Recent reviews by ilPrinni

I will be writing this explicitly for how it plays as a Generational game and NOT just as a JRPG.

In Short a Generational game is a game in which by some mechanism you move forward through generations and play as new characters as this happens. Think Crusader Kings, Agarest, Fire emblem 4, Godhood, and Wildermyth.

This games main mechanic is around appointing new emperors, which on its own would not really be much of a generational game, but it is tied to time skips and the such so it fits quite well.



Story wise the memories and powers of the previous emperor are passed down to whoever is chosen as the new emperor. Unlike others of the Genre there is no Familial component, aka you do not play explicitly as your children. This felt bad at first, I was not seeing the story of a family line of emperors and there was no connection between emperors at all. However the game is very vague about who the characters are so you can easily imagine that whoever you chose is a Descendant of the previous emperor. Nothing in the game says this to be the case, but nothing in the game really implies otherwise either.


Firstly there is no genetics or romance mechanics (despite the name). You will not choose wifes or do any sort of family building. Which is extremely rare for this genre, as often the reason Generations pass on at all is to serve playing as offspring, see even Fire emblem 4 where even though marriage is technically optional it is a major factor in your runs.

The execution of the lack of offspring is interesting. Since your emperor's skill levels and abilities are carried over directly from memories being passed from emperor to emperor. So there is a sense of “inheritance” but through memories and empire development.

As for your non-emperor characters there is inheritance for them as well. As you use weapons your weapon levels will increase globally in a sense, so when you time skip and pick new party members their levels will be close to your other characters. If you brute force a class to learn a weapon they don't specialize in that carries over as well.

Speaking of the timeskips, they are handled quite adeptly imo. Every few major quests, usually every 2 major quests the game will jump you forward 58+ years. The previous emperor will be gone and you will then appoint a new emperor, if anything changes over the years someone will tell you and you will get new quests like monsters rising in areas you already cleared or pirates throwing a mutiny, then you rebuild your party in the castle.

After every time skip, anything made in the smith, all skills learned, and all magics become available to all characters at the designated facilities. It helped create a sense that your empire's military is learning from its “heroes” over the years.

The Length of generations felt very good, not too long and not too short. You spent enough time as an emperor to care about them and their story, but not so long that you only get 1-2 time skips. I found each generation took me personally about 5 hours.

This game is not using an infinite model (which I don't think anyone would expect as this game is a remake of a snes era game). But this does mean that the quests that happen over the years are not randomly generated, which means you will only see a handful of them ever. This game does have a strongly defined ending which I will not be discussing here.

Final note, there are a lot of small details with each of these systems and some I probably missed/didn’t talk about partly because of char limitations.


I was considering layout out the pros and cons but I would write a pro and there would be a corresponding con to go with it. For every step this game took forward it would also take one backwards or sideways.

So, this game's generational mechanics are very non-intrusive. Great for JRPG players who don't really care about such systems.

To summarize, when you switch someone into your party, they will have near identical stats to the previous generation. So let's say you have a knight, you made him learn axes this generation. Next generation starts, if you pick a knight again, he will have the same/similar level in axes. This is awesome if you have your favorite set up and just want to ride it out till game end, since you can keep remaking the same party over and over, since who you can recruit is always the same, you will always be able to recruit a class you recruited.

Why is that a problem? Well what is the purpose of having your party reset every so often in the first place? It gets you to do new things, it forces you to adapt to your new options rather than relying on one strategy, it can also let you relive fun parts of early progression assuming you design the game with the intent that early progression is fun. This wouldn't be a problem if only your emperor was like this, but EVERY class will scale up, even on weapons you don't use. In the later generations you barely discover skills too, which was a great part of the early game.

As such this game loses out on a lot of the fun parts of this genre. For example you never do anything to set up the future generation, bar building facilities or smithing. Which all progresses naturally as you do encounters anyways. This hurts a lot actually as making decisions that help you in the next generations feels great in this genre, things like picking up young recruits in Wildermyth since your best 3 are getting old, or things like picking who will marry who in FE4. This sort of “Generational Planning Play” is borderline nonexistent.

This might sound very negative, however this game succeeds as a generational game. Despite having a system that mechanically doesn't engage the player in the generation side of things, this game's thematic and contextual wrapping of the system hits home a lot of the time and makes you feel the generations for the most part. Things like new quests showing up in eras you liberated, the main antagonists being immortal monsters helps, one town being built *during* the game, but the biggest one is just a lot of facilities and tools open up over time as you do more things and progress. Plus even though functionally the characters are similar it felt interesting to defeat the many bosses with different protagonists who had subtly different feels because of character design.

