Recent reviews by Projekt XIII

This game has a lot of potential. It's hard to say right now with it being in Early Access, but I predict you can probably get about 35-50 or so hours of content out of the game at present with how much you can do at the moment.

Using Stardew Valley as a comparison, I want to highlight the sort of unique differences that make this game stand out to it's competitors in the Life Simulation RPG area.


Probably the foremost point of difference comes down to Aesthetics. It's very clear that Fields of Mistria draws heavily upon the 90's anime aesthetic in it's sprite design. This is reflected in both the character portraits and the actual in-game sprites which tend to have big, expressive eyes. The overall aesthetic of the game is a very bright and creamy color palette that lends itself well to the GBA-styled graphics that seek to express more with less.

It's a genuine treat to see it all come together as it does.


It's no secret that Stardew Valley has it's own unique spin on supernatural, fantastical elements but I think one of the core differences is that Stardew Valley has magic in it's setting that's inaccesible for use by the protagonist in terms of game play interaction.

In Fields of Mistria, the player gets to command magical powers that tend to have a direct impact on gameplay. So far, i've unlocked the ability to restore my own HP/Energy to full and create a localized rainstorm on my farm, thus watering all my crops for the day and allowing me to redirect that energy elsewhere.


In this respect, I do feel like the games share an alarmingly high similarity. If you enjoyed Stardew Valley, you'll feel right at home here. There's a lot of wonderful quality of life and anti-frustration features seen in this game that I wish Stardew would implement. The one notable core difference I feel like is how crafting, smithing, and cooking are handled as activities that take up allotments of time out of the day, which speaking of...

One major of aspect of difference between the two is time management It's very clear that in Fields of Mistria, the player is expected to make smart useage of their time, as the in-game clock goes faster then one might initially expect it to. Time is a valuable resource, and days pass quickly. There's little time for loitering and as a result each day feels like it's a carefully curated and strategic use of time.

A lot of players have expressed concern over this, and I am sort of ambivalent about it. Part of the reason why crafting/gathering/cooking taking up time allotments is such a big deal is specifically because of how little of it you have to manage. If you're gonna spend a day crafting/cooking/smithing a bunch of stuff, you have to commit to that day being a day on which you do such.

I do think it should be an option personally to tune how fast time passes, as it can make it hard to be able to interact with NPC's if you're constantly on the clock. I've also had several days where I was unable to exhaust all my energy prior to the day ending because of how little I was able to utilize of it during the day.

Overall, I think it's a worthwhile experience. A lot of these life sim games lack that "magic factor" that keeps the player invested, because it's either needlessly complicated, or a bit too simple. Mistria feels like it hits that sweet spot that keeps the player excited for the next day.

A great, but rather short experience best enjoyed at a sale, I think. It's definitely worth a pickup if you ever have a chance to play it as this game absolutely oozes style through it's 90's anime inspired retrowave/cyberpunk aesthetic with a VHS filter on top of it all to really bring home an authentic feeling experience that makes you feel like you're playing through a 90's action anime -- with all of it's hijinks.

So what's it like? It's rogue lite boomer shooter, but I would argue that it's a "puzzle shooter" in a way. A lot of the system mastery of this game comes from the ability to quickly recognize patterns and capitalize on those opportunities via the various environmental death hazards present in each floor.

This unfortunately means that mastery of the mechanics will come rather quickly once that pattern recognition sets in, and the only way to really "do more" with the experience is basically be able to interact with these patters quicker. It's admittedly a bit shallow for my liking, and it wears off its welcome fairly fast. For the people who absolutely want to push this game to it's theoretical mechanical limits though, the endless mode is available to give you a more traditional roguelike shooter experience.

As for me? I enjoyed it. It was a solid game with very charming visuals, but the lack of meat really keeps this game from being anything over a 6/10 for me personally.

Phenomenal.

Broken as ♥♥♥♥ on PC.

Avoid until fixed.

The amount of fear mongering over GameGuard is genuinely preventing a lot of people from enjoying an otherwise amazing game. Their loss, honestly.

What we have here is a formula for success. A fantastic cooperative shooter that is the right amounts of chaotic, yet strategic gameplay we've come to love from similar gems like Deep Rock Galactic. These style of "hop in have a good time and hop out" games are among my favorite and I can easily see this becoming a very regular part of my gaming activities.

I wish there was a "mixed" option because I hate that it's one or the other, but if I had to choose i'd lean more towards the negative.

