Epic Battle Fantasy 5 Review
Free Version Link: https://www.kongregate.com/games/kupo707/epic-battle-fantasy-5
Premium Version Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/432350/Epic_Battle_Fantasy_5/
Soundtrack Link: https://music.phyrnna.com/album/the-music-of-epic-battle-fantasy-v-composers-cut
Introduction
The turn-based RPG genre is one of the biggest genres out there. The rise of game makers like RPGMaker have made it so that pretty much anyone can create their own RPG without any prior game making or coding knowledge. While this is great for beginners to game development, it also means that the turn-based RPG genre has become oversaturated. There are dozens of RPG Maker games which all use the same assets and all look the same and even big budget games can feel very formulaic. I’ve found that because of this, it’s quite easy to get burned out on the genre. But despite this, there’s one game series which always manages to stand out as fun and unique: the Epic Battle Fantasy series.
Starting all the way back in 2009 as a flash game on Newgrounds and Kongregate, the series quickly managed to gain a following that only got bigger as the series progressed. With the release of the third game, the series exploded in popularity even further thanks to the addition of a vast open world, becoming one of the most popular games on Kongregate and other web game sites. This resulted in spinoffs such as Bullet Heaven and Adventure Story, and before long the game’s creator, Matt Roszak, was releasing the fourth entry in the series on Steam. This was met with huge success and an overwhelmingly positive reception.
Which leads us to now. At the end of 2018, Matt released Epic Battle Fantasy 5 to much anticipation. It was apparently going to be very different to other games in the series and act as a soft reboot. Caught up with other games at the time, I didn’t purchase it at first. But recently the game received a Version 2 update that added a whole bunch of new content, and I figured now would be a better time than any to jump in. Now, with well over 50 hours of playtime, I feel I’ve played enough to give it the review it deserves. So, is Epic Battle Fantasy 5 a good entry in the series, and does it fulfil its promise of being different from previous games? Let’s take a look.
Not your Typical Turn-Based RPG
While EBF5’s gameplay may seem simple and uninspired at first, the addition of unique battle systems that are new to the series help it stand out from the crowd. Chief among these are the cooldown, summon and weather systems. Let’s start with cooldowns. In previous games, each character had mana like most turn-based RPG’s. In EBF5, the mana system is completely removed and replaced with cooldowns. Most regular skills can be spammed as much as you want, but the most powerful and useful skills such as NoLeg’s Nine Lives or Matt’s Legend have cooldowns, meaning they cannot be used again for a certain amount of turns.
This system won’t be for everyone. It’s best for bosses as it forces you to be more strategic and utilise the character’s full moveset rather than spamming the same extremely strong skill over and over. However, cooldowns also ‘cooldown’ outside of battle, which meant when it came to most regular battles, I just opened up by immediately using my character’s most powerful attacks and waited for them to be available again once outside of battle. Overall though, I think it’s a positive change. I’ve usually found mana to be more of an annoyance than anything in other turn-based RPG’s while the cooldown system rewards experimentation and resulted in me using a bigger variety of skills than I would otherwise.
Next, let’s talk about the summon system. Almost every single enemy in the game, including the majority of bosses, can be captured and comedically confined in crates for later use. Capturing most enemies is simple enough. Get them to low health and make sure whichever character you’re using for the capturing has the ‘good luck’ buff and most enemies will be at your beck and call in one try. Tougher enemies and bosses will require more strategy such as debuffing them and giving them negative status effects before they can join your repertoire.
What these summons do vary greatly. Some simply deal damage to an enemy or multiple enemies, some give buffs and debuffs or status effects and some have completely unique abilities that can be extremely useful. For example, the ‘Blue Flybot’ summon inverts the buffs/debuffs of your party, turning negatives and positives into vice versa. This ability can allow you to completely turn around a battle by instantly making weak and vulnerable party members invincible killing machines. Using summons requires summon points which you obtain simply by defeating foes. The more powerful the summon, the more summon points it will cost. The summon system is a great addition that provides a myriad of (initially overwhelming) strategic options.
Finally, let’s talk about weather. Depending on the current area and other factors such as Lance’s nuke limit break, the battle may have a weather effect. This is a global effect that affects both your party and the enemies you are fighting. Depending on what the weather does, it can either be a blessing, a curse or a bit of both. Blizzard can freeze you or the enemies between turns. High gravity makes everyone heavier and more vulnerable to earth attacks. Air Strikes causes bombs, missiles and medipacks to fall from the sky between turns. This is by far one of my favourite additions. It adds an entire other layer to battles and makes them more interesting. Whenever I entered a battle with a weather effect I didn’t recognise, I got excited wondering what it would do.
It also feels like more effort was put into the enemy types in EBF5 too. Many of them have unique gimmicks you need to be aware of that force you to be more strategic. Creeps bounce around like a pinball, damaging your party as well as their own allies. Mirrors break when they take a lot of damage in one hit, giving the party member that broke them the bad luck status. Dolls damage the player they’re mimicking when hit, making dealing lots of damage to them in one go risky and dangerous.
