Fortune Summoners (Demo) (PC) - Guest Post

Few men would have the courage and strength of will to play a game with that title screen. Fortunately RPG specialist Ocean is making a guest appearance to play it instead of me.

So I was told that Fortune Summoners came out on Steam recently as a demo. I've played Recettear and Chantelise brought over by the same translation team before, so I figured I'd give this a try!

It gives you a few options that you can set up before going into the game itself. Which is nice. I could have changed the controls because I feel it weird to use X to examine and attack instead of Z, but you can change it in game as well. I'm pretty sure you can at least.

Now the intro.... I seem to have wandered into a Final Fantasy game.

And now the town. You see, it's a side view platformer/action RPG. Not top down or 3D like the others.

You just arrive here and are moving in. Your dad is now a shop owner. At least it's not you this time!

So here's your store/house. I have a huge feeling that your dad is going to charge you for the items anyway. What a bad dad.

Well, I went upstairs and you can check various things in your house and in other houses. Judging by the title screen I think you'll have your own live bunny mascot later.

You can store items in here. So I'm guessing that you can only carry a few items at a time... I dunno if you can go back to your house quickly or not. Didn't see this happen in the demo.

This is a rather odd button to use to open the menu.... but it's there. F2 for Quick heal, and there's icons for the other 3 but I dunno what they do.

But I'll try it out here. This is just the status menu part, you have other options too. You can check your abilities (Such as rolling, slashing) and party commands in the menu too.

Let's progress the plot a bit. You previously have to smash crates and push stuff in your house but that's not as interesting as beating up slimes, so we'll do that later. Off to magic school for you tomorrow!

Wouldn't be much of a sidescroller RPG if you couldn't jump! For the most part it's okay. You fall down a hole and you take some damage but it doesn't outright kill you.

Time to fight. Whip out your trusty sword with Z, then attack with X. You can use various types of attacks depending on if you just press X, or press X and a direction. There's a little difference but not all that much in the beginning.

So I beat 2 slimes and I won the game. I hope you enjoyed this playthr... oh wait it's not done yet. It's just celebrating me for winning 2 easy slimes.

Who'd have thought the way to school would have pits and slimes around? Well this girl heals you and temporarily joins you as a team member!

You get to school and the Teacher explains about the very basics of using magic, and how you need an elemental stone to do it with...

...that you don't have.

Why am I still near the beginning? I've barely fought more than slimes and snakes! Well, to answer that, I got through the path easily. It's the dialogue that's been lagging on me for some reason. I can't really tell if it's the games fault or my computers, but it took forever to get through this dialogue for the fact that it'd freeze or slow down massively for me. It might be only me though.

Well it took me a while after talking to all the students and all. You could go to the nurses and buy some herbs or be healed, and check out the drawers for items but I didn't want to stick around talking to people with that lag. So off we go.

If it's RPGs, it's gotta have caves.

Yes I'm down on the floor. This is part of my roll that you can do.

This part is harder than it looks. Jump on the moving mine cart, fall off. Repeat a few times.

...and lose. I wasn't trying to evade or play well, so the bats killed me. Plus, I wanted to get the screen. Try again puts you right outside the door or area where you were so there's not much progress you miss! Which is nice. Or you can go back to the safe place, stock up on more supplies and do it correctly.

70% sure the demo ends as you get to the end of the cave anyway. I think the action RPG/platforming sequences are alright, though there's not much to it yet since you don't have magic and your team member leaves real quickly at the start. The dialogue can go from just there to slightly silly, though not that the story is anything amazing or mysterious yet. I'd have gone further if the lag wasn't an issue for me, but I'm pretty sure it was just me. If you like a cutesy platforming/action RPG game, you can give it a shot if you'd like, though honestly I'd have to vote Iconoclasts over this right now.