I can't in good conscience recommend this game because I genuinely feel like I would've traded the entire multiplayer experience for a more polished single player JRPG adventure game. As it stands, the game feels unfocused and (honestly) a bit too easy for my liking.

But let's give the quick run down of what the good and bad is:

The Good:

• Genuinely fantastic combat system.
• A cast of characters with a wide array of play styles
• Gorgeous visuals
• Amazing boss fights with mechanics similar to an MMO boss fight.


The Bad:

• The story is more or less a tutorial to the meat of the game.
• Aforementioned story is honestly not that great, and has an issue with resolving. There was far too many moments of: "Is it over? Nope, it's not over." and it felt like a slog.
• Aforementioned "meat of the game" is recycled content you've already experienced in the single player mode fed to you over and over without much variance.
• Character balance is genuinely not that great.
• Endgame is comprised of material farming for meaningless % gains when content (in my experience) was cleared incredibly easily just by being "competent" rather then really demanding micro stat management.
• Content gets stale quickly.


If you're a fan of Granblue, I could easily recommend this. You'll enjoy it enough, I warrant. If you're not and you've heard people tout it as "Monster Hunter Adjacent" then steer clear, because it lacks the long-term charm and longevity of it.

I'll probably return for DLC, but honestly it'd be a hard sell to me.

Why is nobody talking about this game more on YouTube, or other media platforms? It's so crazy to me that this didn't blow up like Stardew has. You'd think people would be absolutely losing their minds over it.

In summation, this is a more fantasy take on Stardew Valley. But saying that alone is kind of cheap, so it's more accurate instead to say that it feels more like it takes the concepts that worked well for SDV and added their own unique take to the system that's propelled, and supported by the fantasy setting.

The combat system is surprisingly deep for a game like this. I expected Legend of Zelda, but instead got something that feels a bit Swords Of Mana adjacent. Traits allow you to sort of cater your character towards a certain combat style if you wish. Swords / Bows / Magic are the options, and going for the latter had me enjoying it quite a bit because the lattermost has applications that are useful even for farming. The boss fights are also surprising. I wasn't expected boss fights with mechanics, of all things. A sure surprise that is welcome in my book.

Character creation is hit and miss. I don't think racials should exist personally, because the only two really "useful" ones are Humans for the faster crafting speed, and Elves for the 10% DPS boost for archer builds (which admittedly is probably the best long-term pick if you're min-maxing)

Professions are weird, and unclear. The best profession is explorer for it's permanent move speed bonus that feels borderline necessary what with the glacial move speed your character moves with otherwise.

Overall, it's been a blast. 30 hours in and i'm still barely scratching the surface. There's evidently a whole other *town* to be explored, and many NPC's I haven't even met either. I'm still meeting new people in town, and seeing new shops when i pass by so that's honestly impressive scope-wise.

EDIT:

While the aforementioned still stands, I just saw that this game now has over $100 worth of DLC.

Why is this content not in the base game? No, really? There's so little reason for this. It's predatory and greedy. You guys have a fine product here and you're about to ruin it's image by turning it into a microtransactional hellscape.

This is one of those games that i'd call a rough diamond.

It's anime XCOM. Plain and simple.

If you're willing to overlook certain things (story can be hard to follow, localization needing serious improvements, font, UI, a tutorial system that comprehensively teaches the various systems) then diving into this game will surprise you with how much depth can be found.

Character build variety is insane. The mastery system allows you to dynamically shape and alter your character playstyle, and character classes also allow you to experiment a bit with interesting concepts you might have in mind for a character. It'll tickle your brain in a good way if you enjoy watching something come to fruition.

The music is.. O.K. I wouldn't call it particularly memorable or great, but it is serviceable. They played it pretty safe here, and I can't blame them.

There's a lot of fat to chew on if you're down for it. I just think that admittedly a lot of people are going to put this game down pretty early on (much like I did) if the immediate results aren't satisfactory, and it takes a good while to get into the meat of the game.

Honestly if you stick with it, it only gets better.

Sometimes you just need that daily TLC. This game is here to help provide that. People kind of overlook how much frequent positive interaction helps improve their mental, and I think the developer of this game understood that. People come here for warmth, and succor.

What this game isn't however, is a substitute for professional help. Something the author similarly noted, and gave some potentially life-saving information in the game with easy access for those who feel like they truly have no options left.

