Ikenfell (Xbox One)
When magic crops up in a work of fantasy you can often expect fireballs and lightning bolts to be flung around, but in the the game Ikenfell the students and staff of the titular magic school don’t even believe magic can be used for such a purpose. This situation becomes all the stranger when suddenly a girl with no magical talent whatsoever is weaving fire spells with ease, and so begins the plunge into the mysterious world of this turn-based role-playing game.
The story begins as Maritte heads to find Ikenfell after her sister Safina failed to return after the last semester of classes. Quickly thrown into a magical world completely foreign to her, Maritte is introduced to the limits and concepts of the game’s magic system as she manifests some powers of her own, but Ikenfell isn’t some whimsical school of magical opportunity. Simply getting to the campus already put Maritte in conflict with strange creatures, the school itself is mostly abandoned and quiet save for roaming creatures, and even when you come across other characters they are experiencing strange changes to the magics they wield as well.
The mystery of Ikenfell being upended and how Safina’s disappearance ties to it continues on through most of the adventure, the player fed nuggets of information that make for a slow but satisfying build. Safina’s past is viewed through memory crystals Maritte finds that start to paint a complex picture of the eager but brash student and the slowly constructed morality of the character makes this simple starting mystery turn into one with far more weight than first thought. On top of Safina’s slowly building history comes the exploration of the strange shift in magic, the player slowly finding the effects of people having new powers, losing their old ones, or having theirs go haywire in unexpected ways. These all begin to connect to some of the central players in the broader plot as well, and the character writing featured in Ikenfell is definitely its strongest aspect.
Befitting a party that is mostly built of teenage students, the cast is made up of individuals grappling with insecurities, social relationships, and the difficulties of navigating this formative stage in their life. The main plot doesn’t lay down many high priority actions the characters need to see to immediately so when the characters need to come to a stop and talk out their concerns or work through personal problems it not only feels like the characters are reasonable for doing so, but it leads to the heart of the adventure truly shining. Maritte enters this world as an other, the few students lingering around often won over by her earnest charisma, and while she might be one of the more emotionally intelligent members of the main six party members, she’s the one often hit hardest by large revelations or the one left to sort through them despite her own sense of inadequacy.
The cast aren’t emotional wrecks who demand constant attention but individuals who are properly impacted by the unraveling mystery and what it reveals about those they thought they could trust. Petronella and Rook were friends with Safina, but the nervous and unsure Petronella and socially reserved Rook struggle with managing a friendship that was both held together and strained by their mutual friend. Pertisia’s anger and complicated feelings towards Safina transfers onto Maritte and working through them is an important part of Pertisia addressing issues she has with herself. Even many of the antagonists are given a good amount of room to demonstrate their character and explore their own personal issues, the main antagonist getting a pretty thorough string of events to explain and root their motivations realistically. A delightful pair of characters named Ibn Oxley and Bax serve as recurring well-meaning characters the core party comes in contact with, the overblown flair of Ibn and the understated seriousness of Bax making them a good comedic duo and perhaps the cutest couple in a game where much of the cast has romantic issues stemming from the raging hormones of youth.
One such character that serves as more wonderful comedic relief is Gilda who also happens to be one of the more sympathetic characters despite her silliness. Constantly failing in class before the strange shake up at Ikenfell, when she suddenly finds out she can wield incredible lightning powers her bubbling insecurities lead to a burst of exuberance at suddenly feeling she has the value and skill she craved. Her over the top behavior both in trying to show off and loudly announcing her attraction to the main character makes her a wonderful recurring part of the story even if she starts to lose relevance later in the plot, but a self-contained story of self-worth is told and the flashy persona is summed up wonderfully by her being introduced by way of the first character song with lyrics. Gilda’s character song really helps to lay the foundations for a more complex character, but funnily enough what might be the game’s best song, Paint the Future, is a character song for the last party member who really doesn’t benefit from the song about them.
