Energy Breaker
Released: 1996
Console: SNES (Japan-only,
has a good fan translation)
Okay so this is a game you've probably never heard of unless you like digging through romhacking dot net's fan translation listings, which I think is how I first heard of this game, or watched SNESDrunk's video on it, which is what pushed me to see the game through to the end. Anyways, this is Japan-only Strategy-RPG for the SNES released back in Summer 1996, developed by Neverland, who also made another set of SNES RPGs in the Lufia duology but is probably better known as the developer behind Rune Factory. It's pretty fascinating to consider just how many unique and gorgeous SNES RPGs came out in 1995 and 1996, and that most of them never made it out of Japan. Many of these games didn't see much universal love (Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG being the main exceptions) and seem to moreso be considered hidden gems (really wanna get around to playing more of them). While I don't think Energy Breaker is a masterpiece by any means, it's still enjoyable for what it is and worth remembering.
First things first, this game looks fucking gorgeous for a SNES title. It's kinda like Super Mario RPG with a Golden Sun-esque artstyle, not only because the game has Super Mario RPG isometric view and "fatty" spritework, but particularly the character graphics in each are very expressive and have some fun animations, which really lends well to the games charm. It is a bit unfortunate that much of the game screen is surrounded by a gradient background, but still, the graphics are easily the game's best asset.
The soundtrack, on the other hand, is unfortunately a tad disappointing, but still good overall. While there is of course some blander-sounding stuff, its main problem to me is how many songs in the OST are short, repetitive, and lack much progression despite them clearly having good ideas.
Collapse of the Cycle of Rebirth,
Summoned One, and
The Future Century Apporaching Dusk come to mind as songs that sound really nice but are too shallow for their own good (Note: These are all supposed to be map/battle themes lol). That being said, there are certainly still some highlights in the soundtrack.
To the Blue Horizon is easily my favorite song, just a bit unfortunate it plays so late in the game;
The Prayer Bells Do Not Toll gives off similar vibes (and also plays during the endgame), while
Voice of Awakening and
Ruins of the Rain are just plain gorgeous, even if all of these songs carry some similar motifs.
Story is also a bit of a mixed bag. It's basically a whirlwind adventure featuring an ensemble cast, where each member of the party has their own goals and reasons to go out on adventure; Myra is an amnesiac, Lenardo is looking to revive a dead friend and search for another, Star is similarly looking for his lost love, and Dorothy's there too I guess. Oh, and that character who's front and center in the box art? That's Leon, he's pretty cool but doesn't really come into play much until the 2nd half of the game and is far less important overall than Myra lol. The story is naturally kind of all over the place, there's even some time travel shenanigans involved in the midgame, though the individual events are solid enough. What helps make it work is that the writing in the fan translation is pretty good and all the party members are entertaining, with Myra easily being my favorite, (granted, she's the one you play as on the overworld and she'll probably end up being your strongest party member), although her actual story arc is super predictable and doesn't come to a head until the very end of the game. I also can't really give similar praise to the villains; with the exception of Parasite, the antagonists are just bland and/or unclear in their motivations. It also harms the overall story, since the game's Big Bad Oriales doesn't become relevant until a little too late into the game, so for much of it you don't have a single distinct endgoal as to what you're trying to accomplish (compare to EarthBound, which is also a crazy adventure but has a very clear endgoal right from the start and steady progression towards that goal), just lots of random quests for each character. One particular thing I would like to praise the game for is the insane amount of flavor text when you're exploring the overworld, Myra's character is helped so much by her comments on pretty much everything (not to mention this game has tons of hidden items), don't think there's any SNES title with as much interactive text. Bit of a shame her lighthearted nature often comes in conflict with some of the darker moments in the story, particularly one event that happens just an hour or two into the game.
