Introduction
Antiquia Lost is a turn-based RPG that was developed by Exe-Create and published by Kemco. It was released in August 2016 for mobile, then saw console and PC releases in the second half of 2017.
Review
In the land of Edelstein, there was once a great battle. This led to the three great tribes going their separate ways and started to live their own lives. Nowadays, magic is back in the world, and there is peace among the lands. Until of course someone starts stealing people from each of the tribes. Sorcerer’s go missing, princes, princesses, father’s, daughters. No one knows why! So what does Bine and his band of cohorts do? Take it upon themselves to figure out who’s behind it all! But of course if they don’t, they’ll be stuck in prison forever as the likely suspects!
The story starts off pretty boring in all honesty, and it feels like it moves just a bit too quickly. It doesn’t take too long before you have your whole cast of misfits along with you. But then the story slows down just a bit and takes its time to build up on the mystery of it all. Slowly but surely I started to get more and more interested in the story the game was giving me. One of the big lessons the game relies heavily on though is trust. How you should trust people in your life if you love them enough.
The cast of characters is your typical slew. You have your hero who never fails, Bine. The love interest, Lucina. The soldier, Sarif. Then the old grumpy man, Jade. All of them were your cut and dry clichés, but it was hard to not like at least one. Of course this all made the twists of the story a bit obvious, but it was fun nonetheless. There was a point in the game where it actually got a bit emotional too, but that doesn’t truly happen until you see the true ending, which the last boss is absolutely terrible to beat. But it was definitely worth it in the end.
The gameplay is a simple turn based RPG with a handful of difficulty settings. I played on Normal my entire run and I feel like I should’ve increased it to Hard a few times just for a bit of challenge. A lot of the time with each of the characters skills, I was immediately killing an enemy in one attack. There are also a ton of skills to choose from. Especially when it comes to Lunaria and Safira, as these two are magic users, so they have access to water, earth, and fire magic, along with personal melee skills. Honestly this became a bit too much. Each skill has a level associated with it. The more you use it, the more powerful it becomes. But I never used anything outside of the beginning skills, as they hit multiple enemies and were levelled up a ton so they did incredible amounts of damage.
The dungeons were a let down. They were nothing but singular corridors that you walk to the end of, then walk back unless you use an item. There was one instance where you’re tasked with finding a button to open a door. I was hoping for this to introduce minor puzzles, but it never did. Sure there’s some secret passages to find to get to chests. These often included items or equipment, whether you used it or not was the other question. Luckily if the equipment sucked, you could have your current weapon absorb it so it got stronger!
The one thing the game does different, is that when it comes to Lunaria, she doesn’t actually level up. At the end of battles, the enemies may drop a gem she “eats” to get better stats, or you can increase her stats by feeding her accessories you aren’t using. There’s another way to get her stats up as well. When you fight enemies, or sometimes open chests, you get beans. You can plant these beans in planters that are on the menu screen. These then have a time limit to grow, and you harvest them for stat increasing items. This was really fun to select a character to dump certain items into to make them completely broken. Especially if you use the items to make the beans grow immediately!
There are sidequests to do after each dungeon that usually sees you revisiting said dungeon, sometimes to get an item, or kill monsters. This would’ve been a bit simpler later in the game if you were given an airship, or the map wasn’t so hard to navigate by boat. There was one quest in particular that I needed to get an item seven times from an enemy and it never dropped. Not until I used some premium currency to buy an item to increase drop rates. Then I got it every time. I also bought one to get double EXP and suddenly I was levelling up every other battle! Nothing like being OP in an RPG.
Rating
Pros:
- Weapon Strengthening System
- Eating Beans For Stats
- Enjoyable Story
Cons:
- Boring Dungeons
- Too Many Skills
- Map Is Annoying To Traverse
Summary
Antiquia Lost is a fun little RPG. The cast were enjoyable, the mystery of kidnappings got me intrigued, and it was easy to get OP. It’s just unfortunate there’s so many skills you’ll never use and the dungeons are just linear hallways with nothing in them. But if you’re an RPG fan, I’d recommend this.
If you enjoyed this review, why not check out some more we have?
You can also join us in our Discord, Follow us on Twitter & Subscribe to us on YouTube
Game & Developer Information
Developer Website: Exe-Create
Developer Socials: Twitter
Publisher Website: Kemco
Publisher Socials: Twitter
PSN Store Links: £11.99/€14.99 Europe / $14.99 North America
Trophy Information: 35. 
1 / 
5 / 
11 / 
18
NODE Gamers 