There’s an age gap between Ima and the other central characters and unfortunately that means the personal relationships around Ima aren’t as deep or interestingly turbulent. Having an older character join the party does lead to a lot of the youthful barriers to talking out issues being broken by a more mature member who pushes them to take action instead of stewing in heated emotions, but where Paint the Future could have been a chance to explore the deeper emotional state of Ima, instead it focuses on some pretty basic ideas of fighting for the future. It almost feels more like a showcase of musicians Aivi and Surrashu’s lyrical wizardry and musical talent and the quality at least justifies it, although some questionable inclusions of real world figures like Bob Ross and Martin Luther in the lyrics raises questions about this mostly fantastical world with ghosts, time-traveling ravens, living books, and more. Despite Paint the Future’s narrative failings the game does weave together an enjoyable soundtrack that can handle some wistful and practically nostalgic serene tracks and appropriately punchy battle themes. The graphical style doesn’t always benefit it, the character sprites in the overworld and battles limited pixel art for the characters, but the areas and monsters usually look nice and even expressive and most importantly the well-written dialogue is supported by face art that comes with a wide range of emotions so you can still get an excellent picture of the cast’s emotional state.
The character writing puts in a lot of work to making most of its central figures endearing and the player’s investment in the plot is definitely heightened by the personal ties so many members have to each other and other characters caught up in this mystery, so while Ima is underserved and Gilda might not have the same web of relationships to draw from, you will get a satisfying emotional story from the core adventure. Exploring Ikenfell and its surrounding areas is actually fairly interesting as well, different sections of the large academy essentially dungeons where you’ll need to solve small puzzles to make progress. Areas often have little secrets for poking around as well so navigating a new part of the school isn’t just about figuring out the new gimmick for the area, things starting a bit simple but eventually pulling out new ideas to prevent the long adventure from growing stale.
Creatures can be found lurking around the school though, and Ikenfell’s battle system doesn’t feel like it was given the same degree of attention as its character writing. It’s not a bad combat supplement for the adventure though, but some of the promise in it feels like it might have been squandered in the low difficulty. Battles take place on a battlefield split into grid spaces, and when it’s a characters turn they are able to move to new positions before casting spells. While spells have recharge timers if they’re incredibly good, for the most part you use these abilities free from any points system at the cost of not really having any means of attack beyond them. Spells can only be cast at certain spots relative to your character’s position, so you would think moving your characters around the battlefield properly would lead to a deep layer of strategic depth. Spells can have very strange and almost arbitrary effective ranges though, characters often not able to hit things directly in front of them while their spell might have some strange condition like being able to target only four spots that are placed diagonally or a few rows above or below where they’re standing.
The game doesn’t lock you into anything until you attempt an attack though so you can reposition if you make a mistake, but it does feel like the wide range of targeting rules means a round of combat often involves having to undo your movement since you were a grid space off in your estimation of where you can attack. Characters do develop a gradually growing list of spells as they gain experience from combat though and fights are more interesting than using the same trick to kill the enemy over and over. The different reaches and whether they can hit more enemies does require you to consider your character’s attack options for the turn, and support spells can allow them to still be useful even if their odd grid requirements might prevent them from doing direct actions. Traps can be placed by either side on tiles to interfere with the positioning requirements of spells and stats can be buffed with spells or items, so battles do reward thought and engagement despite the unusual positioning requirements more a limit you fiddle with rather than a source of advanced depth. You can usually finagle the situation you want or at least avoid a rough commitment, but that also means you aren’t incentivized to do too many risky maneuvers whose outcomes could shake up your strategy or require greater thought to accomodate.