Honestly respecing into a party of guys who look different was enough for my brain to feel like things changed despite nothing really changing for most of the game.

The cherry on top is that there is a post game role call of all of your emperors and the things they accomplished. This felt so good.


This game as a generational game nails the feel, does a lot of unique things, and does absolutely execute on what it's selling. However mechanically if you are looking for the things generational games often do, such as encourage you to adapt to your ever changing tools, let you optimize genetics, or make you re-experience unit building/early progression, then you may be disappointed to find a JRPG that only has a thematic and contextual feel of a generational game. But if you are after a JRPG that has some systems you may not have seen, and that does cool stuff with time then this might be exactly what you're looking for.

If you like this style of generational game, my go to recommendation would probably be Agarest: Generations of war, since their system is also non-intrusive and serves a more Linear-narrative focused JRPG.

As someone who loves this niche genre its a solid entry and does alot of great things, and does alot well.
Very happy with it despite my gripes with the systems.

Gonna leave a review since the first 10 are so important.

for 5$ this is a steal.

I will say its not flawless, the Rhythm aspect for the player feels weak, to get perfect hits is like... impossible and doesn't line up the music. But its not required so I would almost cut out the player side of it entirely. Other then that, the enemies feel great, they attack to the music and the music is kicking so that side of the Rhythm part is good.

Game is hard, but good hard, retrying is fast and the fights aren't actually too long once you learn to not die.

The game has achievements for beating fights hitless/dashless which is a really fun measure compared to perfect hits which isnt even scored, which thank god.

But yeah, thought I would recommend this game to help get the count up for this really fun little thing.
A great way to kill a few hours (I plan to get all achievements now)

Content wise its basically as such so far:
4 bosses, 3 of them have 3 variants that have different songs and harder attack patterns.
for 5$ thats great honestly.

also slight con, I couldnt find a button for quick restarting if you get hit you basically need to wait for the generous invisibility to run out before killing yourself. Bit annoying when farming the no hits.

Boss rushes need more love

I goldened some apples
Got that Kromer
flew my broken wings
Ricardo
and got Hunted

I like this game, PM knows how to write.
If you havent played a PM game and you like good writting and world building.
Here you go, enjoy

Very fun little romp.
Different enemy types require different set ups to farm efficiently, lots of optimizations to make to save resources and progress. Lots of limitations that require adaptation.
hell of a way to kill time

I want to write a review from the perspective of Generational game fan who has a interest in make games of this kind someday.

A Generational game being a game in which through some mechanism, time passes and characters get switched out with future Generations. Massive chalice is a perfect example of what this genre is that I simply needed to write this, as well as being the first time I recognised that this could be a genre in its own right. Some other examples being Fire emblem 4, Wyldermyth, Kinseed, and Crusader Kings.

So, how does Massive Chalice hold up in this super niche genre?

Its pretty okay! It is one of the first of the genre and it makes mistakes. But overall I do enjoy this game as a generational game.

[Con] Units switch out quite often for the genre, battles are about once every 12 years or so. I personally only ever used units for about 5-6 battles depending. This can be okay, but in general your going to be switching in younger heroes often. This made me disengage with the characters often, that combine with their sheer quantity. Always felt like I would have so many options and never would pay attention to most of them. I never felt like I was getting new units, but rather slight variations of the same units. The personal traits never had enough of an impact to make me see someone as more then their class, even if pessimist and optimist were fun ideas.

[Con] The Chalice, They are fun characters and have a lot of personality if your into the sort of characters they are. However they completely destroy any sense of time passing or things changing since the game starts to feel more like 3 people are playing xcom with units so expendable that they die on their own rather then watching a worlds people change and grow. Contrast this directly with a game like CK3, in which you will have people come into your life and be major parts of it, then disappear in time for the next king. Your sibling will become your evil uncle as you become your own sun, which eventually fades away with time as well. You have a wonderful sense of meeting new people and seeing the world change *with* its people. The Chalice does the opposite, its you and the chalice for all 300 years.

