Lost Sphear

An endearing J-RPG in the tradition of Chrono Trigger.

Lost Sphear is an easy to master game with a simple but captivating story. It uses many traditional JRPG mechanics, but offers almost no challenge for an experienced player.

It's still a somewhat barebones homage to games of the past, but Lost Sphear takes everything I Am Setsuna did right and improves upon it greatly. At the end of the day, it's a fun game with pretty visuals, an interesting battle system, enjoyable characters (that are well-acted), and a must-have for fans of classic JRPGs of the SNES era. It's also a testament to the skill of the developers at Tokyo RPG Factory, who made the game roughly a year and a half after their first outing, and will leave fans wondering what the team has in store for the future.

Lost Sphear takes a little too long to really get going. Dungeons are tiny, its characters paper-thin, and the story far too predictable in its overuse of already overused plot elements. It’s a JRPG that struggles to add anything of value, perhaps to the point of reminding us why the natural evolution of the genre happened in the first place. Despite this, it’s rapid pacing is perhaps its biggest achievement. Even the smallest session can lead to a feeling of progress. Things start to feel a bit too repetitive in longer sessions, but playing in smaller bursts helps stop its generic tropes from grinding you down. At $50, though, it’s far too much to ask for something that purposefully refuses to reinvent the wheel. Even if it promises 40 hours over the last game’s 20.

Lost Sphear has some good ideas and mechanics working together when it comes to battle, but everything else falls short and feels dull. The reused dungeons, backtracking, and slow-paced story don’t give me much to fight for, even if the end does come together in an interesting way. Sadly, the tedious grind through a milquetoast adventure is sour for far too long before coming together.

Bland and unambitious save for its combat, Lost Sphear draws so heavily from the traditions of past JPRGs that it fails to build a personality of its own.

Lost Sphear is a middling JRPG that lacks style, tone, and substance. You can see certain ideas that are working hard to keep things afloat, but with a rough plot, bad cast, generic look, and combat that grows tedious, it fails to stand out.