Shrine's Legacy Review

 

Do you love the Super Nintendo? Want to revisit the good old days of action RPG's? Are you familiar with the classic studio Quintet? Then this game might bring you back to the past while still feeling fresh to play today!

Developer Positive Concept Games has set out to make their passion project, a spiritual successor to the Super Nintendo era's action RPG's a reality. They draw notable inspiration taken from Quintet's library, including games such as: Soulblazer, Illusion of Gaia and my personal all time favorite SNES game Terranigma. 

Indeed, dear reader, I am old, ha ha. A very quick side note, Terranigma is one of those cult classics that only a handful of people from a certain generation truly know today, it's still to this day one of the coolest action RPG's on the SNES. You can imagine my surprise when there was more than one homage to it in Shrine's Legacy. Terranigma is that game that heavily influenced me both as a writer but primarily as an artist. Ok, ok, I'll stop now, I can't help it, reader, it is not often I get the chance to mention that game, and I had to do a double take when I saw just how much Shrine has learned from it and it's sibling games.

Does Shrine's Legacy honor the classics it is inspired by? Let's dive right in.

Story:

A hundred years ago the world of Ardemia was invaded by an otherworldly demon named Aklor. He was unstoppable and all hope seemed lost, but as he was about to ascend as the overlord of the world, a heroine named Kailee Shrine arose and challenged Aklor with her mysterious sword: The Sword of Shrine. The Sword was powered by eight elemental gemstones, which finally brought Aklor's demise. It has been centuries since anyone heard of the demon; however, there are rumors that he is returning.

In the next scene, you follow a mysterious hooded figure. Not much of any context is given, but it's clear that something has gone horribly wrong. You're then ambushed and forced to fight a horde of enemies. After fending them off, the hooded figure starts to walk away but is ambushed again, and hanging off a cliff. The flashback ends, leaving you wondering what happened?

Now we're following a young woman running through the woods, seemingly hunted by and in a hurry, but we don't spend enough time to know what she is up to. Instead, we meet our main protagonist, a young man named Rio Shrine of Yuril Village, the descendent of Kailee Shrine, training with The Sword of Shrine. He almost forgot that he has a meetup planned with his childhood friend Mala and hurries to stash the sword safely before meeting up with her. 

It's quite a lot, isn't it? It can feel like that at first; however, this intro successfully sets up a few mysteries for the future, and soon answers one of them.

After meeting up with Mala and having a heart-to-heart moment, Rio walks back home to see the young woman we saw in the intro stealing The Sword of Shrine! He quickly gives chase and catches up with her. She can't get past a simple monster because the sword isn't responding to her, and she gets knocked to the side. Rio picks up the sword and sees it has gained a gem. Feeling the surge of the new power, the young woman shouts, telling him to unleash the newly acquired ice magic. With this newfound power, Rio easily takes care of the monster. 

With things a bit calmer, he can finally ask this thief why she tried stealing his sword. This is the moment we truly meet our second main protagonist, Reima. She tells us that Aklor is back! He has been chasing her because she had one of the eight elemental gemstones in her possession that powers up The Sword of Shrine. Rio sensing the danger to his village and to his childhood friend Mala, frantically runs back to the village, only to see that Yuril village is being attacked by Aklor's minions.

After a small confrontation and saving Mala, Rio is forced to flee with Reima to lure Aklor away. This is when Reima urges Rio to seek out the eight gemstones, and she will come with him because she desires revenge against Aklor.

A pretty long intro, aye? I wanted to give you essentially the full setup to have a good idea what we're in for. Shrine's Legacy is a classic hero's journey tale, where young, inexperienced people have to go on a massive quest not only to save the world, but to find their true calling, while also meeting a cast of fairly funny and heartfelt characters.

I enjoyed the plot quite well. There are times when it's execution can feel a bit amateurish, but overall the main characters and their struggles are well-written, and you will at the end of the journey, gotten quite attached to both of them, as well as side characters. In particular I really loved the old granny potion seller, she is a pure blast every time she gets involved, and of course, the muscle men the Hiroshi brothers. They even have their own catchy theme song! 

If there is something I need to give critique, it would be the main villain Aklor, himself. He has a fairly good presence in the main story and does a lot to make both you and the MC's feel really motivated to take him down. However, we don't really get to know that much about him until the very end. It is a bit of a missed opportunity not to spend more time on Aklor's true motivations earlier. I also feel that he could have had more contrast and parallels with the heroes themselves, to give him more of a reasoning to why he is a villain.

