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.