Flowstone Saga [Review]
RPG Flowstone Saga stands out from the pack with its unorthodox puzzle battle system.
Flowstone Saga. Credit: Impact Gameworks
Flowstone Saga is a sci-fi fantasy RPG from Impact Gameworks, developers of Tangledeep. While the gameplay follows the tropes of JRPGs, the game features a unique battle system that sets it apart from other games I’ve played in the genre.
Mirai and her pet fox, Sprig, live in New Riverstone, a tiny village on a remote island in Ocean’s End. She stumbles on ancient ruins and gains mysterious powers she can use to repair objects, manipulate elements, and fight. Over the course of a sprawling narrative, she’ll help build up her village, take on marauding pirates and imperial military invaders, and learn more about her new abilities and true origins.
Flowstone Saga. Credit: Impact Gameworks
You explore the world in a 16-bit style JRPG top-down perspective, with art resembling Squaresoft classic Chrono Trigger. Conversations with other characters appear in textboxes with large, detailed, expressive portraits. Quests open up new areas on the island map, which you access from a list. Most of these are small outdoor dungeons; the game only has a handful of larger ones where you’ll delve deeper.
There are no random encounters in Flowstone Saga. All enemies appear in the world, and it’s not hard to dodge most of them if you like, but it’s worth battling them because they don’t reappear after they die—this isn’t a game where you can grind. The enemies you see are your only opportunities to earn XP.
Flowstone Saga. Credit: Impact Gameworks
The combat is different than what you would encounter in other RPGs. Every fight takes the form of a puzzle game that resembles Tetris, though Flowstone Saga goes to great pains to differentiate itself from that classic puzzler. Pieces are not tetrominoes—they are made up of anywhere from two to five blocks. You attack by clearing lines, but you won't get far if that’s all you do. You can also attack and boost your power by matching groups of three blocks marked by yellow symbols and can execute special attacks as long as you have enough mana. You can target your hits at specific enemies you fight in a battle, which is crucial because you can interrupt their special attacks. You can equip and level frog spirits to change the available shapes of pieces that will drop as you fight.
While the way you fight is novel, it gets tedious after a while, especially in the latter half of the game, when the battles get longer, even against trash enemies. Monsters throw attacks that have special effects on your board that you must be wary of, but even then, it doesn’t add enough interest or variety to the gameplay. I spent the last act of the game avoiding as many enemies as possible because it no longer felt that gaining levels would make much of a difference as long as I didn’t get sloppy when I fought more challenging enemies.
Flowstone Saga. Credit: Impact Gameworks
I enjoyed the game’s story; it kept me playing through to the end. However, it’s not without its problems. It meanders, with overwritten dialogue that often doesn’t add much to the narrative or characters. It also takes far too long for the story to significantly address the strange powers that Mirai gains. I would have expected new information about them to be more gradually revealed, but the plot doesn’t return to that issue until after the halfway point of the game.
Flaws aside, I found myself compelled to play Flowstone Saga through to the end, which took me around 12 hours. It’s a solid RPG experience that stands out from its crowded genre thanks to the risks it takes with its unorthodox combat.
Flowstone Saga is available now on PC (Steam).
Overall Score: 7/10
Played on: Steam Deck
