One of Exe-Create's better offerings. The job system and equipment system offer plenty of customization; the story is good and doesn't overuse anime tropes

Chroma Quaternion is one of Exe-Create’s better games. Anyone familiar with Exe-Create JRPGs will immediately recognize its turn-based battle system where more Speed = more turns. Chroma Quaternion has two distinguishing features – the gameplay involves a job system (the jobs are called “roles”), and the story is solidly above average.

Chroma Quaternion is set in a world defined by the four seasons; the four major continents/kingdoms embody spring, summer, fall, and winter. The mortal inhabitants, called “Springizens,” look like humans but aren’t quite the same. Springizens do not reproduce like humans do; they are born from magical springs through the power of the Quaddieties, four season-themed gods who oversee the world.

Springizens are born as infants and have to be raised from childhood by someone who chooses to be their guardian. They can form family relationships through a ritual called the “Promise of Fate”. Romantic love might not exist at all among Springizens, although this is never explicitly confirmed one way or the other. Deep, meaningful, non-family platonic relationships definitely do exist, notably between certain party members.

In Chroma Quaternion the job system is the providence of the Quaddieties, who grant Springizens “roles” through their priestesses. Different roles can give all sorts of different abilities and talents.

In practice, the party members start with one usable role each. Additional roles can be discovered in treasure chests, gained automatically through story progression, or even earned from the in-game rewards panel which keeps track of various accomplishments and doubles as a stealth tutorial.

As Chroma Quaternion progresses, the party members can eventually learn up to ten unique roles each, for a total of forty roles to experiment with. Each character can eventually equip up to three roles at the same time. The order in which roles are arranged has a major effect on battles. Roles can be changed or have their order swapped anytime out of combat.

Selecting equipment to complement the party’s roles is vital. The bonuses on equipment range up to +999 and can NOT be increased – there is no weapon/armor fusion system – but the stores in various cities stock weapons and armor with higher bonuses as the party gains levels.

Almost every weapon or armor has a special effect, and it’s possible to turn that effect into a ring (sacrificing the weapon or armor). It’s also possible to consume spare weapons or armor to power rings up; most rings can be powered up twice from their weaker initial state.

All of this plus the distribution of stat boosters allows for a lot of customization! There is no real-time garden, but stat boosters can be farmed from the Arena and often drop from regular battles. The player must think carefully about how to allocate these boosters and the party’s roles, and then deploy the party in an effective battle formation, especially on the higher difficulty settings. There are four difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Expert.

Chroma Quaternion has no shortage of content (I spent over fifty hours clearing everything). The Arena can be challenged or farmed for the currency to buy useful things. There are fifteen sidequests. The story is quite robust and includes multiple postgame dungeons to conquer for the opportunity to earn the True Ending.

The player can also explore other, completely different postgame dungeons, fight extra-challenging optional bosses, and challenge the ultimate superboss, in a wacky postgame side-story featuring the mercurial maid sisters Maidame Curie and Jolie Curie. (The Butler is not personally present in Chroma Quaternion, but one of the party members can learn a role that is obviously inspired by him.)

A few game design limitations weaken Chroma Quaternion. Roles have to be leveled up to 100 through a special type of experience (separate from the experience that raises character levels), and this can get grindy. Premium Shop items that permanently increase how much experience is earned toward roles are extremely attractive purchases. Thankfully, it is possible to amass premium Shop currency through simple daily missions to exterminate 15 monsters in a given area. Console versions also let the player grind premium currency from regular battles.

Another frustrating design choice is that, unlike other Exe-Create games, the player can’t mark certain weapons or armor as “favorites”, ensuring that they won’t be sold or consumed to strengthen rings. However, rings can’t be consumed (only sold), so the player is incentivized to just turn old weapons with a useful special effect into rings anyway. I personally recommend turning the One-Step Boots (a Shop purchase that forces battles with every step) into a One-Step Ring right away.

Roles have up to 100 levels each, and party members have to visit a temple priestess and pay gold to lift the cap on a role’s experience every time the role gains twenty levels. Reaching the cap on a role halfway through a dungeon, and having to leave the dungeon to get the cap removed, can get annoying. Chroma Quaternion doesn’t even have dungeon teleports to the dungeon middle and dungeon end, like most other Exe-Create games do, so expect to either backtrack or lose some role experience at times.

Another issue is that roles are very limited in the early game, which severely curtails the player’s options. Since some roles are in treasure chests, the player is incentivized to methodically loot every chest (consumable items that reveal how many treasures are left in a dungeon help with this). This can slow down gameplay and irk players who otherwise wouldn’t care about collecting every last treasure.

If the player doesn’t loot every last chest, then the only way they can make sure they haven’t overlooked a role is to check a guide. Nothing is permanently missable in Chroma Quaternion, but since roles need experience, it’s better to get them ASAP.

Finally, the achievements/trophies on Xbox/Steam/Playstation versions of Chroma Quaternion include a few trophies that require a staggeringly excessive number of steps taken. Walking into a wall won’t make progress on these achievements/trophies; instead, I recommend getting on the air vehicle, applying a rubber band to one’s controller, and doing something else for up to 60 minutes.

If the player can look past Chroma Quaternion’s lesser drawbacks, there is a very fun battle system to play around with, and a good story too. The story is commendable in that it does not overuse common JRPG and anime tropes. There are heartrending moments of emotion – a scene in the second-to-last dungeon of the main game is particularly standout – and interludes of wacky comedy relief, with the main hero Ark acting as the “straight man” to the quirky dynamic of a ditzy princess, her sharp-tongued maid (no relation to the Curie sisters), and a very fluffy dog.

The heart of the story revolves around the philosophical question of how much one’s assigned role truly defines one’s life, or whether it should define one’s life at all. This unspoken question is interwoven with a crisis that endangers the Quaddieties, causes earthquakes, and dries up the springs from which new Springizens are born. The world definitely needs saving, but Chroma Quaternion is about much more than just saving the world, and that’s what makes it memorable.