[Pros] Their are many systems to encourage engaging with the generational aspect of the game, the Crucible is wonderful in that its a way to retire old heroes, and creates that narrative of the legendary hero training the youth. The relic system creates that narrative of "My Fathers Sword" which is also wonderful. I do feel none of these systems really land perfectly, the Crucible sometimes just feels like just "sacrifice unit into exp" and the relic system sometimes ends up feeding into the feeling of "all the units are the same". I would still consider these systems as Pros in that they do interesting things with the Generational genre while also still leading to interesting moments, the relic system is one of the main reasons you would keep around a 70yo which is really neat since it feels kind of like "the vet and the rookies" in some missions.

The overall experience as far as Generational games goes can be a bit limp. I personally never got attached to anyone, time moved to quickly for that. The units who battle and the units who breed are separate so you never have a child fight along side their family. The game goes for 300 years which is a neat narrative hook to attach you to the Generational aspects, but the game ends up feeling more like Xcom but your units are all rookies that you throw out every once in a while.

I really do like this game but that is partly as nostalgia of this being one of my introduction to this genre that I love and I respect it as a part of history of this Genre that not many know of yet. I am sad it never reached levels of success to get a sequel or the love it deserved. But its got alot of rough edges as a whole. I wont go into it, but Outside of the generational aspects the game is overall a bit weak, lots of cool ideas but it gets repetitive fast and progression feels a bit slow.

I can mainly only recommend this game as a history piece of a Genre that is still in its infancy stages and for me, this game is a wonderful case studies of some of the dues and donts of the genre.

Some take aways for me:
- Generations should last long enough for you to get attached. Massive chalice suffers because no one feels substantial enough to really mourn. The opposite issue Kinseed has actually, in that game generations are too long and you can play the whole thing in generation 1.

- A Generational game should be fun and well designed outside of the generational aspects. Kind of obvious, but I feel that the generational aspects fail to shine alot of the time because as a whole the game is sometimes just not super engaging.

- Systems that encourage you to not bench the elderly are a lot of fun! Relics add so much to this game for me. I would keep a old man around simply because his weapon is special, he cant unequipped it till he dies after all (a very important component for this system to work). The game suffers the opposite side of this at the same time. I would be benching 40 year olds with younger units with more potential constantly which made them all blur together as these heroes would only fight 2-4 times ever.

Those are my thoughts, let me know if you know other games in this genre if anyone bothered to even read this haha. If you did then, thank you for listening to my sleep deprived ramblings, cant imagine how this all came across since I am too tired to proof read. These are hardly all my thoughts on the genre and this game but its all I feel is important to write here.

Cheers

Kynseed is a generational game.
A genre I am... obsessed with.

For context a generational game is just "A game where through some mechanism, time will pass and the game will continue even when characters you use die of age or other causes"
Still working on that definition.

Otherwise I wouldn't really have given it much attention.
Honestly the game has a bit of a jank to it like most games in this genre. But nothing game breaking or experience ruining. Its Jankiness can be somewhat fun at times

Its combat system is very fun and unique which surprised me cause it took 5+ hours to get to it since the game is harvest moon esc for the most part. I would play a game thats just the combat expanded into a roguelike.

The generational aspects are... hit and miss, some very very smart choices, but other choices that hurt it.

It has one big issue in this regard, a single generation is too long, even with its smart life tax system. You can do everything in a single generation if you wanted. Which makes the whole having kids thing seem kinda pointless.

The system works fantastic when you die. But it took 25+ hours for me to speed to my death.

Also people just don't have kids fast enough. The world's population goes down faster then it grows so you'll get batches of random added into the mix over time. It works but is a bit sad to see a family line you liked die off. Contrasted too Crusader Kings where in a generation or 2 down and you will be warring with the ancestor of your founders best friend, moments like that are really fun!

As far as generational games goes here is my Pros and Cons:

Pros:
Combat is great and training your heir to be good at fighting is satisfying. Stats matter, so making sure your heir is set up to play how you want is important.

The life tax system is genius. It's a system in which dying in combat, or buying specific upgrades accrue a life tax. At the end of a single year, time jumps x years in the future equal to that tax. It's mixed in with the narrative, adds weight to your choices and speeds up time without just fast forwarding time like games like Massive Chalice or CK have to do. This system reminds me of “years of peace” in Wyldermyth but is a lot more direct, controllable, and impactful. This system is complemented by having a hard set death age. 50. At 50, you die, all left over life tax applies to your heir. Makes you really consider actions that affect life tax. Plus 50 is kinda a nice year to die, makes a reasonable "then he retired" age.