To make the action more involved there are a lot of other little aspects added onto it. Equipment in Ikenfell is rarely about buying strict upgrades as you often have to consider if certain small but meaningful trade offs are worth it. The stat numbers rise slowly as you progress so the difference between small boosts is appreciable but not absurd, the player encouraged to designate specialties like a dedicated attacker or healer in their fighting party of three characters. The player is also able to prevent damage or increase their own effectiveness with timed button presses, each spell having animations to clue the player in to when they should press a button for a boost. You can turn on automatic successes if you want to make getting to story segments easier, but the battle system is definitely more involved with them and the game does feel like it needs the small difficulty boost they provide. Meeting new enemies often involves them landing big hits before you understand when to block so there’s a tangible reward to learning what you’re up against, and having the danger of messing the timing up can lead to shifts in fortune in a fight. For example Ima has an incredibly useful albeit unfortunately loud spell that lets those hit by it regenerate health or a few turns, but if you don’t time the button press right the character won’t get this passive boon. If it was an automatic success it would be much too powerful, but the risk of it not working out means you can’t easily gain an edge the opposition will struggle to overcome.
Difficulty really does seem to be what hinders the battle system though. Battles aren’t boring since they do require thought and the right actions to succeed but the strategies involved aren’t as deep as they should be. It took until the final boss for me to really feel like I had my back against the wall and even then I had a lot of useful items I could have called on if things truly felt dire. The battles aren’t too abundant, if you fight each available one you will grow at a steady rate so you can keep up with the story, it more feels like the game could afford to be rougher with you rather than it feeling like it got the stat growth wrong. Perhaps the discrepancy in the damage inflicted by a failed defense lead to the balance being skewed this way so maybe more marginal rewards for timed button guarding would help it pack more punch than such heavy degrees of damage negation. The combat in Ikenfell ends up feeling more like solid action that supports the story well enough but certainly not the attraction it could have been if the strategy was properly pushed as the appeal.
THE VERDICT: The strong character writing for most of its core characters elevates Ikenfell into an excellent experience even though the grid-based combat could use more bite. The interwoven personal issues of the young heroes makes for many heartwarming and dramatic moments along the adventure that tie neatly into a mystery that is made more compelling because it keeps impacting the people you’ve grown to care for. Navigating the school and small touches to the combat like an equipment system that requires some consideration do mean Ikenfell isn’t coasting solely on its complex cast, and with a stellar soundtrack to draw out the emotions more, Ikenfell definitely makes a good bid for the player’s heart even if the battle system could have engaged the mind a bit more.
And so, I give Ikenfell for Xbox One…
A GREAT rating. The combat system does feel like the most limiting factor in Ikenfell besides maybe some of its art direction choices, but rather than impeding your enjoyment of other parts of the game it instead works as an injection of action but one that clearly could have done more to be compelling on its own. Battles do require the smart use of your spells and having the timed button press system attached leads to a sometimes dynamic shifts in fortune to change up how you approach your next turn, but it might have centralized a bit too much around that rather than having it be an extra layer to the difficulty. The plot spaces regular and boss encounters out enough that it won’t grow dull despite not realizing its tactical potential and only overindulgence really feels like it would really drag it down from being an appropriate way to add action to this story mostly focused on character interaction. The cast all feels like they come from reasonable places with their issues even if they need to learn how to address them properly and deeper flaws are given the right amount of room to slowly be overcome. Ikenfell is at its best when it’s giving us moments with its endearing ensemble who do have defining personal problems but can still bring levity and warmth to the story. This isn’t a procession of tragic individuals but people who need to work together to work through their complex relationships and individual foibles. To see them succeed and grow is given extra weight because you are given a good lens into their lives and thought processes, and with Ikenfell’s grand mystery tying heavily into such things you are also getting a growing narrative to build all of this up to appropriate dramatic heads.
The battle system is decent and has it moments, but if you decide to go to Ikenfell, it should be for the writing. It’s a heartfelt tale of character discovering things about themselves and working through issues without being needlessly saccharine or angling for unearned tearjerkers. Ikenfell assembles a cast of vulnerable but lovable young characters in a scenario whose own revelations can match the appeal of the personal ones had along the way. The strength of the character building is well supported by humor, an interesting world, and a superb soundtrack as well, so the adventure is definitely worth taking even though the combat merely does its job instead of adding to that symphony of successes.