Fragrant Story and Papaya’s Path

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Fragrant Story is a Turn-Based Strategy-RPG released on Nintendo 3DS in 2022 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2024 along with its DLC, Papaya’s Path. Yes, you read that right, this game was released on Nintendo 3DS just two years ago, less than one year before the Nintendo 3DS eShop stopped selling games altogether, and at a time when gamers in general had long abandoned the Nintendo 3DS in favor of the Nintendo Switch. Thankfully, we’ve all been given a second chance to play this game, and it’s a good thing too, because this is a really refreshing take on the Tactics-style Strategy-RPG.

In some ways, Fragrant Story reminds me of the game Into the Breach, as both games strip the Strategy-RPG genre to its most basic elements to pull the focus away from statistics to focus purely on the strategy. However, while Into the Breach combines the genre with Roguelike elements and a punishing difficulty level, Fragrant Story takes a different route, breaking up its battles into smaller missions with players fending off multiple waves of enemies on just a few maps at a time, and using their winnings to purchase permanent upgrades between those missions.

Players start each mission by spending a limited number of “coins” on party members to fill their roster for that mission, with each party member having a short or long-distance basic attack, a special move, and that’s pretty much it. These characters do have stats, but these stats are simply a rating of 0-4 in one of four categories: life, crit, block, and move.

Life is literally the number of hit points your character has – Jorry has only one point in his Life stat, meaning that it only takes one point of damage to take him out for the entire mission. Move naturally determines how far a character can move, and Albert draws the short straw here, with only one point ensuring that he’ll only be able to shuffle along one space at a time each turn. However, these limitations are undoubtedly to compensate for amazing special abilities – Jorry can summon a creature to fight alongside you, and Albert can automatically take out one enemy.

To talk about Crit and Block, we need to discuss this game’s battle system. Whenever a character uses an attack (or some abilities), the game brings up a Wheel of Fortune-style wheel with possible outcomes on it. The higher a character’s Crit stat, the more spaces on the wheel have stronger Crit attacks that do two damage instead of one. Meanwhile, the higher a Block stat, the more spaces pop up on a wheel when that character receives an attack, making it more likely that they’ll deflect incoming damage.

However, in a clever twist, the Crit and Block stats are expended when used, meaning you’ll have to decide when to try to aim your spin to make use of these, and when to save these to use against more powerful enemies. I should note that you can optionally turn the wheel off altogether and simply leave things to random chance, though I would argue that this detracts from the strategy.

I did mention that players can spend earnings in between missions to get permanent upgrades, but this is actually one of my complaints, because the earnings you get are accrued extremely slowly, meaning this meta-progression takes far longer than I’d like it to. Also, I’m disappointed that this game’s isometric view doesn’t allow for any camera rotation or adjustment, resulting in some situations where enemies can be hiding behind others. It’s also frustrating that I don’t see any clear way to tell what the range of enemies are, making this something of a guessing game until you can start to get a better feel for how enemies act.

When it comes to presentation, Fragrant Story is clearly trying to imitate classic Final Fantasy games, along with Final Fantasy Tactics. The character art is doing an impeccable job copying the art style of Yoshitaka Amano, while the in-game character designs bear strong resemblance to those in the Final Fantasy Tactics series. Meanwhile, the soundtrack seems pretty reminiscent of the Final Fantasy Tactics series as well, albeit not with the same level of quality. In fact, that also goes for the visuals, which are far more low-resolution and pixelated than Final Fantasy Tactics was. Plus, the game’s story features voiced dialogue with pretty low-quality recording. Still, for what this game is aiming for, it works… well, as long as you don’t mind the game going for a really odd botany theme for the names of many characters, places, and elements of its lore.

Overall, I think Fragrant Story is a delightfully refreshing take on the Tactics-style Turn-Based Strategy-RPG, and at the budget price of $8 (and regularly going on sale for only $2), I would say this is an absolute no-brainer for any fan of that genre. It may seem simple on the surface, but there’s a lot of depth and replayability hidden underneath.

tl;dr – Fragrant Story is a simplified take on the Tactics-style Turn-Based Strategy-RPG, but there’s still some excellent depth and creativity hidden within this game. Plus, at only $8, this is a no-brainer for fans of the genre.

Grade: B+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Strategy Game, Best Value, Most Overlooked

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