It Utilizes Life goals really really well. You get random life time goals, a few of them. If you fulfill one you get to add a stat to your heir in any stat you choose. 3 of these are the same every generation it seems: make x money, make x rep, make x friends. With 3 random ones. This felt like a really good amount. A few of these I would be fulfilling during regular gameplay, while others made me do things I might otherwise skip or ignore. Plus the reward is good! But not too good, I felt like I had the wiggle room to ignore annoying ones, like the make 40 friends one.

Cons:
25+ hours to get to generation 2... when I was rushing. The Life tax system helps a lot, taking 10+ years after every single year, resulting in you hitting the next generation in 3 years time… but 3 years in a stardew like game? Star dew has your grandpa judge you at the end of year 2, thats end game for some. This is further pushed into the limelight by the fact that you can beat the whole game in generation 1 no problem. The Years are long, I feel this only really helps with farming. But honestly the farming is so shallow and just plain that I would prefer a version of this game without farming.

The town ecosystem is just super dry. People don't really do... anything for you and so people aging, dying and being swapped out feels engaging as a whole. In Most Generational games, most characters can be used by you. Sometimes as units or enemies. In this game they can be used as shopkeepers, but I found the only stat that matters in running shows is “hourly rate”. your shops will be quite lucrative with the worst employees if they don't cost much. An alternative would be to have a town event like a tournament, the combat in this game is unique and deserves a lot more content and attention anyways. This way, you might grow a personal rivalry with a family via combat. Basically I have no reason to care for anyone, and my wife was chosen based on A) looks and B) traits.

This kinda leads into another Con, their is minimum NPC on NPC interactions outside of the occasional marriage that just change where people live it feels. To continuesly mentioned Crusader Kings (CK), this type of game always benifits from people having their own relationships with eachother. I dont think this is nessasary tbh, and is more just one way to help NPCs feel less static. NPCs right now are just a list of stats, traits, likes and dislikes, and relationship points. Traits + likes and dislikes, are a good start to building a NPC that feels interesting, but unless those NPCs interact somehow, they just feel like systems designed for me to have to exploit. A simple way to put "likes and dislikes" into NPC interactions would be to just have that NPC grow liked plants in their home.

Changes that I would suggest from a "generational game first" view.
Shorten every season by half.
14 days a season Is too much, 7 would make generations come fast. You can get a lot done in 7 days.

Remove farming/Focus less on farming, the farming aspects are already really shallow. The game feels more like monster hunter but you own shop's on the side(ie Gathering + Fighting for monster parts). So double down and add more content to gathering and combat. Farming feels so lackluster cause your seeds are non renewable and you kinda have to jump all around to get the seeds you want. Plus your farm is set, you can't customise or organise it, it's just very shallow for a game about farming.

Have weekly events involving townsfolk. That way they feel less static. Things like, coming to your house to sell/give you a rare item, maybe dates, rumours, the aforementioned tournaments. Things like CK 2 events add alot. Simple character building moments, maybe your just given a choice and it gives you a weekly buff/debuff. Maybe gives you items or other things. Lots of variety could help, and so could having traits determine what kind of events pop.

I think heavily cutting back on the farming and crafting mini game count would make time and space for these changes.

Just some less structured nitpicks:

Im 40 hours in so maybe the plot just admits this, but is this some body snatching stuff? Cause if not a few things that bug me:
Why when generations pass does your wife and siblings get nuked? That just seems like your missing out on alot of those fun family bond situations generational games offer. My angry brother would have run the shop if not for this, which would have made it funny to run in and say hi to me.
Why does your friendship not reset on death? its weird to me that I would be best friends with my dads friends.


TLDR:
As a generational game case study: 10/10
As a harvestmoon like farming game: eh, the farming is meh compared to owning businesses and hunting
As a RPG: the combat is good, but feels like it got less attention in development then other systems. Would love to see more of it!.

Overall I really enjoy this game and it was an excellent case study on generational games!
I just keep feeling like its being held back by small things, always a "but":

Generational stuff is fun! BUT season are too long.
Combat is fun! BUT their is only 3 areas and only 1 weapon type.
The Town ecosystem is cool! BUT NPCs dont... do anything.

Anyways, yeah, I do like this game.
If you like me, are into the Generational game genre, give it a try if you can and are willing to sit through 20+ hours per generation.

