An upbeat (albeit predictable) story, charming characters, and Exe-Create delivers its usual, solidly fun gameplay formula

Antiquia Lost is another well-made turn-based JRPG from Exe-Create, in the style of their usual formula. This review is for the PS4/PS5 version.

Console versions of Antiquia Lost let the player grind “alchemy stones” by battling monsters. “Alchemy stones” can be spent in a “shop” menu option to purchase what I assume is premium content in the mobile version.

Console versions of Antiquia Lost offer paid DLC to power up the party or control the encounter rate. All paid DLC is completely unnecessary. It is quite possible to complete every challenge the game has to offer, on the highest difficulty, without any power boosts. Excessive grinding is not needed to complete the main story and earn the True Ending. Grinding is required for optional postgame challenges, but that’s why they’re optional.

The console player can adjust the encounter rate to “Half Normal”, “Normal”, or “Double Normal” at any time, and items that force an encounter with every step or turn all random encounters off are available in-game. (The “Every Step” item is sold at the Arena for a modest 300 maid coins earned from winning Arena battles, and the “No Encounter” item is earned by doing enough damage in Maidame Curie’s optional 20-turn damage challenge).

Perhaps the most unique thing about Antiquia Lost is that the two female members of the party belong to a race of slime-people (one of the two is a mixed-race slime woman). Through gift-giving and various small “trust events”, the main hero can grow close to either of the two, or to the male party member who belongs to a feline race, or to a certain non-player character. The “trust” that the main hero has with his party members has a small effect on gameplay, strengthening the effects of their super moves and enabling them to collect certain hidden treasures.

The “trust events” of Antiquia Lost are limited in number and completely skippable, if the player chooses. Outside of “trust events”, the only way to raise (or lower!) a party member’s “trust” is to give them gifts. These gifts can be purchased with maid coins earned by fighting Arena battles, or by spending alchemy stones in the shop.

Antiquia Lost is set generations after a devastating war between the world’s three races. Although lingering mistrust remains between the three kingdoms, none of the three are warmongers. The peace is jeopardized only when various residents of all three kingdoms – including members of royalty – suddenly go missing in a spate of mysterious kidnappings. The hero’s party becomes directly involved in trying to solve the mystery, especially since some of the kidnapped people are closely connected to various party members.

Despite a couple of dark plot elements, such as kidnapping and a horrific past war that once engulfed the world, Antiquia Lost is overall a relatively upbeat game. There’s also plenty of lighthearted comedy relief, both between the party members and from Marie and Jolie Curie of the maids (who are so powerful that they are effectively their own nation, but no one seems to mind… or perhaps, no one dares to complain).

The Exe-Create gameplay formula is as enjoyable as ever. The player can switch between “Easy”, “Normal”, “Hard”, and “Hell” difficulties at any time out of combat, but oddly enough, only “Hell” difficulty provides a solid challenge. The rest are quite easy to cruise through.

The highest difficulty forces the player to think carefully about their choices. A weapon customization system has very weak and limited options in the early game, but becomes vital to success in the late game and postgame. Like most Exe-Create games, statistics are vital and Speed is the one stat to rule them all, because more speed equals more turns.

One party member, Lunaria, is unusual in that she does not gain traditional levels, but instead gains statistics by eating gem accessories the party can find or buy with gold. She can also eat stat-boosting fruit, but fruits may or may not be better given to another party member, since fruits can’t be purchased with ordinary gold and no other party member can eat gems.

Elemental magic and skills are a major part of the game. Elemental magic is learned by wearing gems that teach it while fighting monsters (three party members have an “innate” element that is automatically learned without equipping any gems, and Lunaria doesn’t need to wear elemental gems at all). Every character has physical skills they learn from leveling up. Since Lunaria does not level up, she learns elemental magic and physical skills in a different way – by raising her stats.

All of this leads to a number of interesting customization options. Who gets to eat what stat-boosting fruits? (It can be very tempting to give Lunaria a HP-boosting fruit if she’s only a few HP away from learning a new skill!) Should characters continue “fusing” their current weapon or move on to the next rank of weapon? How should scarce “delete fossils” be rationed to customize weapon enhancements? (It is possible to transfer strong enhancements from one weapon to another, but “delete fossils” are sometimes needed to get rid of unwanted weapon enhancements.)

