I've played and finished this game within 37 hours. Everything was great until I finished it and realized that half of the story was never completed. I don't know if the developers intend to have direct sequals, dlc, or just leave this game as is; however, this is not a full game. Many of the concepts in the game are never seen, never dealt with, and the final boss is really just a small interruption in the bigger picture. That is really all I can say without spoilers.

Welcome to Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom, a game with a slightly confusing plot, and with so much good content, it really is hard to find a thing I don’t like about it, save for the few that I’ve selected. But we’ll get around to that. The story of Shiness: TLK is one that is centered around Chado, an odd bear like creature that is following a Shiness – one of the primordial beings of Shi – whilst being accompanied by his friend Poky.

In RPG games, you level up by killing monsters for set amounts of XP. In Shiness, your stats level up with pre-determined values, but you can also learn moves that increase your stats by equipping Disciplines. The more you use the moves in combat, you'll earn experience towards that ability until you have learned it, allowing you to build and expand your combat repertoire.

While your current character is in battle, kicking and kung-fu'ing the crap out of everything that moves, your teammates are waiting on the sidelines of the arena. If you've set up your support commands, they can aid you in battle by healing you or negating negative status effects. Support commands can be found in treasure containers, awarded in challenges or given to you during the story. Once it is unlocked, it's available for every character to use.

During some cutscenes that look similar to the actual gameplay, the characters speak in english, while at other times during comic book/manga inspired cutscenes the characters will speak a foreign language with text bubbles to read. It's a weird style mixing them both like that but it works well enough to not feel like it could ruin someones experience. The voice acting was a little bit out of place and cheesy, with Chado's not clicking with me for some reason. Overall everything just sounds like the developers may not have agreed with one another's opinions so they "compromised." Graphically I loved the design of the world and characters. This is what I mentioned earlier in the review. There's never any cliche environments that when you walk through you absolutely know which biome it's meant to be. Each environment is unique yet encompasses enough diversity to surprise you of what you're seeing every other corner. The almost cartoon design behind it all makes it immediately project joy onto the player.

There is one major game-breaking bug, though, and I experienced it three or four times in my playthrough. Occasionally I'd have a character lose all of their health without being knocked out. Instead, they stayed standing but were unable to attack or be attacked. This would require a reset and some lost game time. Hopefully, this is something the developer will address quickly.



PROS:
+Great combat mechanics.
+Easy to use support system.
+Gorgeously presented.
+Great soundtrack that fit the games style and theme.
+Colorful presentation
+Simple to understand, hard to master action battle system
+Full Of Puzzle while exploring from place to place

Cons
-lacks of game time length for an RPG
-Visual glitches
-Game is well crafted but it offer nothing new.
-Mediocre Story

Neautral
=Invisible Wall

Conclusion
those who love action RPGs from the 90s will find plenty to like in the game since Shiness is quite fun for the whole duration of the adventure, despite its predictable story, lackluster writing and somewhat wonky battle controls.
Many will find the length of the game to be 15-20 hours (more or less depending on your pace) but features a good amount of side quests and off the beaten path adventuring. The camera can be a huge pain, and the voice acting will most likely not be loved, nor hated. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my time spent in this strange world with strange characters and am looking forward to replaying it sometime in the near future. It tries to do a lot and for the most part successfully delivers.

My Verdict
Graphics: 8.5
Sound: 7
Gameplay: 7
Control: 9
Story: 7

Score 7.7/10
The Game have potential but a lack of polish definitely hold this good game back from being great

So 7 or so hours into this game. And I would have to say that this is not a very well developed game.

So instead of just bashing and complaining. These are my pro's, cons and recommended changes in future installments (if Focus Home and Enigame plan to make this a franchise)

Note: That theses are my own opinions about the game, and may not reflect your experience with it.

Also note that regardless of how i feel, I will be completing this game, and will be updating this review as i progress through the game.

