A love letter to JRPGs of yesterday, I Am Setsuna takes a fated group of travelers on a pilgrimage to bring hope back to this land of snow and sadness.
Endir is a mercenary who is tasked with dispatching a few monsters and saving a girl when a mysterious man appears before him and has a clear objective for his bombshell of a new job: kill Setsuna, the girl who will travel to be the Sacrifice.
The best way to explain it would be to compare it to Final Fantasy X where Tidus and gang accompany Yuna on her pilgrimage to Zanarkand. The Sacrifice is a chosen individual who makes the journey to the Last Lands about every ten years, to offer her life in exchange for years of peace. The ritual seems to quell monster insurrections and therefore, has become a tradition dating back hundreds of years. Just as her mother before, Setsuna is preparing for her journey when Endir happens upon her. Hesitating to act out on the task that was given to him, he is taken by the townspeople. Yet Setsuna, out of all of them, shows him compassion and forgiveness. She seems to have deja vu and find him familiar and comforting, and makes the case to have Endir join her guard. A woman named Aeterna is also recently made part of her guard, and she seems to know more than she is initially letting on.
Right off the bat there is tension within the party, as Aeterna does not trust Endir (the guy had pre-meditated murder in mind, makes sense), yet Setsuna defends him and appreciates his presence. As the party continues and grows, each new member brings along new insight as well as new baggage, eventually forming a microcosm of the world around them and ultimately, the world that they wish to foster anew. Deception and evil have become more commonplace in the world of I Am Setsuna, and the hopelessness of Man is further exemplified by the consistent snowfall. In that sense, I interpret the snow as a metaphor. It’s beautiful and pure, yet cold and deadly. I think that perfectly encapsulates the morose, somber atmosphere surrounding the land. Monsters are growing more cunning, employing tactics and maneuvers, rare-bloods are being kidnapped and used as bargaining tools for trade and other shady activities, people are possessed and driven mad by their own ego and blind faith, etc. You get the picture. It’s not a happy world, yet the snow at times makes it all feel, for lack of a better word, frozen in time. All the ills of the world seem to just fade away as you are looking over the ocean into the snowy horizon watching the flakes dazzle the screen.
For what it’s worth, I Am Setsuna is not a revolutionary game. It does not challenge the genre in any meaningful way, or attempt to subvert player expectations. It stays predictably in the middle with just about everything. While I understand the entire world is snow covered, the towns and locations themselves seemed to have little variety and began to feel too similar. The lack of an in-game map normally wouldn’t be so much of an issue given the game world isn’t massive, but the damn snow makes everything look identical. Game-breaking? No, but can be pretty frustrating. Despite the shortcomings, I’m ok with the way it was presented. It was exactly what I thought it was going to be, a calm journey and a reprieve from exposition of loud, over the top JRPGs. Don’t get me wrong, I love those just as much, but this was soothing to play, flaws and all. The pilgrimage uncovers multiple truths and lies about the nature of the world, the past, mankind, and the true purpose of the sacrifice. Perhaps Setsuna’s calm, caring disposition reminded me of Yuna, and while Endir doesn’t have much of a personality, he seems to soften up from her influence as well.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
Once Cornelius reveals himself, it just..stops? There’s no follow up? This man proposed the insane job of killing Setsuna, supposedly given to him from higher powers, and when you and the party are face to face with him, Endir has 0 reaction to all of it? It just makes no sense to me, and every moment of Cornelius having concern for anything in the slightest just felt fake and forced. How can he care about the safety of Julienne when he is initially pushing you to kill Setsuna, thus dooming the entire world to utter destruction? I also believe the Nidr/Setsuna dynamic was poorly conceived. Given his love and reverence for Mana, he couldn’t be there the way he should for their child, instead delegating himself to just be her bodyguard? His side quest touches on it a bit but even then, I feel like he progressed so much during the game in conquering his regrets and deficiencies, just for one man to strike him down to being second-rate. I found it odd, and as a dad I would think that there would be less hesitation to want to be there as the father figure.
I Am Setsuna may not exceed your expectations, but it is a safe bet. A relatively short story that touches on multiple themes and leads a decent cast of characters down familiar paths. For me, it served as a great escape from some lofty JRPGs I’ve been playing recently. I will have to check out some more works from Tokyo RPG Factory and see how they compare.
-Game Info- I Am Setsuna. Genre: JRPG Developer: Tokyo RPG Factory Publisher: Square Enix Release Date: 2/18/2016 Platforms: PS4, Vita, NSW, PC -GamerDad Info- Completed On: 10/17/2021 Played On: PS5 Time Played: ~35 Hours Rating: 6/10
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