Title: Little Town Hero
Platform: Nintendo Switch eShop
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Game Freak
Release Date: October 16th, 2019 (NA)
File Size: 1.9GB
Review copy provided by Rainy Frog
Yeah, Rainy Frog decided to step in and provide the review copies for Game Freak. How about that? 😛 Anyway…
Little Town Hero is a JRPG by Game Freak… WAIT WHAT!? Yep, from the creators of Pokémon comes I believe to be their first all-new original JRPG, possibly since the SNES? Whenever Game Freak does a non-Pokémon thing, it’s usually in a different genre. Examples include HarmoKnight (3DS), a platform/rhythm game, Pocket Card Jockey (3DS), a solitaire/horse-racing game, and Drill Dozer (GBA), a 2D platform digging game. Actually the director of Little Town Hero is the same person who directed Pocket Card Jockey; Masao Taya. So how does this game fare? Is it a good idea or a bad idea? Let’s find out!
Axe in a field of wheat with Matock and Angard behind him. Where are the wild Pokémon!?
Little Town Hero stars a young boy named Axe (but you can name him yourself), who dreams to leave his small town to go on an adventure. Problem is, he needs permission from the people in the castle to do so. So he tries to prank the guards to be able to sneak into the castle, but it didn’t work so well. We then fast forward a day and find that Axe is training alongside his friends Nelz and Matock with a knight from the castle named Angard. Here’s where you get your first bit of combat training.
So here’s how combat works. It’s turn-based, but it’s pretty different than Pokémon from here on out. You have a selection of moves (you start with a few but once training ends it really expands), and these moves are presented as ideas, or as they’re called, Izzits. To use an Izzit, you need to spend the required amount of power points (1-3 initially) to make it into a Dazzit. Once you do, it can be used against the opponent’s Dazzit. You see, each one has an attack number and a defence (or more accurately health) number. Say yours has an attack of 3, and your opponent’s has a health of 4, then once you clash Dazzits, then the opponent’s Dazzit’s health goes down to 1.
A battle screen with Axe vs. the mighty Hulk Ogre. This fight won’t be ogre for a while.
This applies to your Dazzit as well. Now, when Dazzits lose all of their health, they break and disappear. If you can break all of your opponent’s Dazzits, an All Break happens and then one of two things will follow. If you have a usable red Dazzit (they focus more on high attack and can only be used once per turn), then you get a Chance Turn which will allow you to attack your opponent’s hearts. You both start at 3 and each attack takes away 1 heart. Now there are two other types of Dazzits; a yellow one, focused more on defence and can be used as much as you want until their health runs out, and blue ones, which is more of a special move that gives you a benefit or effect on opponents (more attack or defence on all Dazzits, inflict 1 damage on all enemy Dazzits, etc) and usually at a low power point cost. Note again that only red ones can damage opponents during Chance Turns. The other thing that happens during an All Break is that if you don’t have a usable red Dazzit, you then get a Battle Point (BP) instead, which can be used to swap out for reserve Dazzits or revive them all if needed (losing a heart also restores Dazzits). Also when turns end you gain a bit of power point energy in a gauge, and when it fills up, you get an extra power point at the start of turns from then out with up to 6 power points in total.
During battles, after every turn ends, you spin a roll between 1 and 4. This determines the amount of spaces you move in the town during the fight (yes, there’s actually a party game-vibe here). These matter because some spaces have a friend to assist you in battle when you land on their space. Nelz for example will reduce a random Izzit’s cost to 0 for a freebie. While Matock will attack the opponent directly. Angard will deal 2 damage to all of the opponent’s Dazzits, stuff like that. That should cover the battle mechanics. Now here’s the other thing and does throw you through a loop; there’s NO experience or leveling-up system. There’s no money to earn either. Yeah. This is a bit of a pet peeve for me. You win, and then move on. However, later on you do unlock the Eureka system. This allows you to earn 1 Eureka point when winning each battle from then on, and you can use those points to upgrade your Dazzits permanently via a skill tree. Upgrades include more attack, more defence, or a stronger effect. So that’s something at least. You just don’t unlock it until a bit after the first boss.
The party game-esc map, with Nelz on a space and what effect he offers on the upper-left.
That’s sort of the name of the game. You roam town, speak to people (in cutscenes or otherwise), fight, then rinse and repeat. Anyway, once you finish learning the combat from Angard, you unlock the Travel option to fast-travel which is how you get your job in the mines. There you do your work (blank screen…. and you’re done), but before you leave, you find a red stone. So the next day arrives and you go back to do more training with Angard and decide to challenge him to a real fight and he accepts. Then out of nowhere, you beat him in one shot. Naturally, it’s figured that the stone is responsible. But that’s not important, because A MONSTER HAS INVADED TOWN! Yepper, we’re introduced to the first boss, the Hulk Ogre. This handsome fellow is obviously meant to put what you’ve learned to the test, and a warning, this WILL take a while to beat. I think I beat him in 12 turns (which is a LONG time), wow.