As for the gameplay, basically take a typical J-RPG, but instead of random encounters you have preset skirmishes that play more like something out of Final Fantasy Tactics (disclaimer: the only SRPG games I've played a decent amount of are a few Fire Emblem titles), and thankfully you can escape them at any time without penalty if you've beaten them already. As with most J-RPGs, you've still got item slots to manage, which can often get pretty cramped, equipment for each character, all that standard stuff. And within battles, you can obviously move around, attack, use various items, or make use of skills. The two main things that separate this game from most are, firstly, its skill system, in that you basically can mix and match points towards fire, earth, water, and wind elemental levels, and depending on what values you have in each elemental determines what skills you're capable of learning and using. It's a cool idea, but still kinda annoying, especially since you'll constantly need to check items called Grimoires, of which there are
21, one for each skill, and each one notes the levels you need to learn and use that skill and which characters can learn it, and it's pretty annoying to constantly adjust your levels and make sure you're capable of learning each skill.
The other neat but flawed idea the game has is how its actions work; at the start of each turn you or your enemies get allotted some amount of Balance Points, depending on the unit and the amount of HP they have left, and these are what you must consume to take actions, including moving, using items, attacking, or using various skills (each of which has its own required number of points its consumes). It's kinda neat, you can use it to attack multiple times, move twice, and so forth. The problem comes into play once you've taken a lot of damage; when you're at low health, a character gets allotted 4 Balance Points, which is enough to use an attack and an item, or a basic skill, but it is NOT enough points to move your unit out of danger, which is quite frankly really annoying. Thankfully, there are buyable items that let you replenish balance points for a turn, but it's still pretty annoying (and those items can obviously lead to some broken tactics).
The actual gameplay itself is very fun overall as tactics games tend to be for me. I don't have much to comment on what makes the game fun though besides it just being so, I'd probably say it's because of its nice blend of typical J-RPG elements as well, since there's an emphasis on item usage, stat buffs, and stat debuffs (though movement is plenty important too). All the maps are really small and simple, so your sense of tactics is going to be very small-scale, though it also means battles don't go on forever. This will probably upset Fire Emblem nerds like Stratos, but 80-90% of the 75 or so maps in this game are Rout maps, with a Seize map appearing periodically, and a small number of Defeat Boss maps (though most of these happen towards the end of the game) and Defend maps. The Rout maps themselves are easily the weakest type, and the more egregious ones show off a few random and less-important issues I have with the gameplay. Firstly, much like standard J-RPGs but unlike most S-RPGs, it's very difficult to gauge how much damage any particular attack will do; the in-game stats aren't explained well, the enemy stats are really high for some reason, and there is no battle forcasting. Granted, there isn't any damage rolling either, so you can at least use one attack to roughly infer how much damage other attacks will do. This really comes as a problem when you're trying to kill off enemies efficiently as, secondly, there is a turn count limit to each battle, and exceeding that limit is an instant Game Over. In most cases, this won't be an issue, but it can be really annoying on maps with periodic enemy reinforcements or enemies that are particularly bulky. Finally, going off the last point, the balancing in this game isn't particularly good. Some enemies are just way way wayyy too annoying to kill with most of your party; there's usually not a need to grind in the game, but you'll absolutely need to grind early-on because there is an early-game map with a nigh unkillable skeleton that you need decent levels and good skills and items to take down. Additionally, Myra and Leon will likely end up being your strongest party members by far and will just snowball in levels because of how much you rely on them to take out the more resilient enemies, not to mention Dorothy joins severely underleveled and will pretty much always be woefully underpowered (thankfully you can just use her to boost stats or heal instead).
Despite all this rambling, I'm glad I played Energy Breaker, obscure but interesting games are usually fun to play :) Also good that this game is on th short side by RPG standards, I finished it in about 25 hours. This game makes me really want to check out Lufia II since I've heard even more praise towards that game (and it has a better OST) and it's pretty clear that Neverland is more comfortable with the JRPG side of things than the SRPG side.
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Low 7 / 10, legit good; yes I'm stealing Fantano's grading system but I don't care it works well)
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