When the term “cosy” is mentioned in relation to genres, common opinion thinks about life sims and farming games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. For fans of RPGs, however, this term indicates an easy to play tale with lots of humour, and not too complex combat mechanics. Covenant of Solitude is one from the archives, first released in 2013 on Android and iOS, but is now available for Nintendo Switch owners. Does it have a similar charm to newer KEMCO adventures?
It normally takes time to get to know characters, but unfortunately it takes only a short moment to realise Fort is not a particularly likeable protagonist. Heroes are, for the most part, easy to like, but this young man feels like such a coward. He seems reluctant to do much, and rather than being an endearing quality, his indecision and initial lack of obvious courage is irritating. Fort has the incredible power of a genie, someone who can summon monster allies for battle, yet is reluctant to be brave and take risks; he has to be encouraged to act.
Yes, a lot of unpleasant drama happens to him, but he doesn’t seem to look on the brighter side of life, and often his mood is unenthusiastic and lacks optimism. Thankfully Fort’s chatty companion Wicca has enough personality quirks and fortitude to cover for her master’s faults. She always points out when the option of doing nothing would lead to death, which is great motivation.
Fort’s ability to summon monsters is a powerful skill that is exciting because it means the playable party is custom created. There are four types of monsters, each with inherent strengths and weaknesses that can be ignored altogether or built upon to cancel out the negative aspects through choice of initial job allocation and equipment.
Each species has both male and female options, which further alters the appearance, and three colour variations for selection. The sole unfortunate nature of this party selection method is that most playable members are silent throughout the tale; it is just Fort and Wicca having conversations between themselves and NPCs. Compared to AAA titles the character development is fairly basic, but given that Covenant of Solitude is an earlier mobile game, lenience in judgement of this feature should be applied.
New party members can be created at specific areas, and swapped in and out here too. In practice this means that if a party combination isn’t working out well in battle from the initial setup, a different character can be substituted in later. It’s definitely a fun change compared to the usual preset characters. A sign of Covenant of Solitude’s age is the static character pictures during plot narration. Having zero expression changes adds much more humour to the journey than is clearly intended: smiling continuously through the tragic moments or always scowling affects how the meaning of discussions are interpreted for both playable and non-playable character personalities.
Both the music and the sound effects invoke nostalgia for retro style games, using pitch and other elements that replicate music on older consoles. There are sadly no infamous secret passages to explore (at least, none were found), but the journey with Fort as he battles against the evil-seeming Empire has the usual KEMCO twists that regulars come to love. Side quests are technically optional, but aid levelling up characters and are worth pursuing for the useful reward prizes.
It takes time time through battles and selling redundant gear to keep the team’s armour and weapons updated, but it is worth it, especially as the enemy difficulty levels naturally increase. Random encounters are the norm for any KEMCO title, and yet another sign of this being an older game is in the fact there are no difficulty settings. There is paid DLC, which can make it easier to play with, for example, added experience, or even no encounters.
If following previous instances, no encounters means no normal enemies except boss fights, which makes it hard because if used for the entire game the party would be too weak to defeat them. Perhaps it is a convenient feature if there’s an area that needs to be raced through due to real life time limits. Either way, the fact these are DLC means that everyone can play in a style that suits them even though there isn’t a way to change the challenge level.