Pros:
- Interesting world: The world is very vibrant, live and gorgeous. The use of light cell shading and with fantastical characters makes for a really breathtaking world. The world design is quite thought out, and a mixture of pathed (Think Witcher 2) and open world (think Witcher 3) is blended nicely.
- Pros of Combat: The use of dynamic, sem-skilled based action fast paced combat combined with a myraid of combos spells, and techniques can make combat quite fun, fast paced and enjoyable. Albiet, you remember that you have combos, spells and techniques.
- with 6 elements and 5 spells per element, makes for an interesting spell combinations since you can only bring into combat with you 4 equipped spells at a time.
- Unique techniques for each of the party members.
- Combat is a tag team match among 3 of the party members selected as your primary. Which combined with different spells per primary, you can have a nice combinations of spells.
- Back seated primaries arent beach warmers. You can equip support spells to your party members, and based on set conditions set by the player will activate, like heals, status ailment cures, silencing enemies, etc.
- Final Fantasy Stylized items and equipment. While you progress you constantly get better consumables, equipment, spells and techniques.
- Mastering. This idea i like. By mastering spells and techniques, you memorize them, and thus allows you to use them and newly acquired techniques. And mastered techniques can be mastered further with more advanced versions of those techniques.
- Very generous save system. The save system is very similar to Previous Final Fantasy installments, with designated save locations. But they supply you with a plethora of save points, throughout the world.

Cons:
- Lack of Exposition: This may not be a con for everyone. For me though, because i found the world interesting, i wish there was more exposition as to how to the world is. When you enter it is like "Here is the world, a bunch of magical sky islands in a torrid void of swirling elemental energy. Aaaannd Start."
- The Characters. I dont really care about the characters. I understand that the characters are more for the pre-teen/teenager audience. And by the design and character personalities that is definitely the target audience. However, i just cant relate to their personalities. More over, their motivations seems forced, contrived and derivative. Some characters themselves seem annoyingly wannabe anime stereotypes. "Fat scared nerdy kid, quick-ready to fight 'chosen one", misunderstood outlaw, Tsundere female characters, etc." They seem very one dimensional and not much depth was put into their personality.
- The story: I just dont care. Now dont get me wrong, i love a good story. Last of Us, Deus Ex. Final Fantasy 5,9,10, Chrono Trigger. But i feel some elements of the story are very predictable.
- The Cons of combat:
- The Arean combat can get pretty wonky, and lost. There is no target lock, as the fights are one-on-one tag team matches. However, I feel this design choice limits the play. You will end up punching the air alot
- While there is are there a large majority of spells there are only five real types just with different elements. Buff/Heal, Single Target projectile, Aoe+ Defuff, Bigger Heal/Buff, Zone Attack. Only thing that is changed up is the element. The element dictates what the buff/defull are and the Zone attack layout and property (wind does a aoe knockback, earth does a straight line boulder thing, etc.). Yes there are 30 spells, they seem rather limiting and mostly unoriginal to the next.
- Techniques are boring. While they are unique to the character, they are the same set of combinations across all the characters (kick+charge, punch punch+charge, punch kick+charge, and kick punch+charge.) Now some may like this, and that is perfectly fine. For me however, i like a bit of variety.
- If you cant dodge a wrench you cant dodge death. This game is unforgiving in terms of lack of dodging and parrying. Normally i would have this in the pros as i love skill based defense and offense. However, some enemies are absolutely ridiculous (even at low levels) and there are times where one missed dodge and you are stunned locked until that character's death. There is a difference between being fairly unforgiving (for examples Dark Souls 3) and just plain unbalanced. In Shiness, its more on the unbalanced side
- Speaking off - Very unbalanced combat. This game is like "Ok Billy time to take those training wheels off, and get in to that BMX Wold Championship Race. Leave the helmet here." The combat difficulty skyrockets on normal enemies. Now this may feel this way to me because i just might be a crap player.
- Poorly Optimized - I run a pretty beastly computer playing this, and it lags, the audio quality is not all that great in the comic panel cutscenes, and overall a bit laggy.
- Uninspired puzzles or annoying puzzles with no prior foreshadowing. How let try to explain without spoiling anything. There is a puzzle where you have to use Chad's poop boulders, and i spent over an hour trying to figure out this pretty simple looking puzzle, only to find that that the whole time, another character can use his Telekinesis to move the the poop boulder's that Chad laid out. This was never explained, foreshadowed or expected. Now. You could say "hey, why didn't you try to experiment earlier" Because the telekinesis character just joined your party. It is the first mission with him. And Porky cant interact with your stuff, how was i to expect that.
- Make sure you kill everything around you before triggering a cutscene. Because if an enemy tries to engage combat when you do a pan out area view/cutscene, you end up in a deadlock and your game freezes (lost over an hour of progress just to that)
- Chapter Level caps. Yes, this game has level caps at each chapter. While i dont personally have a problem with that, however, if i kill a the Chapter 1 end boss and i am already at max level for that chapter (lvl 20), i lose that Exp from the kill and from the mission. Which is bullcrap in my opinion.
- This is a personal con, When you equip new gear, your character looks the same. I personally like to see my character grow and progress on a visual scale. At level one hes wearing hobo clothes and level 100 wearing Full Plated, horned, spiked demon killing armor with a dragon head for a shield and the dong of god as his sword.