I have nothing but genuine praise for this experience so far. There's some very heavy emotional burdens you're going to be confronted with, and I want you to know that it's O.K. to not respond to those. You're not a professional (probably) and it's not your job to fix people's problems life problems in in fourteen lines of dialogue However, sometimes just some warm wishes, and well-meaning concern can go a long way towards helping these people at least feel comforted -- which is ultimately the name of the game here.

I would urge pragmatist to stay away from this game though. Your advice may be genuinely sound, but it's not often the advice that's sought after in a lot of instances, but rather the nuance of simply making the other person feel listened to enough to hopefully get through a rough time.

If you see anyone talk about ending their own life, the author has provided the hotline number for reference. I would personally ask that you plug in this number and urge the concerned party to contact them. You could be potentially saving a life.

I will change my review once something is done to address the current implementation of the trait system, as well as them rolling out some borderline necessary optimization patches.

For those interested, I get an average of around 80-90 FPS on a 3080Ti with 1080p scale rendering with DLSS set to balanced. This is more than playable, and i'm satisfied enough with the games implementation of motion blur which helps drastically in masking the FPS loss. Overall? I can't complain. But my experience is definitely not what a lot of the community has experienced and it shows with the steam discussions being littered with posts regarding the borderline abysmal performances from fairly decent cards.

But that's just performance. What I really want to address is the trait system in Remnant II which is by far and large the objectively worst change they made to R2, and absolutely stifles the repeatability of both adventure modes and the game at large.

To get to the point, you have a 60 trait point cap. This is absolutely a massive over correction by the devs to limit/funnel the player choices, and i'll explain why it doesn't work below.

To put it into perspective, each trait can be leveled up 10 times. You have four core traits, a class specific trait you can unlock, and then a myriad of traits that are unlocked either via gameplay or objective completion. This doesn't sound bad, until you realize that core upgrades are the most consistently useful across the board, and there's four of them. This means right off the bangle most optimized builds are already 40/60 trait points in just to make their character usable across the board.

This leave 20 left, and i'll be honest the increased armor trait from the melee class is substantially leagues above the others in terms of usefulness, so now you're 10 traits left and you have to ask yourself what could you possibly spent your remaining 10 trait points on.

You see the problem here? The logic the devs would have you believe is that this system encourages a player to thoughtfully apply their trait points to create a "build" but what "build" can you make with traits outside of a generalist that applies equal benefits to every single primary class/secondary class spec?

The answer is very limited, and it's a massive over correction of the issue that was prevalent in the previous Remnant game, in which players became a jack of all trades, master of all. The devs have claimed that this is to make balancing easier as they don't want to balance a game where the player has all the traits unlocked, but they don't have to. They just need to fulfill the mission objective of allowing players to even have a build in the first place. If you're going to have us funnel 40 of our trait points into the core traits to begin with, then why not just have them passively increase as you accumulate trait points and then let us spend the trait points on actually meaningful and interesting traits that do affect game play in some significant margin?

You've already made players have unique and diverse play styles thanks to your brilliant rework of the class system, which is in stark contrast to the trait changes: actually a really well thought out system that I genuinely enjoy mix-and-matching with to create a fun and unique play style. You see? You already fulfilled the mission objective there, but you kneecapped the traits for no particularly good reason.

My suggestion to alleviate this issue is simple.

Firstly, let's remove the trait point cap. Right now doing adventure mode feels incredibly unrewarding because i'm not actually gaining trait points when I pick up a book. The only thing I can farm for is gear, and that is much less exciting. Let me put points into things and feel like i'm at least making progress in some capacity.

Secondly, while I understand the mission objective with capping trait points, what you should have put a limiter on instead is the amount of active perks that are able to be used at a time. Allow us to simply toggle on/off the perks we want to use is a build. This removes the need for a respec system entirely because if I want to change my build, it could just be a couple of clicks of "on/off" states for perks to create something interesting.

Lastly, give us trait load outs we can save. The aforementioned is a nice system, but clicking/unclicking a bunch of perks could be awful. I'd rather just have a load out system I can save to so that I can select that preset. Do I wanna roll a medic? I select the medic load out and it'd load up my pre-done trait allocation for running a medic build. So on, so forth.

Overall though, you guys have the framework here to make the dream work. I just ask that you listen to your player feedback on this topic and make adjustments in line with community desires. I appreciate what you do, but I think the trait system was a major miss in the games fundamental design.