Tales of Vogar – Lost Descendants review

It seems like nowadays every video game has RPG elements, but sometimes I just want to go back in time and play a good old fashioned, turn-based, pixel art RPG. For me this love of the genre started (as it did with so many people) with Final Fantasy, but as time goes on new entries in the series resemble the classics less and less. If you’re hankering for an RPG you’d have loved in the 90s, you could do a lot worse than Tales of Vogar – Lost Descendants.

Vogar was once a lovely place filled with happy citizens and magic powers, but that has all changed in a fight for power. The game opens with a castle under siege from enemy forces, and a king fighting a battle he cannot win. In a last ditch effort to continue his legacy, he orders his children to be escorted away from the bloodshed in secret and makes a heroic last stand as a distraction. As you may have guessed already the main character of this game is one of those children, and he’s the only one who can bring peace back to the land.

It doesn’t take long for it to become apparent that Tales of Vogar places a whole lot of emphasis on this story, and you’ll spend most of the time interacting with NPCs and plotting the best way to overpower the big bad who caused this chaos. The overarching story is actually rather engaging, but it’s let down a little by some very typical JRPG characters. The main character is suffering from amnesia after the escape, and his brother is a loudmouth who loves to chat up the ladies. It’s all stuff you’ve seen hundreds of times before, and made my eyes roll on more than one occasion.

Between story segments there’s a good chance you’ll be thrown into a battle or two against some enemies. Each character in your party gets to act once a turn, choosing from an attack or special ability that they’ll unleash when it’s their time for action. Ascan the main character is a mage with various types of elemental magic at his disposal, his brother is a warrior who can deal heavy damage or weaken foes alongside hurting them, and you meet a healer at the start of the game who’ll help you recover from damage and status effects. They’ll all learn new skills and get stronger by levelling up too, so you’ll have more to think about in battle as the game goes on.

Although this turn-based combat is enjoyable enough, it’s hard to get too excited about it. Sure there’s an element of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, but in a golden age of RPGs you have to do something to stand out from the crowd. Within the last six months we’ve had games like Chained Echoes and Octopath Traveler 2 do mind blowing things with turn-based combat, and it felt a little hard to go back to a battle system that would’ve fit right in on the NES.

There’s a lot that Tales of Vogar does right though. I love that grinding is absolutely never needed in the game, and as long as you don’t dodge enemies left and right then the difficulty feels just right from start to finish. The length of the game is great too, lasting around eight hours and hitting all the right story beats in that short space of time.

I don’t particularly like complaining about the graphics in an RPG Maker game developed by a single person, but I do have to mention how Tales of Vogar looks. The visuals have that cookie cutter fantasy RPG look about them, with the environments especially really suffering from a case of generic pixel art-itis. The character models are admittedly more impressive though, and you can tell a lot of effort went into making sure they had a distinct look about them.

The audio is nice too, with a banging battle theme and generally well fitting music throughout. It’s clear a lot of effort went into the sound design outside of the music too, with little details like dripping water in caves and chirping birds. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s pretty darn immersive for a pixel art RPG.

If you really love old school JRPGs then there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy Tales of Vogar – Lost Descendants, but it’s hard not to be disappointed when comparing it to more modern titles. The story is engaging and the combat perfectly serviceable, but it just doesn’t do a whole lot beyond that. If you’re looking for a throwback then this well made RPG will be right up your alley, but don’t expect anything more than the bare essentials.