I Am Setsuna

I Am Setsuna is a simple JRPG  that tries to discuss themes such as death and alterity but doesn’t do these subjects justice, being dragged down by a shallow cast of characters and a painfully boring combat system.

The plot revolves around a tragic pilgrimage. Setsuna, a young girl that has just turned 18, is chosen as a sacrifice: she must give her life to keep the monsters at bay and safeguard her people. But the player actually controls the actions and choices of another character, a mercenary named Enrir, who is hired to assassinate Setsuna.  Enrir, however, understands that she’s going to die anyway, and decides to accompany her on the pilgrimage instead, joining her personal guard to see that her mission is fulfilled.

This means that Setsuna’s quest is bound to end in death either way.  She either sacrifices herself or is killed by Enrir. Setsuna means “a moment, an instant” in Japanese, showing the connection between life and time that the character represents: even people who live long, happy lives can feel it all went by too fast, and Setsuna’s life is being cut short too soon. Her name transforms her journey into her identity: she represents the transience of life, being marked by what awaits everyone at the finish line. To further remind us of the looming presence of death, her group is constantly chased by a mysterious man called “Reaper”, who wants to murder Setsuna before she has a chance to complete her task.

The game’s chapters mostly work around the same themes: it’s either discussing death and sacrifice or the “otherness” of the monsters. One of the first chapters, for instance, deals with the questionable nature of her goal, showing a leader that doesn’t hesitate before sacrificing people for the “greater good”. He is deemed “wrong” by the characters, who nonetheless fail to notice the obvious parallels to their own quest.

The next big event introduces a character that brings another perspective to the matter of death. He has to face a dilemma: he either lives a long, lasting life, but isolated from everyone, in hiding, or he shortens it by a considerable amount but lives it fully. Here, death is portrayed as a worthy price to pay for being able to truly live and enjoy your time in the world. Life and death appear inexorably linked: you can’t have one without the other.

The other major theme in I Am Setstuna is the question of whether monsters are intrinsically bad or deemed so just because they look different. There is a chapter when Setsuna’s group meets a monster pretending to be a human, making the barrier between the two groups thinner. The monster in question has feelings and mourns the death of closed ones the same way that humans do. They are understandably angry for being treated as an outcast, being unable to make friends because people eventually find out what they are and feel both betrayed and threatened.

Setsuna, of course, sides with the monster.  When she defends the creatures, refusing “to believe that ending someone’s future is ever the best choice,” she is doing so not only because she has a gentle soul, but because her own future is being cut short as well – and willingly. She believes that being a sacrifice is an honor and this forces her to value the lives of every other being in the world.

But the strength of the narrative is limited to Setsuna. Enrir, the character you control, is poorly developed, having few remarkable traits. The developers expect to make him your avatar in the world – you can change his name and pick most of his answers – but, at the same time, they make him a character with defined traits. It’s difficult to balance these two approaches and I Am Setsuna shows how schizophrenic the narrative can become when this is not done right: you may choose to pick only kind answers, for example, and the characters will still react surprised by them as if Enrir was often insensitive. If that is how Enrir “really” is, why give the players the choice to act differently at every turn? In the end, the character is either bipolar or a shallow brute. And, either way, he is uninteresting and boring.

The narrative doesn’t falter only with Enrir, though. The writing is often blunt to a fault. When the “good monster” appears, they explain “We monsters are no different from humans.” When Setsuna’s guard, Aeterna, tries to justify the girl’s sacrifice, she says “Is that the sacrifices keep the monsters at bay, and stop them becoming more ferocious.” It’s with this amount of eloquence, subtlety, and complexity that every character speaks. It’s not like everyone must sound like they come from Deadwood, but a bit of personality, color or subtext is necessary to make dialogues interesting.

