Fortuna Magus starts with a short reading from a storybook, which sets the tone for the tale to be told in the latest Kemco-published retro-style JRPG. Interesting systems, intensive gameplay, but does the tale told belong in Grimm’s Fairy Tales? Read on as Cubed3 delves into the world of Fortuna Magus.
Fans of Kemco and retro JRPGs in general will feel right at home. The retro-style story, gameplay, graphics, and music will all be familiar to fans of the JRPGs they are known for, mimicking the SNES-era style. Fortuna Magus is everything one would expect – for better and for worse.
While it offers a sense of familiarity, it does little more than the bare minimum, and it is far from the best game in its genre – but one step at a time, there are a lot of things Fortuna Magus does extremely well. The combat and build systems are engaging and well thought out. They also have some wonderful and unique quirks that make it stand out in a genre that, sadly, can feel a little stale.
The most notable system is Revelations, which governs how characters learn new spells and abilities throughout the game. In combat, given that the characters have enough levels both in terms of character build and in the element system, each attack has a chance to lead to the learning of a new move, depending on which one is used. It is quite an ingenious system that encourages players not just to use their best move, but also makes each combat, even random encounters, feel exciting, as they can lead to interesting character development.
This, combined with the elegant movepools of each character that make them useful in all circumstances yet feel very distinct, makes combat and character development interesting in their simplicity. The fact that there are three difficulty levels is quite elegant. It ensures all players can enjoy the story, regardless of how willing they are to engage with the game’s systems to optimise their characters.
Sadly, though, for those looking to play Fortuna Magus for the story, there is some very bad news. The tale told has bad and inconsistent pacing. It is a very short JRPG that can easily be beaten in 6-7 hours in a first playthrough. Therefore, it would be safe to assume the story wouldn’t drag on too much or have too much empty time. Unfortunately, despite the game being so short, much of it feels like filler. The issue is that the plot mostly happens during the first thirty minutes and the last hour of gameplay.
The rest of it feels like a rushed monster-of-the-week shounen anime where the party gets sidetracked by things that are just barely tangential enough to the main story to be excused to stay in the game. Plenty of characters are also introduced who are hinted to have a big part in the story, but never get a payoff. Worst of all, characters who at first seemed to be irrelevant to the main story all of a sudden get massive roles out of nowhere as an 11th-hour plot twist.
It makes the entire story feel fragmented and the player unable to trust that anything shown is important. The worst crime of all is that, while Fortuna Magus has many dungeons, they all follow a painfully similar structure: three to maybe four rooms, followed by a boss fight with often zero story build-up. It feels like the team was told the basic structure of a JRPG but given barely any guidance on storytelling, nor the time needed to craft anything beyond shovelware.
To make matters worse, the characters feel somewhat underdeveloped. While the characters claim to have different personalities, it rarely shows in their actions and dialogue, as no one has a distinct voice. The main suggested romantic pairing also feels a bit unsettling, given that the characters imply a budding relationship between the main protagonist and his sister, as underscored by their dialogue. It gives the game an unnecessarily icky feeling that adds nothing to the story.
It makes this a JRPG that relies entirely on combat and character progression to keep it interesting from start to finish. While the systems are both engaging and innovative, some sad quirks undermine the game’s challenge. The biggest problem is FMPs, Fortuna Magus Points, which are earned as the player defeats enemies as a sort of bonus currency. They throw the entire combat balance out of place by giving easy access to stat-boosting gold medals. While they are useful and somewhat necessary for post-game content, it is strongly recommended not to even interact with this system in the main story if one wants to have any challenge at all. Even at the highest difficulty setting, the system leaves the characters close to immortal throughout the story, thanks to the massive stat boost that the gold medals available just from normal gameplay provide.
While it is always good to have systems in place to make sure players of all skill levels can get through a story-heavy game, the difficulty settings present do this well enough. This is a system that would be far better if unlocked after beating the game, to prepare players for the far more demanding post-game, where it is actually needed.
These problems all point towards one common theme: a lack of polish. Making a short game does not mean one can be lazier than when making a long one. The themes and combat systems are extremely promising. After about an hour of gameplay, it was a very enjoyable experience. Sadly, that feeling faded after the third hour, as Fortuna Magus started to feel like a repetitive mess that never managed to capture the attention and emotions a JRPG should strive for.
