre for a fantasy RPG) I’m sure if Natsume was a bigger publisher with more money floating around and could afford to localize and churn out more of these hidden mobile gems on a regular basis, they’d make those who don’t play that digital ton of JRPGs on their own phones for any reason pretty happy.
I’m one of those people who doesn’t believe in playing a game ONLY one time and then deleting or not touching it again. End of Serenity is a nice, but predictable time killer that makes for a good entry level JRPG. It’s not going to set the world afire at all, but it makes for a decent enough diversion that as noted above, I wish Natsume would consider looking into bringing more over from the mobile space (in a shorter period of time). Given that it was designed for playing in small travel-sized stretches (like a ride to and from school or work on the subway or bus), the short playtime will probably make fans of bigger epic RPGs sore in their seat parts. But if you’ve been around long enough and play many types of RPGs, it’s nice to see one that gets right to where it needs to be without drawn out exposition or arcane gameplay elements that make it a chore to complete.
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