Recommendations: (These are for me personally for my own tastes)
- Add more than one enemy at a time, and add in target locking. For me it would make combat more dangerous and more fairly unforgiving if i screw up. I forget a dodge and how like 3 monsters repeatedly punch me in the junk.
- A better variety of spells. I mean the game pretty much steals its inventory system from Final Fantasy. Why not the an improved version of their magic system too.
- Be a bit less anime-ness. Now there is alot of good anime out there, and a lot of good anime games out there. But Shiness really hits it hard, that it wants to be a JRPG anime game, when it is clearly isn't. I understand it is a style, but they mimiced that style very poorly.
- Better Balancing and better progression based difficulty scaling

Even though I recommend this I have to say feelings on Shiness are mixed.

The game is very creative from the designs of the characters and world as well as the interesting fantasy setting. The story can certainly be interesting and the characters are diverse enough and I really like the idea of a crazy kung fu RPG.

However there are some things that hold the game back. Voice acting can be a bit overblown and silly but you can tell they were trying at least. It feels like movment can be limited in places where it looks like you should be able to walk or jump down but it doesn't let you. Also the combat while mostly fun can be a bit unresponsive at times and I felt like their were instances where my hits wouldn't land or the character would not track the enemy. Also the story while interesting and fun to watch it felt incomplete like after the final boss the dev team ran out of time which is frusterating because I was getting pretty invested.

This game has some really good things going for it and I feel the team definitely put alot of love into this. But there are some big things holding it back too. If you're a patient player willing to overlook the faults I'm sure you will find some enjoyment. I hope the devs cotninue the series and are able to produce an even better sequel.

I was meant to do a review about this game but this game kicked me right in my feels (or nuts in this case).

Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom have a very intresting gameplay, story, graphic and not to forget, language.
Yes, the game has it's own language called "maherian".

Shiness: The Lightning Kingdoms story is about a young boy named Chado who are traveling with his bestfriend Poky. Shado have a nature spirit called shiness who he can communicate with but the thing is, he is the only one who can see it and was mocked in his homeland for that. On thier journy they encountered many different people and companions and finding out that different kingdoms were in power struggle and thought they could solve the problem.

So about the gameplay. Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is an action-RPG with arena styled combat. You can use physical attacks/combos and magic attacks/combos and there is different elements for magic which is earth, fire, water and air.
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom have different areas to explore, do quests, fight enemies and so on.

Shiness: The Lightning Kingdoms anime styled graphic is honestly very good looking. The characters looks good and well done made manga and animated cutscenes.

The reason why i gave this a no is becouse there is a progress hindering bug that was known to the developers but never actually fixed. The developers went out of buisness so there wasn't much of bugs fixed.
I was so deep in the game until the game hindering bug appeared, It was than i got so hard slapped that it made me sad and disappointed.

A game that went in to the grave not by my choice but with force by someone else...

EDIT: It seems like there is a small hope after all. Many thanks to a reader for telling me and confirming a workaround for this progress hindering bug.

There is a part of the main quest where you have to go through 3 trains. On the second train, there is a cart full of enemies and a chest. DO NOT ENTER THAT TRAINCART!
You are supposed to gas the enemies in that cart.
This must be done before completing the engine puzzle and gone aboard the third train.
What you have to do is to go back and climb up on a ladder and return again by the roof.
A cutscene is showing you the enemies in the cart and a couple of pipes. Use Shado's menhiros to block the pipes and that should finish them off. The bug is triggered if you didn't gas the enemies.

TL;WR -> The game is fun, definetly worth it on a sale.

Pros: Overall a lot of fun, Shiness has a charm to it that makes you keep playing. It's good for an RPG, has a fun naruto shippuden style of combat, and interesting skills progression.