The characters in the game all speak with the same voice. Any player will be hard-pressed to discover which character wishes this aloud at a certain point: “If people can become just a little healthier… just a little happier…” Is this character Setsuna, her friend Aeterna, or the knight Julienne? We can’t say based on the language alone. And the answer is none of the above: this is a line from an NPC called Smiling Aide. When a random NPC says something that could have been uttered with the exact same words by the game’s protagonist, or any of her female companions, you have a problem. The only character that stands out from the crowd is the warrior Nidr, due to his constant use of contractions and swearing: “Whadd’ya take me for, dammit?” Voice acting would have remedied this problem by giving a distinct tone to every character, but without it, this blunt and simple prose is everything but engaging.

It also doesn’t help that some narrative threads are basically dropped as the game progresses, while others appear out of nowhere. Enrir, for instance, is hired to murder Setsuna at the beginning, but even that is soon forgotten: we eventually discover why he was hired, but incidentally. There is no confrontation, no big twist; it leads to no climax, and not even complications arise from his original mission. Meanwhile, at the very end, the player is suddenly bombarded with random plot points, like the existence of clones/projections/who-cares, which were never hinted at before.

The side characters also suffer from a lot of problems. Julienne’s plot is overstuffed with notions about “the necessary traits and mindset a good ruler must have” that overstay their welcome and lead nowhere. Aeterna is just random. Nidr doesn’t have his big moment of revealing his identity. Kir, a boy from the forest, has to face a good dilemma at the beginning, but that is it: his narrative arc ends in the same chapter where it starts. And finally, there is Fides, who comes too late to have any impact, feeling more like a throwback to Magus of Chrono Trigger than anything else.

Speaking of Chrono Trigger, I Am Setsuna borrows its combat system shamelessly. There are three characters you can control during battles and they act only when their respective action gauges fill up. Each character has a group of “techniques” to choose from and they can create combos with their companions’ abilities. One such combo even deals damages by making an “X” on the battlefield, in another reference to Square’s masterpiece.

The only useful novelty comes from the fact that, once the gauge to act is full, you can wait more time so that it fills up again, allowing the attack/technique to gain more power if you press a button at the right time. There are other new systems and mechanics, but they are just here to make the game feel a bit different, having no great impact on the gameplay: characters, for instance, don’t gain techniques by leveling up, but by equipping “spritnites” obtained in shops by selling enemies drops. There is also a thing called “Flux” that activates in battle when certain conditions are met and helps the party by modifying their attributes. However, as with most elements in the game, you can safely forget that this exists.

I Am Setsuna is a fairly easy game. That wouldn’t be such an issue if that didn’t turn most of the game’s mechanics useless. Take the combos, for example. Players can easily beat the game without using a single one. The good old tactic of “attack, attack, heal” works like a charm here, especially because you have three characters on the battlefield and can designate each one of these actions to one of them: while two characters attack, the last one heals the party. Even bosses fail to push other strategies. This means that mechanics such as the flux or even combos can be easily ignored, sounding like fluff that is only there to make the combat system feel complex. Yes, you can use them wisely to create devastating attacks, but that would only make an easy game feel even easier. Only the endgame content – some belated side quests – require some thinking in their boss fights, but before reaching that point players will have already had plenty of reasons to lose interest in the game.

Another baffling design decision is the fact that some attacks and enemies require positioning but you can’t move your characters in the field. There are enemies that explode when defeated, damaging their surroundings, for example, but you can’t just move your characters away. In other words, the game makes unit placement relevant but blocks the player from easily managing it. It’s a decision that makes as much sense as anything Nintendo does regarding their online services.

The only thing coherent in the game is its presentation. I Am Setsuna has a striking monotone aesthetic: all lands are engulfed in snow and the whole soundtrack – which is great and deserves a better game – is played on the piano. This can result in a repetitive experience, no doubt, but it reinforces the melancholy one expects of a story about death and sacrifice.

Even though I Am Setsuna aims to be a simple JRPG, and is clearly inspired by such gems as Chrono Trigger, it still fails when it comes to the most important things of the genre: its story is uninspiring and its combat system is just dull.

July 16, 2019.