As with almost every Exe-Create game, stat buffs and debuffs are vital to winning tough battles. Another notable feature is that every single skill and spell can be individually “leveled up” with repeated use, for more damage/healing and less mana cost.

“Leveling up” skills is an extremely slow process. Even even with the in-game shop item to double skill experience, the player is not going to max out more than one ability per character in a normal playthrough! The player must choose their favorite skills and spells carefully, and remember that there’s no benefit other than reduced mana cost for skills that do not involve damage or healing, including many buff and debuff abilities.

Overall, Antiquia Lost is fun for its gameplay, including a postgame optional dungeon, postgame Arena challenges, and an Arena superboss. Its story is predictable, but also cheerful. It’s a good pick along with Fernz Gate for anyone new to Exe-Create RPGs; both have very similar gameplay, although it should be noted that Fernz Gate uses a teams-of-two “Buddy System” while Antiquia Lost does not.

Jade and the Gang

It is hard to not be indelible to these characters. Some dialogue is absurd and honestly unnecessary but some fun stuff with the party. I really enjoyed strengthening the weapons and planting seeds for a variety of stat upgrades. The music is catchy. It’s about as “hold your hand thru” type of a story, but it’s a great story nonetheless. The charm of Kemco, .exe, and hitpoint RPG’s are it’s simplicity and the way you jump right into the action. “budget” rpg’s are looked over and that is a shame. This is a FUN game.

The game’s characters are lacking in distinctive personalities. This makes the overall cast feel rather bland. Also, you do not discover who the antagonist is until late within the game, which leads to the next problem. The plot feels very undirected in this game. It starts out as a simple “helping friends”-kind of plot, but through chance encounters with another mysterious character, the main characters get entangled in solving the mystery of a bunch of people that have disappeared. Finally, the world and story are severely lacking in depth that helps to create a more rich and powerful story.

Mechanically, the game is similar to many of EXE-Create’s other games. Like in Asdivine Menace and Fernz Gate, you can level up skills and magic by repeatedly using them, and they gain new effects after awhile. In this game, all skills and magic use MP; there is no separate BP. There is an item crafting system that is pretty much the same as Asdivine Menace’s version. One thing different about this game is the character Lunaria who instead of leveling up like normal eats gems after battles to gain marginal stat increases. You can also feed Lunaria gems that you may otherwise use as equipments to increase her stats as well. It’s interesting and different, but not really a mechanic that increases the fun factor of the game.

The game is balanced fairly well in terms of difficulty with some hard encounters along the way, but nothing that should require extensive grinding to beat. On the other hand, Lunaria’s skill growth is not well balanced. She frequently lags behind the other characters especially when it comes to how much health she has. In addition, only a few spells and skills are worth using. The rest are rather useless. The final boss however is not at all balanced and will require significant time investment in grinding to have a chance. (Part of what makes the final boss unbalanced is that you cannot use magic at the beginning of the fight, and the boss has extremely high health, even on easy.)

Overall, it’s okay, but it’s not really worth buying the premium version when the free version offers a very similar experience for… free.

One of the better titles as collection content goes.

I personally thought this this game was one of the best I have played so far. I enjoyed the massive amounts of inventory, quests, tough enemies (in the tower), but I really enjoyed trophy hunting especially for this game as it was very fair to achieve them. I think I spent the most time on this game than any other Kemco title. I clocked in about 70 hours.

A Good Game. It's Worth Playing.

The Skill System has some concepts that are unique from other games. There are a number of things that can be done. There are also a number of things you’ll want to do.
(1) For one character, “Gems” that are dropped, found, or bought in the game, are used to “feed” the character. The attributes of the Gems typically determine the stats affected for the character. Watching what, how, and when these Gems are fed, gives a nice strategy for the player to consider. If the Gems are not eaten, they can be used as stat boosters for other party members- providing they have the available slots to place the Gems. (Never discard or sell Gems. Eat or equip them. That’s it.) It takes a long time to get “Full” from eating Gems. So you will need all you can get.
(2) Brave Arts: Bine has a special ability that awakens, and reacts with, an innate ability each of his party members control. When the two party members sync, something big will happen that will benefit the entire team. When the Brave Arts meter reaches 100-percent, a Brave Arts skill can be launched again.
(3) Meteorites: Found, earned & bought in the game. Some of them are powerful and a must-have. Others are not. What is very unfortunate, is you cannot see the Meteorites’ abilities until after it is given to a character. The learned Meteorite skill cannot be removed or transferred then. It’s a poor system for what could be great skills if used in the right hands.
(4) Skill Strengthening from Usage: An interesting strategy is determining which skills to use more in order to increase their strength.