So you beat him, and then the Minister of the castle wishes to speak to you. Here you start getting some side-quests and other tastes of what else you can do. For example, a guard won’t let you see the Minister, thinking it’s another prank. So you and your friends try to come up with an idea. This is actually another mechanic where you gather words from folks you speak to, and once you speak to everyone possible, you present these words into a plan to Nelz, which is to lure the guard away with the smell of Curryquette. So you go to the chef who makes it… and he just gives it to you, again you don’t buy anything so… yeah. Also you can speak to people with blue smiley faces above them to get their own side-quests. One woman has you investigate a talking scarecrow… and it’s just a girl sleeping from behind it in the field of wheat. That ends, and you’re actually given the ability to redo fights and try out Dazzits at the scarecrow. It’s meant to be easy training, but re-fighting the Hulk Ogre is a side-quest of its own, so there’s stuff to do here. Also speaking to the Minister is what unlocks the aforementioned Eureka system.
Here’s the Eureka skill tree. You start out with 4 points and can you earn 1 point after each battle.
Visually it’s more good then bad. The art-style actually looks nice and graphically is IMO better than Pokémon Let’s Go. Hell I can see some bits of it being used in Pokémon Sword & Shield, like the wheat field has that same shimmer effect you’ve seen on the wild Pokémon grass. Textures also look surprisingly high-res. You can tell this is a native HD game. I’d even say it’s better than what you’d get on Vita typically, so at minimum PS360-grade. It looks like it runs in 900p or even 1080p docked and runs at a smooth 30fps. Trouble is, there’s some hiccups. Sometimes the game will chug during loading and even freeze for like three seconds just when talking to people. The game also has a lengthy boot-up time of like 20-30 seconds? Also, I want to mention that there’s a nifty character model viewer via the Scrapbook option on the title screen, allowing you to look at characters and their descriptions as you meet them in the game. A little extra something to pass the time.
Audio-wise it’s so-so. The music was composed by the creator of Undertale himself; Toby Fox, but seemingly was arranged and finalized by Game Freak’s Hitomi Sato from the Pokémon series. The music’s only pretty good, but not to the standard of Game Freak and Toby Fox’s other work for some reason to me. I do like the battle music but that’s the most I can say. Most of the time you’re listening to the town theme over and over again and it’s not that long I think. Also, in cutscenes there’s no voice-acting. Instead everyone speaks with a different but cute trumpet sound. However in battle characters do have actual vocal grunts (and occasionally during certain cinematic cutscenes). Not sure why they have two different “voice” styles like that. Anyway, there’s a big issue though, and that’s audio-skips. See, during fights in particular as well as in loading screens, audio just skips or even chugs for a brief second. It’s really weird how this is possible. Game Freak’s never had this issue to my knowledge. Maybe they had a new team of programmers or something…
Here’s a look at the Settings menu. Don’t like the trumpet voices? This should help!
Overall this is certainly an interesting game, if only because of how “significant” it is. It’s an original JPRG from Game Freak exclusively for Switch. But it’s lacking a key point in RPGs (the leveling) and battles can take a LONG time if you mess up (my aforementioned fight with the Hulk Ogre was fairly smooth and it still took a long time). It’s not super expensive at only $25 USD and $31.49 CDN, but really if you want a Game Freak JRPG, just wait for Pokémon Sword & Shield, you likely know what that’s going to be like and surely a FAR better value for your money, even at full price. Or you could even pick up the critically acclaimed JRPG Dragon Quest XI S for Switch right now!
You’ll Love:
+ It’s got a nice art-style. Framerate’s a smooth 30fps and models, textures and such all look good. The resolution also seems pretty high, possibly at 900p or even 1080p docked.
+ The music is decent to pretty good. The battle themes stuck out to me the most and do have that Pokémon-vibe to them.
+ Combat is pretty neat and does require careful strategy.
+ The town itself is pretty neat looking and decently fun to run around in. It’s also quite large.
+ The characters are pretty charming all things considered.
+ The Eureka skill tree saves the concept of a progression system, but it’s all you get.
+ Has screenshot and video capture support.
You’ll Hate:
– The technical issues with the load screens and loading cutscenes in general, where cutscenes can cause the game to freeze for 3 seconds when being loaded. As well as the audio skipping during said loading, and during battles when the camera changes.
– During certain Chance Time strikes, the framerate will occasionally dip upon impact with the cool lava explosion effects everywhere. It’s very brief, but it happens.
– The overworld theme does get really repetitive after a bit. And the music overall doesn’t really live up to Toby Fox or Game Freak’s reputation in my opinion.
– There’s no leveling-up system, nor is there currency to earn.
– Battles can take a LONG time to finish.
Score: 7.5/10