Gales of Nayeli

Great example of this genre. Graphics are a little rough but easily overlooked for game play.

Overall: 7/10 Gales of Nayeli is an SRPG with some interesting new mechanics when compared to similar games. Perhaps too interesting or too ambitious. It is held back, slightly, by it’s UI/UX and by following in the footsteps of other Fire Emblem-esque games and their outdated mechanics. Music: 6/10 Music, sound effects, all of them are good. Voice acting leaves a lot to be desired. Visuals: 7/10 I usually like games more polished but I also understand the limitations of what they were working with. Character designs are really solid for the most part, however not sure if intentional or it was the artists’s range, but a lot of times the weapons and some details of the characters are either too big, too small or don’t work well. Gameplay: 6.5/10 If you have played Fire Emblem or similar games you will get how the game works as base. Everything can work but the creator went a bit overboard with the items and skills. Too many items, all of them with unique effects that you must check or remember whenever using and since there is a lot of variety, that can be bothersome unless you really really want to take your time with the game. Skills are just the same, too many skills for the characters and each character being vastly different than the others means, again, that you need to read a lot and remember. Avatar inclusion was 100% unneeded, luckily you can bench and forget them pretty much a few chapters into the start. There are too many chapters + sidequests. I think the game could have been condensed slightly more, especially since a lot of chapters are kill X while reinforcements keep coming each turn. If the maps could have been more gimmicky or if the skills/weapons a little bit more streamlined, then that would be fine. Lastly, too many characters, and some keep joining until the very end. This causes the usual issue of why am I going to use the new ones if I already have my solid team, plus a few mid-game characters join at super low level. This also causes an issue with supports since there are a good number of timed ones, if you did not reach the support level on time, it’s blocked. An example, is that I started using Quidel x Astrid two chapters after she joined and I was never able to unlock her 1st support and progress. Story: 7/10 This is interesting because the story felt very cringey at the start, and then it starts picking up. I enjoyed it, a lot (though it did feel very long by the end). It had a nice dash from starting as something local and growing into multiversal sort of.

When I finished Gales of Nayeli the one word that kept coming to mind was this: ambition. Gales of Nayeli is a culmination of ideas that I think impress anyone familiar with game development and understands the constraints of a premade engine like the SRPG Engine can see how much effort and ideas was strung together to create this game. So much thought put into the world, its characters, the multitude of mechanic ideas and concepts that, while they don’t quite stick the landing, create a very satisfying and meaty experience. Fire Emblem fans should be interested in this title, but I think newcomers to the genre would enjoy this game if they allow for the jank and hitching that the SRPG Engine can employ. Especially since the game lets you save each turn, it’s great! If you are unfamiliar, SRPG Engine is a toolset that lets you make games vaguely similar to the Fire Emblem titles on the SNES. It has been used by the former series lead, Shouzou Kaga, in a FE-like title he made in his free time. But, what sets Gales apart from the rest of its specific subgenre of tactical RPGs is the emotional and creative core. Gales draws on the aforementioned Nintendo series to be sure, but they had a vision that to me feels closer to a fantasy webcomic or novel series. Tonally, the character writing is surprisingly in-depth, grounded, there are jokes and goof characters but for so much of the game’s own runtime it’s a very solemn and ponderous experience. There are genuine attempts to make the character’s struggle feel harrowing, ongoing. The fact that romances are not just an ending goal like in FE, but a lengthy string of romantic interactions, reassurances, pledges, and even sidequests or character skills, or items. It helps that each character is generally unique within your team, they all have weird gimmicks, traits, quirks, and specialties that is a total blast to mess around with. Even the most inconsequential characters have dialogues, and cool things about them, including branching class trees! Every mechanical flourish was made as someone who is a fan of the genre. They asked, “what if my super cool game did all this weird stuff, let you make an avatar, lets you do environmental attacks, gives you cool weapon skills” like in Awakening, Echoes, etc etc etc. It keeps together surprisingly well. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the strangeness of each character that you quickly lose the simplicity the subgenre is known for, and toward the end of the game you are juggling a lot of mechanics at once! Thankfully the map design is pretty fun although at the start there is a certain slog feeling to them since your movement is so low but you learn how to use the environments and movement skills to force your movement that much more forward. That’s what made the game fun for me. Weird gimmicks: character and map wise. Enthralling story. I also really enjoyed the game’s style and variety of designs. Character types of all kinds, I love that the main character and her people resemble American indigenous people, or that so many of the cast are elves, demons, monstergirls (specifically girls, so it goes), fairies, and of course, pirates. All of this feeds back into each other. It just never felt all that FE to me, it felt like GoN. But, of course, with wild ambition and a hodgepodge goal of design, there were a lot of goofs and gaffs. There’s still one or two typos in the script, for example. I saw one at the end of the game where the character gives a big speech regarding the game’s main villain. There’s bugs, not once, not twice, but three times did a save get corrupted and was unable to be loaded. Some skills are not as spelled out as you would like, a lot of buffs/debuffs in the game are mostly just an icon without much of a reference on what the icon means. There are places where there’s a definition but having to look for a specific character to know what Fear does is a bit off. I generally don’t know if certain skills or thin…