izigame.me

First, let's start with a simple request to IF as a publisher/developer.
Please, fire your whole localization team and get one that wants to do a good job instead of inserting shit that will get old in the blink of an eye or directly ignores what the character is saying to insert their own story.
If you aren’t reading this during a sale, go no further, this is IF’s most expensive game they have published to date, but at the same time is the one that reuses most assets, animations, OST, etc.
Not worth neither for fans nor newcomers at a whopping 50€.

Refrain Chord, the game targeted towards no one

Wait, how can a game not be targeted to any audience at all?
Refrain Chord is a game sitting in a strange crossroad. It changes the genre of the game from turn based RPG to strategy RPG, so fans of that kind of gameplay are left behind.
The story is neither a full reboot, nor a sequel, but chooses to start at something like 20% of the original game story progression, leaving newcomers confused about who the characters are, their relations, etc, since we don’t even get introductions.
At the same time, it treats itself like some kind of alternative ending but skipping part of the journey and mixing the character growth from before and after the time leap, making the old fans feel confused about what exactly to expect from them.
So, after explaining this, I hope everyone gets why nobody is welcomed here, fans won’t get something substantial, and newcomers should be redirected to advent dark force instead.
Story, a rushed mess
The game is, if I’m not mistaken, 25 chapters long.
Wow, that’s a lot!
Well, not really, almost every chapter follows the same structure:
• Talk in the inn/fountain.
• Click on map (SRPG has no exploration), short chat.
• Battle.
• After battle conversation ending with “let’s continue talking in the city” (the next part of the conversation is always the opening of the next chapter so there’s not even a full convo as opening per chapter)
Some chapters have the rare trick battle->second conversation->real battle, but the gist is that.
Understood, but it’s the plot good?
Not really.
I have read some people arguing that Refrain Chord tries to mimic what Mary Skelter 2 was, a retelling of the story of the first game with a few changes so we get a big party for a sequel. Reminder that there’s no route on FF:ADF that has all the party members alive at the end.
But I don’t find that comparison doing justice to MS2.
Mary Skelter 2 starts at the same point MS:N does but with Otsuu and Little Mermaid accompanying Red Riding Hood, and from that point onwards everything changes. The story makes the characters a blank slate again and develops them and their personalities in different directions compared to the first instalment. The story, despite having the same premise, is used to expand the lore and key elements of the world, with special emphasis in Blood Skelter, something that there receives the treatment it deserves after being shrug off in the first one despite being the biggest fear and danger a Blood Maiden must confront.
Meanwhile, Refrain Chord tosses you in the middle of the first act of the story, but with characters having a weird mix in their personality between their developed selves from any of the routes the developers picked for them and the starting way the character was (which will be quickly overwritten).
The new characters and key points don’t help either in create an engaging story, since most of them will quickly set into the group and pushed to the sideline to introduce the next character and the “mysteries” (all more obvious than usual) collide with the driving force of the cast, still chasing after furies and never trying to learn more about their enemy true intentions.
The dark tone that combined with the jokes of the original is also mostly gone, here everything will get resolved quickly and with a happy ending.
Characters
After going through the story part, you must think, how can the new characters get sidelined so quickly if the previous main cast is already ensembled by the start of the game.
Well, we just speedrun the Heel-Face turn trope again and again and again.
This game won’t take it’s time to develop the enemies and how Fang feels about them, you will always have the same progression: Enemy appears as boss from the chapter->next chapter the enemy joins the party after a weak talk.
This is embarrassing because despite there being some examples that more or less makes sense (despite this supposedly being the starting Fang and not the one trying to amend all his needlessly killings after some reflection and getting the chance with the time leap) others are fucking laughable, at the point of a psychopath attacking you and trying to murder you, and in less than 1 minute conversation (depending on the speed you are reading it) him already joining you and being a good ally for the rest of the game.
Others directly are different from their starting point just because they are, without further explanation nor development (worst offender Sherman, who just goes in one scene “this is what must be done, but I won’t do it because I have changed. When dude? When did you change? because you clearly hadn’t changed in the previous chapter).
But I guess is what we get when we need to rush character after character to increase the party and keep introducing new foes.
The relationships at the inn also return for this game, but despite them being a perfect way to develop the characters, they are just gags for the biggest part and pretext for subquest in the rest.
Gameplay
I’m reaching Steam’s word count for reviews (301 longer than it should first time trying to publish it) so I’ll make this section short.
TL;DR: unapologetic GRINDFEST, and yes, grindfest needs to be in capital letters.
Gameplay itself is as basic as it gets, is an SRPG but with the S watered down to the bare minimum requirement to still add it in the genre. Hyperdevotion Noire, being from the same publisher, has more complexity and better art direction, map verticality/strategy and art/models than this game.
I recommend playing on easy, I played in hard and the only thing I can say about it is that you need to be careful of chip damage doing bigger numbers, the rest has the exact same ratio of difficulty be it easy, normal or hard.
In every battle you will have a plethora or mobs that get copy pasted until madness and a copy of Glaze, because yeah, Glaze will be in every fight no matter what.
Battle are looooong, not because complex or needing you to think, but because they are slow, the “speed up” option is not toggleable and needs of your constant input and Glaze itself is resistant to almost any damage you make, the enemies are always disperse and you need to eliminate them, but stay closer to your allies to use the buffs.
Animations are either recycled from ADF or non-existent. Models are deformed versions, not being as good as they were there (10yo game btw) and being worse than going full Chibi.
OST is the same as ADF. Adding only the songs of the Muse’s abilities (they did really, really dirty Ishikawa Yui here).
Maps are just flat surfaces with minimal detail (yes, there are different heights, but no detail).
There’s only one quest per quest rank, the rest are done via inn interactions with characters and the new world shapping is a step back from the og one, this one being a tedious grind that gives you items, requires special energy to play it (2 units per battle, and at the time of writing this on chapter 18 after doing every subquest available I’m ~50% so the game expects me to make some fucking free battles for this)

Quick summary

If you like Fairy Fencer and want to see the characters in a “new” adventure go ahead and get the game, just be prepared to be disappointed.
If you are new to the franchise or love it, go play Advent Dark Force.