Needs mod support and more townbuilding.
Those are my personal desires.
This game is uses ideas from stardew + terraria and improves alot about them imo
the second this game has mod support im diving in deep myself to see how much of a townbuilder I can make this

This game is pretty sick

if you like weird rogue-lite RPGs give it a go

Its story is vague and metaphorical while also being direct with fun character interactions.

Just a really really solid game I wish I saw more people talking about.

This game makes me itch while I play.
Like not trying to meme about haha turning into a dwarf or anything
I legit just need to scratch while playing this game, and only this game.

10/10

Still in early access but lots of potential and already a fun little toy.

I hope the game works towards dynamic story telling in a CK2/CK3 way. I already had a mini story from whats in the game already so I had heaps of fun, with only 1 major complaint which I will get too.

The set up is simple, you are a dormant Evil god, do your evil god stuff.

I had a specific 2 notable agents for this story, A soul eating creature and a corrupt noble.
My noble had been slowly corrupting the coastal city of Crit, and my soul eater has been slowly driving a hero insane. All was going well until I had noticed a MASSIVE sea battle taking place right off the coast. My soul eater had finished his duties and I was worried that this country I had been slowly converting to my dark goals was about to be conquered or worse, destroyed. Once I resurrected I was hoping to be able to retreat to this country if things when wild so I could not afford to let this country fall so easily.

I commanded my soul eater to go into this massive battle where corpses were aplenty and resurrect a undead army to wreak havoc. The army would be large and fufill my dark goal and ravage the land post battle. I had realized that a hero was fighting in the battle and thought little of it, he would be too occupied with the battle.

The ritual started smoothly, the battle kept on going, more bodies to raise.

Then, unexpectedly, the hero acting, catching on to the chaos that was about to be raised hopped into battle with the soul eater. I was not expecting such action and he swiftly put the soul eater down. Stopping the massacure of all people in that battle. However he and his family were forever cursed for killing the creature. His sister, ruler of the raiding country, would hear the howling of a damned spirit.

The battle raged on and both sides ended up retreating. The Hero, who know no one knew saved all their lives returned to the city of Crit. Out of frustration My Noble welcomed the hero to land, by jumping him with sell swords. Killing the hero who ruined my plans.

The far away sister, stricken with the grief of her murdered brother and the spirits of the Howler (soul eater) eventually went Mad.

While I embellished the story quite a bit and stretching a bit, but its what happened. I adore games that can create such fun stories like CK, Rimworld, or Shadow of Mordor.

However, this game isnt that perfect at it yet.
I didnt really feel encouraged to kill the hero when he came back, although its my favorite story beat. Had he swam off to another continent I would probably have just forgotten about him. I think a vengeance mechanic could be neat, a reason to care more about Heros who wrong you. Killing heros is Hard, makes the agent a huge threat, so other heros are more likely to hunt them down. So petty vengance is just kinda bad, even tho tormenting or tracking a single hero who is knees deep into your plots is pretty fun. Had a hero ruining my fun for a while, and he was the most memorable hero.

Hero's Vs You was the most interesting part imo, it was hard to pay attention to the politics at all. Maybe a more detailed nations screen would be useful. Would be nice to know who's at war and why. Maybe the game shouldn't even care about the nations tho since the Hero V You was the fun part to me tho.

My final issue is player goal and just... how easy it was. I have only played one round so far, so take EVERYTHING with a grain of salt BUT... The Orcs passively getting me half way to victory, is insane. They just... destroyed 2 nations naturally no influence from me.. You CAN turn orcs off, but I don't want that either. Would be nice if maybe they were purely defensive until a condition was met? like you must take the fortress and have the orcs reach x amount of industry before they will invade? but honestly this would be a bandaid for my issue, which is that "Conquer victory percenage" just feels wack...

My game ended super anti climatically. The chosen one was alive, I wasn't even resurrected yet and there was like, 3 untouched nations? I had conqured like 2 and half while orcs killed the rest. Once the game ended I just had a... "Oh okay, guess I could continue playing?" reaction.

I feel like making it so the Chosen one has to be killed a requirement, or perhaps remove the goal at all? make the game more sand boxy, you win when you say you win. If you need a win con for achievements then Maybe "destroy / shadow all capitals + kill the Chosen one + wake up". Cause the ending left me soooo cold.

So this was long, and kinda negative sounding but that's just cause I really liked this game and want to give honest feedback. I will be eagle eyed for more updates! seriously had fun.