Bad and boring

II played the Steam PC version.
I don’t expect much from games published by Kemco.
Silver Nornir starts off confusingly. Characters are introduced briefly, you play them for a few minutes, and then you move on to other storylines. Well, maybe they’ll all tie together. By then, though, it had become too boring for me. The world looked like it was built from a kit (well, they probably used a kit system), it was lifeless and not particularly interesting. The fights… OMG, they were so boring. I found it particularly silly when you completely dominated your opponent and won, and then the ensuing dialogue acted as if you barely had any strength left.
Although the story is something you’ve seen a thousand times in RPGMaker games anyway.

Short and sweet, with a challenging postgame dungeon of optional bosses

Silver Nornir is one of World Wide Software’s better RPGs. This review is for the Switch version.

Console versions of Silver Nornir have a higher base price, and compensate the buyer by making it easier to grind Shop currency in-game. Shop purchases are not needed to complete the main game but can be extremely helpful in the postgame, especially since the Shop sells powerful exclusive or near-exclusive (who has the time to repeatedly try stealing rare drops? Not me) accessories and consumables.

Paid DLC for console versions of Silver Nornir is not really worth the money. Experience boosts are pointless since all characters level up whether they’re in the player’s chosen party or not, and the maximum level of 150 is very easy to reach. EP boosts (EP is the experience used to level up magic gems) are similarly pointless, since gems naturally level fairly quickly. The “No Encounters” DLC might be convenient, since running away is not guaranteed, but nearly all regular encounters are pushovers anyway.

Silver Nornir’s innate strength and weakness is that almost every non-boss encounter is trivially easy to destroy. The best way to deal with 99% of regular battles is to use the autobattle feature to quickly blast through them.

The only exceptions are battles in optional Shop dungeon (if the party is very low level when they gain access), when fighting rare “rabbit” monsters that yield more money or experience (they’re more likely to escape if the player doesn’t choose the best tactics), and some strong postgame dungeon encounters (until the party becomes strong enough to autobattle them too).

Autobattling almost everything speeds up Silver Nornir, making its overall length shorter (10-15 hours for the main story, another 2-5 hours for the postgame). But it also makes regular encounters boring. At least the party does show off all sorts of magic spells while autobattling.

Boss battles are a different story. Autobattling during a boss battle risks a game over, so the player does have to be diligent about upgrading equipment, selecting and equipping magic gems that give the party spells, managing magic buffs and debuffs, and the judicious use of TP and Special moves.

One other flaw of the combat system is that the camera constantly pans back and forth between the party and the enemies. This can get especially annoying while fighting sped-up autobattles. I never personally experienced any motion sickness, but players who are susceptible to motion sickness might want to think twice before getting Silver Nornir.

Silver Nornir has a LOT of playable characters. In the World Wide Software tradition, all playable characters can be renamed from the menu at any time the player has control of them (although the player doesn’t get control of several of them until late in the game). In another World Wide Software tradition, the party’s composition is subject to suddenly and radically change during the main story, so regularly upgrading everyone’s equipment and keeping a healthy supply of healing and magic-restoration consumables is vital.

The postgame lets the player choose the party’s composition. Party members can’t be switched out in mid-battle, so the player must carefully weigh this decision, especially since many two-person or three-person groups have unique Special moves to consider. Characters also have individually unique Special moves, and individually unique magic spells, in addition to the magic spells that any character can learn by equipping magic gems and leveling them up.

Magic spells have six elements, and gems that bestow magic spells can be single-element (which give stat boosts and penalties) or dual-element (which have no stat penalties, but are largely unavailable until late in the game). This plus a wide array of potential accessories adds further depth to party selection and character customization. However, weapons and armor are not really customizeable; the player is just expected to buy the best stuff they can afford.

Silver Nornir does not have any sidequests. There’s just the optional Shop dungeon, the optional postgame dungeon, and one other fun postgame area to explore. Some of the main story dungeons have puzzles to solve. There are also character-based titles to collect, mostly by talking to various NPCs. Most titles are just fluff, but some postgame titles do affect stats when equipped.

The story of Silver Nornir is surprisingly involved for such a short game with so many playable characters, each of which has their own story arc (some character arcs are interconnected with one another). The base premise is that the world has been completely destroyed and remade twice, and now in the Third Age, the world is on the verge of being destroyed again.

Aside from the impending destruction of the world, there is also the more immediate threat of an evil empire bent on conquest. Although Silver Nornir primarily has a fantasy setting, there is an element of science fiction in that the evil empire uses cyborg technology to enhance its soldiers, and some playable characters are cyborgs.