Cons: game ends abruptly, the story makes sense and is relevant up to the point of the final battle, which you won't know is the final boss but it will be. Suddenly then it's over and you're left wondering what happened to all the plot and lore you've been collecting so far.

What would make it better: Make the game longer, tie up those loose ends nice and tidy, could cram in another 20-30 hours of game in there without even having to add new story.

Personally, out of sheer coincidence or maybe I just was busy, I had never heard of Shiness until about a month ago. So when I approached Shiness I flew completely blind with no preconceptions or opinions. Everything I had gathered was from screenshots that looked incredible and reminded me of Dragon Quest and from a trailer that looked and sounded amazing.

I did a little bit of digging on the history of Shiness after having played it and I discovered quite a few things. For one, Shiness has been delayed a few times, much to the dismay of its backers. The game was due to release some time in 2015-16 but had been pushed back. This is also Enigami’s first developed game, and an extremely ambitious one at that. If you take in the amount of money vs quality that this game has achieved, it’s astonishing. They made an entire language up for this game and it even has a dictionary. The point is that Shiness’ development has been a bit of a mixed bag, with some good and some bad. Was all the wait worth it? I think so. Although I haven’t been waiting as long as others.
It was June 7th 2014 that Shiness was officially Kickstarted by 3,028 backers who pledged $139,865.

So here is an important disclaimer: I will not be putting any of the drama into consideration here in this review. I am judging this game solely based off of the merits of what I played, unaware of events or any promises beforehand. However, I will take core features and compare them to the original campaign promises.

With the amount of world building and unique style, Shiness reminds me of everything I loved about titles like Jade Empire and Fable.

Aside from a brief starting exposition cut scene, Shiness literally crashes you into the middle of its universe. The tones all feel familiar, but you definitely feel like there is a lore that you will learn as you play the game. There are times I felt thrown for a loop and a little lost. When I first heard the characters speak I had to stop and make sure that I didn’t click on the wrong dialogue option. That is when I realized there were no language options and that this was a made up language. This is amazing but does take a bit of getting used to. There is quite a bit of name dropping as well which I felt that a lore guide would’ve definitely helped with.

The story of Shiness is mostly in line with the standard RPG concept. You have six elements that live harmoniously and an evil version called Dark Shi. This is the macguffin of the game and gets things moving. There are three primary races: Waki which are cute cuddly teddy bears, the Shelk which look like furries on steroids, and finally Humans. Our protagonists name is Chado, a Waki who can speak to an elemental spirit named Shiness(Terra). This makes him an outcast from his own people. Adventure, go!

While I wouldn’t say that the story is forgettable in Shiness, I will say that it is your anime-esque typical affair, if you will. Shiness wears its inspiration on its sleeve. Taking from bits of DBZ, Naruto and other animes. This certainly isn’t a bad thing, but the story really requires minimal brain power to understand. The characters are cute, over the top and adventure seeking. That is the primary theme of Shiness; those looking for deeper plots and lore along the lines of Skyrim or Mass Effect aren’t going to find it here. It really depends on your personal preference. Sometimes you just want to enjoy something easy to chew.

Speaking of easy to chew, Shiness’ graphics have a wonderful sense of joy. The world is beautiful, bright, and brimming with magic. All of the villages, dungeons, and areas are lovingly crafted and you can spot details packed into every nook and cranny of the game. The first time you see Mantara you can’t help but be in awe at how imaginative and amazing it all looks. The graphics lend themselves perfectly to these types of moments.

The environmental design, by far, is the most appealing thing about the graphics in Shiness. The character models themselves aren’t as robust as I would’ve liked in comparison. This was obviously on the developers mind, as most often when heavy character expression is required, a cut scene takes charge with comic panels. These manga/comic moments are extremely well drawn and accomplish far more than the current character models ever could. I personally didn’t mind this style at all and felt it was a great way to get the story across. Keep in mind from a gaming development standpoint, one or two hundred thousand dollars isn’t much. Cutting corners in creative ways is impressive.

One thing to note is that Shiness is a very linear RPG compared to most these days. You won’t find an open world to explore but instead there are tight compact zones akin to an MMORPG. You can tackle side quests within these zones and markers are placed so that you never really get lost. Zones are also level based so eventually you will just out level everything in the area if you find yourself grinding often.
Have you ever wanted to punch an anthropomorphic animal in the face or blast it with a fireball?

