Quick Review: Remnants of Isolation

Cue my usual “I should review more RPG Maker games” talk. Anyway, here’s one more.

What a magical keyboardist.

Remnants of Isolation was made by Team Isolation, published by Degica (who also publishes the many RPG Maker softwares, as well as others), and released on May 1st, 2015. A nameless girl is playing a magical piano in a desolate, dark place. She suddenly feels that something is abnormal and leaves. As she leaves the room, she meets a guy with green hair called Melchior. They are both mages locked in this place, away from the outside world. She’s also mute and does not seem to recall much about herself, so Melchior nicknames her Celesta. He seems to know more about their situation than she does. The first powerful monster they encounter flees upon recognising the girl…

An RPG Maker character who can jump?
That's amazing!

This guy was cold as ice earlier (and weak to fire).
Now he's on friggin' fire (and weak to ice).

Most RPG Maker games tend to feel the same, so a game has to stand out, usually by featuring gameplay mechanics that are seldom seen in others. From merely the first hour of gameplay, I could already notice a few of those, which is a good sign. The first is that Melchior can jump over short gaps, which is necessary to reach inaccessible areas and activate levers. The second is that Celesta can use her music in precise places to change tiles, create platforms to break walls; that ability is part of a new set called Innate in-game, which implies they’re abilities she has always had (Melchior has his own). The third is that, instead of learning spells on their own, the characters can find and equip Spell Cards, up to four per character, which means any character can use any (non-Innate) spell and you can experiment on that front.

Melchior's attack upgraded to hit all. Nice.

The best idea, though, and I haven’t seen it often, is that using an Innate spell first in a turn will give an additional ability to the spell the party member going second will use. It allows for pretty cool conbinations and can turn the tide in a tough fight. Note that, for this to work, the game doesn’t use the regular “quickest goes first” turn-based RPG system; you have control over the order of attack between the two.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the boss battles, which utilized strategies that are programmed into RPG Maker and can be applied to enemies, but are hardly ever used in practice. A plant-themed boss casting a spell that cancels its weakness to fire, as an example. Or a reaper boss that changes its form midway into the fight to modify its weakness. I can really see that a lot of thought went into programming Remnants of Isolation in order to use all of this software’s capabilities, and the result is a game that takes full advantage of them.

This castle goes on forever!
How big is this place??

For a moment I was afraid this place would
ask to light up, like, ten crystals or more.
No, the story is concise and doesn't overstay
its welcome. The game doses its element right.

On the topic of appearance, the game looks a lot like regular RPG Maker titles, using the preprogrammed assets for map construction (the sprites for characters and enemies are new). Even then, each room tries to have as many details as possible. Everything about this world is presented on a tone proper to legends, with the protagonists stumbling every now and then on a parchment or a sign further explaining the setting. Same goes for the items, whose descriptions use that syrupy tone to discuss their effects.

Overall, I liked this one. It was pretty creative and stood out from the crowd in a lot of ways. If you wish to create games on RPG Maker someday, this ought to be a game to try out in order to learn a few things and see what the software can do with some ingenuity.

Remnants of Isolation is available on Steam for 1.99$.