You lead a group of heroes across a wide fantasy world in turn-based battles, walking through towns and dungeons to advance a long, old-fashioned story. Combat lets you build up combo attacks by pairing characters together during a fight. It is a long game that expects patience over many hours, though a bonus retro mode lets you switch to a simpler, old-school look if you prefer.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
Overall
It's an old-fashioned RPG in the best sense, unafraid of being long and generous rather than lean and modern, and it earns every one of its hundred-plus hours.
Moment to moment
Turn-based combat here is classic and clean, and the option to switch to a retro 2D mode is a lovely bit of fan service rather than a gimmick.
Art and atmosphere
Erdrea is gorgeous, colorful and varied, scored by a sweeping orchestral soundtrack that elevates even routine encounters into something grander.
Worth your time?
A must for RPG fans with the patience for a long journey. Anyone wanting something brisk or experimental should look at other entries in the genre first.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You play a young man marked from birth as the Luminary, and the early hours have you leaving a quiet home village to learn the truth about your destiny, walking across a colorful overworld map on foot, exploring towns full of chatty townsfolk, and picking up a growing party of memorable companions along the way. Combat is turn-based and menu-driven in the classic style, where you choose attacks, spells, or items for each character and watch the results play out, with a system called pep powers letting characters who reach a heightened state combine for extra strong team attacks. A skill panel lets you spend earned points to unlock new abilities and stat boosts for each character as they level up, giving you some say in how your party specializes.
Your overall goal is a long quest to stop a rising darkness threatening the world, told across a sprawling map with dozens of towns, dungeons, and side quests to find along the way, and a full playthrough runs somewhere around sixty hours or more if you explore thoroughly. This version adds a huge amount over the original release, including an option to switch the entire game into a retro-styled 2D mode reminiscent of older Dragon Quest games, extra story chapters focused on individual party members, and additional post-game content for players who finish the main story wanting more. Crafting weapons and gear at a forge adds a satisfying side activity for turning collected materials into better equipment.
The pace is unhurried by design, with a slower opening stretch before the story properly gets moving, which some players used to faster modern RPGs may find testing. A few difficulty spikes appear later in the story, though harder optional settings exist for players wanting more of a challenge from the start. If you want a long, comforting, beautifully told traditional RPG with a huge amount of content packed in, this is about as good as that genre gets.