Gameplay:

Shrine's Legacy is an Action RPG at its core that takes heavy influence from The Legend of Zelda, Terranigma, and a bit of Secret of Mana. You have a simple regular attack that makes you stationary, a dash attack, and a magic attack, which can have variety of effects. . . Sounds simple, aye?

Shrine keeps combat fairly simple, but makes up for it by you having to play more strategically with where you stand during attacks. Fore instance, one of your starting magic spells is an ice spell that freezes enemies. While frozen, you can push the enemies into walls or others for a massive amount of damage. 

The combat has a slow and simple start, but by the time you can put enemies on fire and, in general, learn more moves, Shrine's Legacy starts to become much more engaging and fun. Testing out your new spells and seeing how they not only affect enemies but also the environment for puzzle solving never stopped being interesting. To recharge your magic, all you need to do is to attack the enemies with regular attacks. In theory you have infinite magic, but only if you can keep up your attacks without taking too many hits.

To give you a more strategic choice for playstyles or buffs, Shrine's Legacy has an equipable jewel system. Early on, it unlocks the access to enemy health and a dungeon map. However, later, you will be able to affect things like: how long you're invulnerable after taking a hit, how fast your magic charges, sacrificing your HP for a lot more damage, etc.

If I had one small complaint I would give this system, it's the fact that you have to equip the jewels for simple features like map and enemy health. It's not a big issue early game, but the more you progress and get a whole arsenal of jewels, the bigger the issue becomes with equipping different jewels for different combos. Of course I could just get rid of the map and enemy health; however, in later dungeons, not having a proper map would be . . . A bad idea, let's put it like, that ha ha.

In single-player you control both Rio and Reima by quickly switching back and forth between the two. Rio is the more Strength-based character who hits harder with regular attacks, while Reima is more magic-based one. The game supports local co-op through the entire adventure with a buddy. For this review, I didn't get the chance to try out this feature; however, the game was a smooth experience even in single-player and didn't feel like you would get classic AI partner frustrations as one might imagine.

When it comes to exploring the world, the game has an overworld where you can find teleportation points to travel back and forth between old areas. Most areas are also connected to a dungeon (or something that functions like a dungeon), with its own mini-map, puzzles and treasures to find. Quite often to progress through a room, you have to take out all the enemies you see to open a path forward. 

There is a crazy old potion-selling lady who will appear all over the world to sell you permanent upgrades to health and magic, and also different potions with various effects to combat or just healing. Monsters often drop random materials that are pretty much exclusively used to make potions.

Pros and Cons:

Let's go over the cons first. If you have a Steamdeck, the game claims to be fully viable on it, but in my experience, it was slow and clunky-almost unplayable. The frame rate attempted to be a stable 30 fps but quite often dipped to 24. Considering the game is a heavily inspired SNES game, I believe it is more of an optimization for the deck that is the issue rather than the game itself (runs smoothly on PC, though, rarely has performance drop).

The gameplay can feel a bit clunky for those that haven't grown up with SNES games before. It doesn't take long to get used to, but at the start, you might take a few too many unintentional hits due to enemies being faster than you. 

Now on the Pros. Shrine's Legacy is a nice-looking game with its pixelart though some NPCs could use a few more frames of animations.

The music is for the most part great (especially in the desert zone). Personally, would have wanted a more impressive regular battle theme and boss battle theme, as they are rather amateurish compared to the later zones in the game.

Side characters are a lot of fun, as mentioned earlier. They honestly carry the games narrative a lot since they mesh with the main characters.

As simple as the combat is, it has surprising amount of depth with its magic system and how many things in the environment you can affect with it. Honestly, would have just loved to see more of it, but fairly glad with what I got.

The game is around 16-ish hours long depending on how many side quests (which are recommended) you do. It doesn't overstay its welcome but it also doesn't feel short, just about right.

Personal pro, I really loved all the hidden Terranigma references, I couldn't stop smiling every time I found one.

Closing Thoughts:

Shrine's Legacy is a pure love letter to classic SNES action RPGs. It doesn't try to reinvent the wheel—instead, it offers a simple, nostalgic journey designed to transport both veteran and new players back to a simpler time. Best of all? You can bring a buddy along for two-player co-op.

VERDICT: Recommended
Reviewed on PC (and Steam Deck)

Review Copy was Provided