Then let’s talk about combat. No RPG would be successful without a great combat system. Shiness strikes a good blend between old and new. This is definitely where I draw comparisons to Jade Empire. Featuring exclusively one on one fights, you will seamlessly enter combat where you can use an assortment of combos, spells, and basic attacks to defeat enemies. Players who love the open world combat are going to be amazed how fast the game quickly transitions between exploration and combat.

There is no pause for loading or cute little screen dissolves. You punch that plant in the face and it’s go time! This switch happens so quickly that sometimes I was unprepared and the aforementioned plant blasted me in the face for half my health. Combat is a robust but simple system that doesn’t really take long to grasp. You have basic strikes, combos that you learn from disciplines(scrolls) and spells. Shiness took a page out of Final Fantasy IX’ book and lets you “Master” abilities from items. Once you master a combo or spell, that item can then be given to another party member.

Some combos are character exclusive but further enhanced versions of them are deeper in the game and add more effects and make combos stronger. The arena itself also plays an important role during combat. Depending on the color of the arena certain elemental spells will be enhanced or weakened. Then there is your characters “Hyper” which basically can be equated to a finishing move. Below your health bar is a meter that lets you combo break, deflect enemy attacks, and use hyper. This resource can only be built by taking damage or dishing it out, bringing everything back to slugging it out old fashioned style.

The combat system just works, and I mean it works really well. I have few complaints when it comes to combat. It’s fun, and definitely robust enough to my satisfaction. While I wouldn’t go as far to say it’s a true fighting game along the lines of Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, it combines enough elements to keep things from getting boring.

There are some drawbacks though. For one, I hate the camera. When you enter combat there is no special arena it magically zips you away to. A circle appears around you and your foe at a fair distance. Most of the time this isn’t a problem. However, for some reason camera control is taken away from you and it becomes fixed in position behind your fighter. Natural terrain can become a hazard if you get stuck behind a tree and suddenly you can’t see anything. Additionally, for some reason the game will flip to the perspective of the enemy and this really makes it difficult to dodge or move.

Full review: https://bigbossbattle.com/review-shiness-the-lightning-kingdom/

It's obvious Shiness was made with love and a lot of time was invested in imagining it's world and lore, but is it a game worth your time?

The story revolves around a conflict between two kingdoms situated on "meteoras", parts of a broken up planet who's pieces float in space, and Shiness - four spirits to represent the elements of fire, earth, water and air. Many different species inhabit the world; including Wakis the smaller furries, Shelks - their bigger counterparts, Gromiz the nasty little goblins, humans and so on. There is also a lot of original animals around which can be sneaked upon or chased around for items to barter with.
Your main cast is a mixture of these species and the characters are designed with a lot of significant, easily recognizable detail. They all fit right into certain, already established tropes, yet have enough of their own personality to make things entertaining.
I personally found the story to be a little unfocused trough the middle part of the game, but the later half rewarded me with plenty of awesome for my devotion.

I would strongly recommend reading trough the official free manga. It will give you a good insight to what you can expect from the game in terms of the story, characters and the world.
With that said, I would rather focus on the gameplay, soundtrack and issues that some of you might find hard to turn a blind eye to.
World exploration is a mix of casual platforming, sneaking around enemies and using each character's different abilities to solve minor puzzles while searching for treasure and hidden passages. The side quests are more on the silly side of things and while not really original, they do their best to be different and entertaining.
The locations are not many but all are big enough and well crafted. Visually surprising for an indie developer, the world has a unique flavor and a setting that's hard to put in a genre. I would say it's a fantasy setting with a spin of it's own.
What really needs a good describing is the combat.
It functions as a 1 on 1 arena in which you may encounter multiple enemies one after another while you are allowed to switch between your 3 team members.
The system is rather complex and makes use of almost all the buttons on your gamepad. You will be required to make quick decisions and change your tactics at all times trough the game, as the battle is fast paced and will need you to show some reflexes.
You will be able to equip your characters with various items including "disciplines"; scrolls from which they teach melee input commands and long range magic.
Mastering these is a key to good preparation, as your enemies will react differently to them and it is generally a good idea to have as many different ones as possible.
There's also about 20 support commands you must set up for your inactive team members to cast on you while they wait for their turn. These are set trough four slots for each character in a form of small macros, for example; "If the character's HP is below 70%, cast heal".
Every party member can equip up to 4 quick slot items and spells, while having access to 4 input commands which consists usually of a string of button presses.
They are short and mostly easy to input, while the "hyper", the strongest attack with a unique skippable cutscene for each character, requires a 6-7 buttons to be pressed correctly.
Hypers are not spammable, nor is anything else in the game, as they all use different kind of gauges you'll have to keep tabs on.
The spells need "shi" energy of their own element to use, which you can siphon from the arena when it changes to the right element, as it keeps cycling trough them during battle. Your blocking is limited to few connected blows and will break if you keep pressing it all the time, so mastering dodging is advised.
Parrying requires not only precise timing but the use of the "tension" gauge, as do the hyper and all the input command abilities. The said gauge refills while attacking with arms and legs, blocking or consuming certain items.
All of this is happening quite fast, especially later in the game when a lot of status changes or hexes is introduced such as; immobilize, stun, inability to cast magic, inability to heal and so on.
I see a lot of people are arguing against this system and how unfair it is, but I found it to be challenging and entertaining throughout the game. While I did have a few game over's and sometimes felt as if I was beaten really fast, it was never frustrating or annoying enough to have me quit, but rather improve on my tactics and habits in battle.

