Rainbow Moon – Review

Review by Wewillrocku

Reviewed: 04/05/19

Triple A game of the TRPG genre.

Rainbow Moon is an isometric, turn based game where you fight to go home after you're transported to a strange land, eerily just before you were going to participate in a yearly battle at the arena.

It plays the same way as any TRPG. However, there are some notable differences. Often in a TRPG you move from map to map with an anchor world in between where you can buy upgrades (like in Shining Force). This time around you have a huge world map with enemies on screen that you engage to enter isometric battle. This is a welcome change to the genre (though, I am probably one of the biggest fans out there of the anchor system) and it makes the game feel fresh and original.

In this land there are many monsters to fight, merchants to buy from, items to find, and bosses to defeat. You can perform simple weapon and armor upgrades by melding them with the items enemies drop. This system is simple throughout the game and never reaches the point of being convoluted or excessively difficult to farm as it was in Tactics Ogre. You won't need a guide for the majority of this game (at least, I didn't) but you will need patience. This is because, although the world map and dungeon maps are not that complicated, the monsters always have very strong attack stats, a thing unique to this game. Using your special skills is absolutely necessary because they grow in power the more they're used, and you can sometimes hit multiple enemies with them, use debuffs, or perform magic.

You can save anywhere except during battle. You can also assign rainbow pearls to your characters to buff their stats a bit, and you'll be doing that every now and then because you always get rainbow pearls from a battle. There is a dungeon in the middle of the game with no way through it except to experiment with teleport tiles and in this case you may need a guide. Completely doable on your own, but annoying.

Is it worth purchasing? If you like this kind of game then absolutely. The JRPG elements (world map, rainbow pearl buffs) may make this TRPG game an easy transition for someone who usually purchases JRPG games.

Note: as of this date you're not able to cross buy the game so if you purchase it, you'll only be able to play it on Vita (alone), PS3 (alone) or PS4 (alone). Just something to keep in mind.

A Vita game that is very similar to Rainbow Moon is Hyper Dimension Neptunia: Goddess Black Heart, where you play with the same isometric view and in a turn based format. In this game, your characters are chibi (cute) and the difficulty is easier. God Wars: Future Past is similar to Rainbow Moon because of the isometric view and turn based battles but actually this game may be considered more difficult due to spikes in enemy level from map to map. The Utawarerumono series is a little similar because of the battle system but expect a boat load of visual novel elements in this series.

Rating:   4.5 - Outstanding

Product Release: Rainbow Moon (US, 12/03/13)