Aria Chronicle

Genre: Turn-Based JRPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Aria Chronicle, released on PC in 2020 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2021, is a Turn-Based JRPG about a princess and her entourage who, while on a coming-of-age pilgrimage, uncover a dark plot by a secret cult.

I have seen this game described as a more accessible and easy take on Darkest Dungeon, and while I can sorta’ see that, at the same time I have to wonder why anyone would attempt such a thing, as I always thought that a part of Darkest Dungeon’s appeal was how grueling it was and how callous it was to the player’s party. To soften that would seem to run counter to the whole point of the thing. That said, I’ve never been fond of Darkest Dungeon myself, so I suppose that sanding down that game’s rougher edges could potentially make it more appealing to me.

The presentation in Aria Chronicle makes use of nicely-detailed 2D visuals in an anime art style, animating with a combination of “paper doll”-style animation and stretching and warping parts of the characters. This works, but it’s far from impressive. This is joined by a decent but unmemorable soundtrack fit for a medieval fantasy setting, along with Japanese-language voicework for the characters that sounds decent enough to my ears.

When it comes to the gameplay, this is mostly a fairly straightforward Turn-Based JRPG with randomized layouts of dungeon rooms, almost but not quite like a Dungeon Crawler. In addition to your starting pair of active party members (the princess and her paladin protector), players recruit multiple other heroes to join them, with five active in their party at any given time. However, these mercenary characters can be permanently killed, and the game makes heavy use of a stamina system that can result in these characters getting so fed up with your leadership that they abandon you if you neglect them, necessitating that you rotate out your active party on a regular basis.

While it’s potentially an interesting system, I feel like it ties into my main issue with the game, which is that while this game requires a fair amount of grinding, it always feels like you’re making two steps forward and one step backwards – train up your characters and they’ll get stronger, but they’ll also lose stamina which forces you to stop using them for a while. level them up and they’ll gain new skills and helpful traits, but also sometimes negative traits. Because of this, grinding in Aria Chronicle just doesn’t feel as satisfying as you would want in a game that’s heavy on grinding.

In the end, I neither loved nor hated Aria Chronicle. I respect what it’s trying to do, and I think it mostly does what it does with a fair amount of proficiency, but what it’s trying to do just doesn’t strike me as particularly fun. Fans of RPGs may still get some enjoyment out of this game, but I feel like most would be better off picking one of countless others available on Nintendo Switch.

tl;dr – Aria Chronicle is a Turn-Based JRPG about a princess and her party who discover a dark plot while on a pilgrimage. This isn’t a bad entry in the genre, but it pushes grinding that frequently feels like you’re making two steps forward and one step back, resulting in somewhat unsatisfying progression. Fans of JRPGs may still want to check this out, but I feel like players have numerous better options on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: C+

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