Rise of the Third Power | Switch Review

A Game Made With Passion

Rise of the Third Power describes itself as a love letter to the 16-bit RPG, and it’s not hard to see why. The graphics are crisp, the soundtrack slaps, and it provides a good challenge and solid story to boot. While not without its flaws, it still offers up a satisfying gameplay loop, which is more than can be said for a lot of indie games in the genre.

The basic premise of Rise is fairly simple: Fantasy Europe has just ended fantasy World War I, and fantasy Russia is planning to exploit the recent peace to take over fantasy world. You start out controlling an ex-pirate and thief duo, aiming to kidnap a princess in order to secure her help to stop fantasy Russia. Of course things spiral out of control from there, and the adventure begins.

You’ll eventually gather a group of fantasy buddies to help you save fantasy world, each with their own unique abilities and place in your party. The ex-pirate and thief are a tank and DPS respectively, and the princess, rather than being a support character, deals solid single target and AOE damage. Naturally you also recruit a healer and others, but the princess’s party role especially is a nice (and hilarious) change of pace from the norm for the archetype.

Make Numbers Get Bigger

The battle system draws from Stegosoft’s previous game, Ara Fell, and many might see similarities to Final Fantasy X or Trails in the Sky. Essentially, each “turn” you’re able to see which character or enemy will act when, and plan accordingly. There’s some turn manipulation, though not to the extent of Trails in the Sky. It still works well, particularly once you get more than three characters and can customize your team a bit.

As far as customization goes, rather than pick up new pieces of weapons and armor, you have crafting options that give permanent stat boosts. Naturally, the items required for crafting appear gradually as the game progresses, so rather than spending your coin on gear, you spend it on items needed to make gear…assuming you don’t grind it up yourself.

Besides equipment, each character has a talent tree you can explore, though one unique mechanic is everyone shares the same pool of talent points. So you can, theoretically, completely ignore one character you don’t use and just spend their points on your favorites. That said, the more points you spend on one character, the more future talents cost, so you won’t be able to fill out one character’s tree right away just by neglecting others. Similarly, the game encourages swapping your party around with an exhaustion mechanic. The more a character participates in battle, the higher their exhaustion grows, while leaving them benched will reduce the meter. It’s never really an issue on normal difficulty unless you spend a long time grinding, but it still serves as a gentle reminder to keep your battle team fresh.

Saving the World Before Storytime

Mechanics aside, the story and characters are, by and large, very good. Each character has distinct personalities, flaws, and motivations, and their interactions with each other are a lot of fun. That said, there’s one notable exception.

Your main character, Rowan, is an ex-pirate turned mercenary. He’s rude, a drunk, and has few redeeming qualities. It’s to the point that you would be forgiven if, halfway through the game, you started wondering why the rest of the party even puts up with him. There are several social encounters, in fact, where his presence actively makes things worse until someone else has to step in and be the adult. While every character has their flaws, Rowan’s are done in a way that don’t endear him to the player. It feels very much like the party is bringing along this chronic drunk and problem-causer for no other reason than he’s the main character. If Rowan was an NPC, he would have been left behind or killed before the halfway mark and not allowed to cause so many issues along the way.

One other notable flaw, at least in my view, was the change in tone with the story. The first act of the game has some serious moments, certainly, but otherwise has a lot of very well written comedic moments and meta humor, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Once act 2 starts, that lightheartedness is abandoned in favor of the overarching and much more serious geo-political struggle. While the overall story isn’t bad, the tonal shift feels abrupt, and the early game comedy was funny enough that I wanted more. And then things got serious.

But Buy It, Though

All that said, Rise of the Third Power is a solid indie RPG overall, and certainly one that’s recommended. It’s currently available for $20 USD for all major consoles and PC game marketplaces. If you’re into turn-based RPGs, you’d be hard-pressed to find one nowadays with the same level of care put into it.

This review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy of Rise of the Third Power provided by Dangen Entertainment for coverage purposes. It is also available on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC via Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, and Humble Store.