Rise of the Third Power

Fantastic game. Character development is top-notch, dialogue is great, with plenty of opportunities to laugh, and combat is a lot of fun. As someone who favors tanks and healers in most games, I love how integral to the combat the tanks are.

The characters really do flesh out and grow over the course of the game. There's a strong theme of moral ambivalence: the idea that black-and-white, good-and-evil isn't really functional for approaching major, real-world problems. Everyone in the group is driven in different ways, and some (most?) have done terrible things. But they can still do what they believe is right.

Classic JRPG elements with a pretty good story.

Story line is one of the best, comedic, great emotional ride, easy mechanics to understand, beautiful art style. Lovely and magnificently built game

This isn't a *bad* game, but it's also not very enjoyable. The main issue I have with it is that everything is very drawn out and takes a long time. I don't mind a long RPG - in fact, I typically love them! - but the length of game play here feels artificially extended.

For example, your team levels up as a team and shares one pool of very limited talented points. This could be ok and even interesting if it offered unique ways to customize the team or be forced to make hard choices about skills and talents, but instead it just functions to make leveling up feel underwhelming and tedious. It takes a very long time to level up and then to go in and only be able to buy 2-3 talents/skills/stat increases across several (eight, by the end) characters is extremely unsatisfying and each leveling feels like it barely impacts game play.

Similarly, you have to craft armor and weapons as you go through the game. This happens rarely, slowly, and so should feel significant and satisfying but, again, it feels like it barely makes a difference. Your character might have attack of about 60 and you craft something that increases attack by 7 (these are numbers I'm pulling out of a hat but from what I remember from my last crafting session, they're pretty close to accurate). That increase is not nothing, but at just a little over 10% increase for several hours of game play, it feels quite underwhelming.

Another issue is the team synergy and the switching mechanic paired with the exhaustion mechanic. I get why they put an exhaustion mechanic, which makes your team members get "exhausted" the more they are used. They want you to use the party members more dynamically rather than just rely on your core team (I find this annoying but I at least see the logic). Hence, the party selection screen before every battle and the switching mechanic that allows you to switch your team members up to three times per battle. HOWEVER, a character switch costs one turn of action and you are limited to three switches, so you can't truly dynamically mix up your team as you play. The characters don't feel specialized enough to make this really satisfying. While each character does have a focus (support, crowd control, DPS, etc.), some characters are just much better than others. Some characters should have synergy together (like one who applies sleep and another whose attacks are boosted when applied to sleeping enemies) but everything is so slow and clunky that it never feels like it comes together. This is why it's so frustrating to be forced to use all characters when only a few of them feel remotely satisfying and none of them really work that well together.

It feels like they may have been going for a Final Fantasy X vibe, but that game allowed for free, unlimited switching between characters with no turn penalty, making that system feel more fluid and exciting. FFX also had characters with very specific talents that were required for different enemy types for the majority of the main storyline, leading to satisfying kills and a need to use each character without being arbitrarily forced to (by an exhaustion system, for example). And then the talent system allowed for characters to adopt skills of other characters for late game shenanigans. While FFX had a similar leveling up system (leveling allowed for points to be spent on a talent/skill/stat tree and stats had to be purchased this way), which wasn't always sexy (it's not thrilling necessarily to only be able to purchase some strength or agility on a level up vs a flashy new spell) but the levels always felt like they made a difference. You feel stronger after every visit to the talent tree. Not in this game.

As I said before, it's not a terrible game. It's certainly not lazy or a cash grab like other games I've seen on Steam. Care and passion went into it and I always deeply appreciate that. I'm not surprised a lot of people enjoy it and I am genuinely happy to see that. But I personally am finding it to be a slog. I'm challenging myself to finish as many games in my library as I can before purchasing more games and this one is one I can only play for a little bit at a time before needing to switch to something else out of fatigue. An RPG should, in my experience, really pull you in and make you not want to leave, particularly at this price point. Maybe give it a try if you find it on sale and/or just keep your eye on your refund window if you aren't really vibing with it early game.

Fantastic RPG that gives you many characters with different playstyles. Combat feels quick and fun. When you have a big party I tend to just focus on my favorites, but here switching up you party often is encouraged. Upgrading your team also feels fun and rewarding.

After Ara Fell another great game by Stegosoft Games, looking forward to what they will create next!

Rise of the Third Power is a solid entry in the world of classic-style RPGs. It successfully captures the nostalgia of 16-bit era JRPGs while adding some modern twists. The game's alternate history setting, inspired by 1930s Europe, is intriguing and provides a unique backdrop for the story. The combat system is engaging and offers a good level of challenge, while the soundtrack is excellent and complements the gameplay well.