Here’s a spoiler: if you fight in the arena or against easy random encounters with the intention to only use skills, grinding battle-after-battle, then the skill levels & their strength will increase quickly. Skills are increased by the number of times used.

For example, use any specifically chosen skill, whether it is necessary or not for that battle, each turn, against weaker enemies- like heal spells, and various elemental and physical attacks- maybe certain buffs and debuffs, if you desire. Keep attacking and healing with your favorite skills whether or not you need that specific attack, or whether or not you need that specific healing ability. Just do it every turn and every battle, until you increase the strength of the abilities to a comfortable or OP level.

The game has a design to repeat the last skill with just a click of the “auto” button on the left side of the screen. We don’t have to go through multiple menu lists that way. Utilize that feature! Skill’s levels and strength will reach fruition more quickly since we don’t have to choose, or reset, the skills with every single turn.

Going through this entire process will prove to be a useful strategy, and we will be thankful for it, as we get deeper into the game. The early efforts of repeated mundane battles and attacks, will pay off with being able to use OP skills and techniques against otherwise deadly enemies.

(5) Trust Levels and Their Increased Abilities: Just like when any new people meet, they really don’t have trust in each other. In Antiquia Lost, as the party gains Trust through designated events and items, three teammates improve a unique skill that can be used outside the battlefield. One character can pick locks, one can crush rocks, and one can squeeze into small places- like mouse holes. From early in the game, you’ll notice the areas where you can pick, crush, and squeeze. For some areas, your “Trust” level may not be high enough to meet the required mastery for the skill’s complexity. In that case, make note of the location of the lock, rock, or hole, and return to it later to claim the treasure behind it.
(6) Weapon Amalgamation: Gotta love being able to stack Crit to destroy every Metal you encounter! 😎
(7) Mechanics of Using so Many Skills: There are so many skills to learn, and there will be many favorites to master. Each character has a specific elemental magic and/or physical attack they master. On top of that, each char can learn every elemental magic spell. Having five different types of skills (which includes Meteorite), and some of the learned skills end up creating two pages, it can make the scrolling to reach the appropriate attack or measure a little cumbersome.

Battles are turn-based. The gameplay is largely linear. (That is not so unusual for RPGs. So it’s not a good or bad thing.) At certain points in the game, other areas to explore become available. The new areas make the game more challenging, fun & diverse. There is post-game content to play.

The few areas that gradually unlock can be explored & challenged to help increase gold, XP, and char levels. There are also special tokens/items we can “grind” for that will nicely enhance char items or stats, or improve our gameplay experience. Those non-linear events will give a bigger purpose to the game that aren’t boring to do.

The graphics are crystal clear. Artwork is beautiful. When characters equip new weps and armor, you can see the difference in the character’s appearance in battle.

The dialogue is redundant or unrealistic, and it is often pointless. This game could probably be played without any dialogue at all. Unfortunate. The potential for a great (or better written) story is most certainly there.

There is considerable mystery surrounding the NPC, Alma. Alma adds fun and intrigue to the game, and he also affects the party’s attitude at times, which adds drama and deepens the mystery. Alma’s appearances always add some suspense, questions, or pep to the story. Without Alma and everything that surrounds him, the game would flatline.

Alma doesn’t shoulder the entire game’s story by no means. However, the plot is shallow, and the story’s only sub-plot IS Alma. To look deeper into the storyline, it does appear that Alma is more than one vital organ for the game.

Regardless of any less-than-stellar review I write, I enjoyed this game immensely. I’ve played it more than once. Antiquia Lost is reminiscent of old-school 16-bit console games that have been re-mastered. It has a pleasantry about it that makes anything that could be undesirable just fade into the background while you play.

Antiquia Lost

The story ia good enough, but after I see every ending, I don’t like Jade’s ending

is this a review?

After watch all kind of ending (especially Jade ending i never-ever play this game again)