What Shiness excels at best is probably the soundtrack which may remind you of the 90's era of gaming's best like the Chrono series and Final Fantasy games.
It consists of lots of well arranged native sounding instruments mixed with an orchestra filled tracks revolving around a "lite theme", a central piece which is itself very melodic and memorable. As a keen listener and observer of soundtracks in general, I can say for sure that each track finds it's rightful place in the game, lifting the atmosphere and bringing life into the world.
From the top of my head, I can't remember any area that I found boring to play trough, thanks to all the amazing tracks inside the game, and I will say that I found myself humming the melodies on my way to work and even after the game was finished.

Took me about 35 hours to complete the game, without grinding and with managing to do most quests, a secret dungeon and boss, leaving me satisfied, yet craving for more of the world of Shiness.

Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom (StLK) is a third-person action-RPG based in the magical yet fragile planet of Mahera. Your journeying party includes 5 members, each provided with specific tools or abilities that will allow you to progress through platforming and puzzle challenges. While the game suffers early from the shackles of its depth and pacing, fans of fantasy RPGs and gameplay similar to that of Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm will find reasons to stay around to see the conclusion.

StLK focuses on providing a collage of well-established game mechanics from different genres and is, for the most part successful. Progressing through each zone, you will need to swap between your party characters for triggering weighted switches, color coding crystals, and other activities that should be familiar tools in your gaming kit by now.

Each area often feels lofty and large, and as a result, you sometimes start to feel that they were probably against either budget or deadline issues for the first few hours of the game. Once you are about 5 hours in, you really start to see the creative and technical aspects shine. If you show this dedication, you will get through to the really good stuff.

The familiar mechanics and friendly faces make for a fun all-around experience and worth your time.


While the game blends the player experience with platforming and puzzle aspects, the reason that you come and stay for StLK is the fighting system. The level of customization is a welcome addition as well; allowing to modify the magic-types you are utilizing, equipping support skills that your allies can do on the sidelines of a fight, as well as special moves through button combinations.

As you walk through the overworld, enemies roam freely through certain areas and will initiate combat once engaged. You can crouch and sneak to achieve a back attack for a slight advantage or to move past the enemies and save time. Once initiated, combat becomes a circular arena with a colored wall matching the elemental magic types (Earth🟧, Water🟦, Fire🟥, Air🟩). You may switch out with your party members during combat, as may the enemy.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2228270452
Overall, the combat is fairly easy to understand but doesn't provide a lot of middle-ground once you progress further into the game. I've seen complaints that enemies have a polarity between easy to seriously difficult, and I think this largely can be attributed to being able to face-dive without much finesse getting started. It will ultimately evolve into a pattern of parrying the opponents' attacks for a counterattack of your own, using block/dodge to avoid magic attacks, and using your hyper attack when available for heavy damage and gap closing. It is easy to be coddled into a false sense of security as you bore your way through the early game without having to block or parry often. Hyper moves are one of the last combat-related things you will learn, several hours into the game. I did feel that the equipment, item, and skill systems had deep aspirations, which ultimately led to needless complexity. Unfortunately, I at no point felt that my skill or item builds were critical to my experience. However, these were still thoughtful additions, and allow the game to remain casual and fun.


