Steel & Steam: Episode 1 – Reviewed
By Suzanne Verras
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I never really played JRPGs, but I believe that trying out new stuff is what keeps you creative. I don’t know why I never tried one of these earlier; they’re pretty awesome! Steel and Steam is a retro JRPG, by Redmeat Games, celebrating the classic RPG games, played on the Sega Genesis, NES and SNES systems. With the Kickstarter Campaign they managed to exceed their goal by more than three times! Redmeat Games promises a huge world to explore with an epic story and loads of side missions. It delivers on all fronts, starting with the story.
The continent of Terra Corpus is plagued by the desert spreading from the East. Sand and monsters slowly take over everything and man is fighting them with Steel and Steam. You play as Noah Phoenix and Alyssa Nobel who are one of the few who can tame the Elemental Guardians of the legends to stop the desert from taking over. Well if that doesn’t sound like an epic to you, I don’t know what will.
The world is definitely huge; there are enough locations to explore to keep you busy for a long time, including cities with even more little buildings to look around in. In the cities there are a lot of NPCs to talk to and do side missions for. The NPC and character dialogue is pretty funny and I even found some Doctor Who references; a shop owner talking about a Blue Magical Box and a little kid asking, “Are you my mommy?” Some of the side quests can be a bit difficult though. There is a quest where you have to find the first vendor, called the Master (another reference?), so he can sell you some awesome stuff. You have to talk to other vendors, who will give you clues on his whereabouts. The thing is these clues aren’t saved in your quest log, which can make it difficult if you have the memory of a goldfish; like me. If you are fed up with all the main quests, side quests, and random fights etc. you can play some mini games such as fishing and arena gambling. Both are pretty fun.
The monster art is also a plus point. If you aren’t such a fan of the random fights thing, there is still something awesome about them, because of the cool monster art. There are bandits, rats, slimes, wasps and a huge awesome bear. The fighting is your typical retro JRPG style stuff. You attack, drink potions, do some special attacks and throw in some magic. There are two, later three characters all with their own special abilities to choose from.
All in all, I think Redmeat Games did a pretty good job with Steel & Steam. They wanted to bring back the feeling of classic RPG games and they succeeded. Together with an awesome story, fun dialog, cool minigames, splendid monster art, and a huge world to explore, this one is definitely one to try out!
[divider][facebook][tweet][Google][pinterest][follow id=”Cliqist” size=”large” count=”true” ] [author image=”http://cliqist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/suzanne.jpg” ] Suzanne Verras is a freelance writer and a university student from Leiden, The Netherlands. She is a video game enthusiast, but also loves movies and art. She has her own video game, film and art blog called Miss Lily Blogs where she posts all kinds of articles as well as her Let’s Plays. Her favorite games include Bioshock, Myst, Ratchet and Clank and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. In the future she hopes to be writing full-time and one of her dreams is to sell her artwork one day. You can follow her on Twitter: MissLilyTweets. [/author]