You're right, those are valid points! It sounds like the party composition and pacing issues hold Rise of the Third Power back from being truly great. Having a more diverse selection of characters, especially a mage, would definitely add more strategic depth to the battles. And inconsistent pacing can really disrupt the flow of an RPG, especially when it comes to story immersion.

Overall, Rise of the Third Power is a worthwhile experience for fans of classic RPGs, but it may not appeal to everyone. It's a solid 8 out of 10.

Great game, good dialog, good story, good combat.

Rise of the Third Power is a very impressive SNES-era style JRPG to be made by such a small team. The character portraits look amateur, but the rest of the game is very much not. Excellent pixel work, excellent music, a surprisingly good story, solid side quests, rewarding skill advancement, and very solid game mechanics. Each of the eight playable characters has a unique skillset and none of them have a generic fight command, so you have to think through a variety of actions. There's also a minor exhaustion system that encourages you to switch up your character usage throughout, which is a novel approach. It's also a good length at about thirty hours. Very highly recommended.

Lively characters, great pixel design, Deep story. What else could you ask of an RPG?

This is much better than I expected. From the battle system, to the writing, animations, and environment design, I am quite pleasantly surprised at how good this is.

This game disappointed me. I wanted to like it. I'll finish it, but it's got some unnecessary things that make me unable to recommend it. I won't be playing more from this developer in the future.

10/10 Characters, story, and the fights make me wanna punch my screen sometimes but thats the fun of it!

Not a bad gameplay experience but the story teeters on fan fiction (but is serviceable) until the end. Felt like a pathetic attempt at both a miserable ending and a cliffhanger. Only thing missing was the words "The End...?" Which I guess was similar to Ara Fell. Not going to pretend endings are easy, but if you can't make a good one just do a generic happy ending. This has massive levels of oh so nothing we did mattered ever and everyone is worse off, cool glad I bothered. Only positive thing I can say is the ending is the only truly horrible thing in the game so at least it wasn't chained echoes.

Very good Jrpg, good gameplay, many characters with unique gameplays. Very good story telling, out of the box and modern.
Would recommend for all Jrpg lovers

Short review after 100%:

A fun indie jrpg with a decent lenght of playtime (20-30 h) that focuses more on the political intrigue (ww1 and 2 inspired) while still retaining the spirit of adventure that we love from our older jrpgs. With a nice cast of characters (8) the game offers good amount of sidequest and world exploration.

Pros:
- 8 unique characters with good skill selection, team attacks and side stories
- Beatiful world, music and setting
- Fastpaced combat no random encounters, enemies only respawn when you rest or at vendor
- Solid story with ups and downs (fun times, sad times), important to notice the story leans more on political and war intrigue then your normal hero adventure
- Big suprise was awesome sound effects when casting or hitting enemies with melee attacks or just using skills (not common for 2d indie rpgs)
- Semi-open world with some room for exploration

Cons:
- Slow traverse speed on foot and ship considering that some areas and world map are relatively large
- Although there are now more item upgrades then in their former games, only 2 weapons per character means almost no gear looting, chests are no fun to find
- Exhaustion system is bad, the more you use a person the more it gets exhausted leading to stat reduces, healed by visiting an inn and resting hence making you get punished if you use a character to much ( the only good thing here is that resting at an inn can get you stat boosts for couple of battles that can be unique per inn)
- Story does have an ending but its too much open-ended

In the end this is an upgrade compared to their earlier game Ara Fell and is worth a purchase for any jrpg fan.

The game definitely does not seem like much, but it is rather impressive once you get past its exterior. I love the characters, story, story-telling, animations, as well as the combat.

Absolute delight of a game!

The story is great, worldbuilding is great, the writing even more so! The writer clearly didn't pull any punches, and it *bloody shows*. A genuine indie masterpiece from start to finish, with no major gripes to speak of.

I really hope the devs, and especially the writer, get to keep telling their great stories. I'll be sure to get their future games!

PS: Love how y'all handled Rashim. It's clear he was written with a helluva lot of care, both for the character and his place in the story. Lots of love to the devs!

This game is fun! The combat is still turn-based, but it is physically beautiful. The rest of the game is an excellent old-school RPG with a great story line! I am really enjoying this game, and I am glad I purchased it!

Really fun battle system in this one.

Overall a decent RPG. Would recommend buying it on sale as I do not feel like it is a $20 game, I put in just under 27 hours of game time to get every achievement with the exception of beating the game on expert difficulty. The only real con in my opinion as that I do not feel like the ending is complete. It is hard to explain that without going in to too much detail as a lot of games have open endings so the best way I can put it is that the conflict does not ultimately get solved. So you're expecting more to the game and all the sudden the credits roll which is just confusing and unfulfilling. Again what is there is enjoyable and I will recommend this game but I would purchase it on a steam sale and with the knowledge that you may find yourself questioning the ending.