One final warning about Silver Nornir – it’s a little too easy to lose track of where to go or what to do next. A Story recap buried in the game’s menus helps, but I strongly recommend always saving the game in whatever dungeon or town holds the next story objective. Sometimes town-related story progression can be obtuse, requiring the player to enter the right building or talk to the right person.

Overall, Silver Nornir is a short, sweet, and fun little game. Its story is about as good as one can expect from a mobile RPG originally created in 2012. Its boss fights and postgame are challenging enough to make the player customize the party with care.

All-around Solid RPG Experience

Silver Nornir is one of WWS most solid RPGs, and definitely a worthwhile game to check out.

There’s a nice cast of 10 really like-able characters, with a few being reincarnations of other characters. Your available characters change considerably throughout the game, and at one point, you have to play through a chunk as the “evil” characters you’d been fighting in the first part of the game. While all of them can eventually learn the same magical skills, they differ considerably in their stats, and have memorable personalities too. My favorites were Alicia, Lynn, Secile, Ein, and Elena!

The battle system is kind of unique as well, you place up to 5 characters on a 3×3 grid with a vanguard, middle row, and rearguard. Skills use either TP, which slowly builds up with attacks and is carried over battle to battle, or MP, which can only be replenished by resting or using items. Boss battles are all about carefully managing these two resources while building up for your ultimate attacks to finish the enemy off.

The game rewards you for finishing battles quickly and with multiple critical hits / hitting enemy weaknesses with an end of battle grading system. By scoring “S” ranks, you can slowly grind your way to IAP currency without paying any real money.

Another unique feature is the Title system, which allows you to give your characters fun nicknames. In the post game, you earn some strategic titles that actually improve your stats for the final battles as well.

The orb system has you equip up to three orbs each representing one or more elements. As you level up, you gain skills depending on which combination of element orbs you have equipped. For the endgame, there’s an expensive orb that allows you to level all elements to 30, which gives you really important revival, magic attack, and TP/MP recovery skills that are important for beating the game’s superboss.

I like how the game adds a few puzzle-y elements to diversify the dungeons, including portal mazes and a few node puzzles where you have to create a path by stepping on every square on the board exactly once.

Personal Favorite

So maybe my review is a bit too much of “I love this game”.

======== First Impression
I didn’t liked very much the description on Google Play, but I absolutely LOVED the blog post by 1oldtymer. You must check it out, it’s far better than my humble review.

======== Comments After Playing
Well, I love this game. Even music and the paid items (they’re useful and can be obtained with a special, intelligent grinding for IAP currency. Oh, you don’t need them by the way. Even the third magic crystal slot is free, and I’ll explain it now).
Magic Crystals which allow you to freely distribute magic is cool, and there are various kinds of Magic Crystals. They not only grant magic, but they also affect the status – like a weird class system. But you don’t need to rely on magic, there’s skills and special attacks too. Well, there are even combos.

It’s not a difficult game. It’s rather fun.
The team is always a mess until the end-game. Even having the hero for the whole game is NOT warranted, but unlike various games, this is done properly. This is done in an actually *fun* way – I usually hate games which does this kind of stuff, but this one deserves the exception.
Oh, and don’t worry with 10 players when only 5 can battle: everyone gets experience.
The alias system is there too. A pity the alias which actually change something only come in much later…

There’s the guides, and it is a bit too verbose on story, but it’s ok because story is a strong point.
This is also like an improvement of Fortuna Magus. The battle system is very similar, and there are the fight ratings, if you exploit enemies weakness, causes criticals and uses some features.

To don’t get behind on art, during dialogs, the characters eyes blink. Just a minor detail, but it gives the feeling of the world in motion, which is important on this game. You can even rename chars, and battles are voiced – It’s a polished WWS game.

======== Rating Summary
This is an amazing game, so lets start at 5.0 and see where the game sins which is not a matter of personal taste.
1- Uhm, it’s not particularly difficult, and there’s not a difficulty setting.
Of course, you can make it harder by eg. not using special skills, not farming SNP…
2- It has a… tad too many options. You have MP and TP, because there is an absurd amount of skills. Six elements. Six stats. Ten party members (at total, you usually play with less). You can get easily lost, but not bored or out of tactical options. (It’s like they wanted to put everything they had thought for years on a single game)
3- A bit too many menus to save the game. (It’s not really hard though)

All these are not major flaws, and costs the game a star from gameplay (because they make playing the game a bit harder)
Oh, about the controls, I love the d-pad. It have a touch movement option but I never used it.

======== Monetary Worth
As long that you like the battle system you’ll find the game very enjoyable.
The battle system is a bit different from others. If you’re afraid of wasting money, my personal advise would be to download Fortuna Magus Trial first, do a battle, and if the battle system is OK, then you can buy this game.
Of course, if you don’t like FM battle system, odds are, you’re going to hate this game.