The story can be a lot to take in without much explanation, so you have every permission to be confused. As the premise is presented to you, there are these planetary islands called Meteora. Our main protagonist Chado (pronounced "Shadow") meets a Shiness (a mysterious being with elemental magic) while grieving the death of his mother. The Shiness mentions the Lands of Life, which causes Chado to hatch a plan to build a flying machine with his buddy Poky and leave their Meteora to bring back his mother. This leads to a crash landing and the beginning of our story, which lands them in the middle of a conflict between kingdoms.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2229326911
All of that is a lot of wind-up to say that the story can sometimes become frantic and requires a certain amount of whimsy. Try not to come in with too many preconceived notions and research and just go along for the ride.

My PC Specifications:

Intel i9 9900K 4.8GHz
16GB DDR4000 RAM
GeForce GTX 1080ti
2550x1440 Resolution

StLK does not provide many advanced options for graphics. With the above configuration and highest settings, 60FPS was easily maintained throughout. AA is about as fancy as it gets in this department!

This isn't the type of game where polygons and geometry are brimming out of your GPU. It would rather spend its time on being stylistic through its vibrant and beautiful cell-shading. The characters are unique and memorable, yet all too familiar with their fuzzy anthropomorphic faces that will remind you of the simpler days of gaming.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2229326961
The soundtrack is really good, arguably one of the best parts of the game. Composed by Hazem Hawash, it could easily be found adorning a much higher budget title. There is even a bonus track from Hiroki Kikuta (known for Secret of Mana). Overall, the music acts as an amazing soundscape for the experience.

The voice acting is few and far between and can leave some to be desired. Overall, I would say that it still rates above average in the grander landscape of RPGs of this type, especially as an Indie title. Sound effects were on point and delivered the expected results.

It will be clear that the game has its fair share of bugs, many of which relate to terrain meshing issues, in my experience. I didn't ever have any issues so bad that I was falling through the floor or similar, it is just that your character's collision always feels a little off with the geometry of each level.

The only aspects that could truly test your patience will be the controls just feeling a little finicky and dated. Your characters inertia going into jumps can be strange, and the platforming challenges are sometimes due more to the systems than the design.


StLK has some rough edges, but if you can hold tight and see it's an ambitious vision, you will certainly enjoy your time. The game provides for an endearing indie experience with an artistic vision that often reminds me of older Atlas JRPGs. Hang tight through the first couple of hours and you'll be rewarded for your time.

I would recommend this game to those who enjoy games like Spyro or Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm and enjoy casual action RPGs.

Disclaimer: This is less a review and more a warning to people who prefer mouse and keyboard. I haven't played the game due to the issues surrounding the controls.

I backed this game on Kickstarter, and back then it was advertised as coming out on PC too. Since I've grown up playing games with mice and keyboards, I expected this game to support this input method. Well, it kind of does, but it's all set up in such a half-arsed way that it's barely acceptable for QWERTY users and unacceptable for anyone else.

The issues in detail:
Each key is mapped to a button on a standard XBox controller.
There's no in-game key rebinding. Even worse, rebinding in the ini file is almost unworkable because of the above issue. Say you want to rebind your jump key - this is what you'll find: "Bindings=(Name="SpaceBar",Command="xbox_A |OnRelease stop_xbox_A") There's more, but this is the important part. In order to really rebind your keys, you'll have to enter the game, find out which key does what, exit the game, reconfigure, then start up the game again and hope you didn't make any mistakes.
There's no mouse in the menus.

They know these issues are a problem for people who don't use QWERTY keyboards, because they brought out a patch that rebinds keys for AZERTY users (the users still don't get a say what the keys are rebound to, though). The rest of the world and any left-handed people who find it uncomfortable to use WASD controls are left out in the cold.

The worst thing about all this is that I got one response, telling me, basically, that all of this was intended. Their excuses are that the controls went through their publisher's QA, and that rebinding was possible in the ini files and that was good enough. No, it isn't. Thus my warning to anyone interested in this game or any other Ynnis Entertainment are going to publish in the future: Make absolutely sure that you're okay with shoddy programming and lousy customer support before you buy anything from them.