There are other changes to the game’s usual formula as well. Steroids are character specific meaning there’s no reason to hoard them and you don’t have to choose who to use them on. NoLegs is now playable as kind of the ‘rogue’ or ‘thief’ of the group. Skills have been overhauled and streamlined. Again, not everyone will like these changes, but EBF5 is meant to be a soft reboot of the franchise and it does a great job of mixing things up. Overall, I think most of the changes are positive and help make the game stand out.
A Wealth of Content
If you’re looking for a game that will keep you occupied for dozens of hours, EBF5 has you covered there as well. Beating the main story without doing any side content whatsoever will probably take you around 15–25 hours and the wealth of bonus content meant I didn’t face the final boss until I was around 50 hours in. Earlier in 2020, the game also got a ‘Version 2.0’ update which added even more to do. You can’t walk five tiles without stumbling into a side boss or bonus area. There are over 100 achievements/medals to earn, a good chunk of which involve beating bosses on the hardest ‘epic’ difficulty. There’s a ridiculous amount of stuff to do if you’re a completionist and it manages to feel fairly fresh and new for most of it.
The biggest side content is the game’s bonus dungeons. These are exclusive to the premium version and provide a unique challenge. Enemies and bosses of these dungeons are usually much tougher than enemies you encounter in the main story and have unique gimmicks that you need to account for in your strategies. The boss, or rather, bosses of the Freezeflame dungeon are fought together. One uses ice attacks and is weak to fire and the other uses fire attacks and is weak to ice. You can choose to either fight them on the ice or fire side of the dungeon and when one is down, the other gets angry, gaining more power and the ability to attack twice in a turn. These dungeons aren’t required and even disable earning XP and money so you can’t grow too strong for the main content as well as scaling enemies and bosses to your level. They’re just a nice little challenge that you can do at any time, and doing all of them gives you access to some of the best fights in the entire series and probably my favourite moment in the game. The additions are more than worth the money.
Music To Your Ears
One of the most standout parts of the Epic Battle Fantasy series has always been the music. Since the second game, Phyrnna has been the main musician and her work has been consistently good since. EBF5 is no different. It’s probably her best work yet, with only Bullet Heaven 2 even coming close in my opinion. There are pulse-pounding battle themes, happy and friendly town music, and not so happy or friendly but instead terrifying and alien town music. This entry in the series has probably the biggest variety of tracks, and it culminates in the most emotional and beautiful track and moment in the EBF series’ history. I’ve already gushed about that moment in another article though and I don’t want to spoil it, so I won’t go over it in detail here. But as with the other games in the series, the music is still one of the best parts and more than worth the price of admission alone.
A New Beginning
As I mentioned earlier, EBF5 is a soft reboot of the EBF series. This means that as well as huge changes to the gameplay, there have also been huge changes to the story. EBF5 starts off without the series’ iconic heroes even knowing each other. You initially start with Matt and eventually build up a full party of five. Story has never been a big selling point of the series and it still isn’t, but it feels like more effort was put into it this time around. Although it’s nothing huge, the characters all feel a lot more fleshed out. Their personalities and tropes are still exaggerated, but it feels like there’s a lot more party interaction and that the characters are actually growing to like each other. Seemingly small additions like characters talking about their past and family help them to feel more human and interesting. I was impressed by Lance in particular and he quickly grew to be my favourite party member despite initially appearing as the least likeable.
However, it also feels like the story was made a bit too important. I don’t mean to say the extra effort isn’t appreciated, it’s certainly a nice touch. The problem is that the game’s story is tied into the gameplay, and this is never explicitly said or even really hinted at. There are multiple endings to the game, and if you want to get the best one, you either need to beat the game on the hardest ‘epic’ difficulty, or make sure all the characters like each other. How do you do this? By having them fight together in battle. It’s a bit of a grind, nothing too time-consuming, and you can get everyone on good terms just by doing the bonus content as you go along. It wouldn’t be too much of an issue if this mechanic was explained.
But unless you happen to read about the endings online like I did unintentionally, you won’t know to do this. While playing, you’re sure to use your ‘favourites’ more than others, even if all characters have their uses. I favoured Lance, Natalie and NoLegs for a good chunk of the game along with Anna occasionally, and this meant that I only had one or two pairs happy by the time I got to the final area. If I hadn’t had read about the mechanic shortly before I faced the final boss, I’m sure I would have been confused by a sour and confusingly depressing ending.
I understand what Matt Roszak, EBF’s creator, was going for. He wanted players to fully utilise all characters to their fullest rather than leaving two in backup all game, which was an issue in EBF4. I wouldn’t even consider it an issue if it was explained, but apart from a single NPC you can easily miss that only gives vague hints that the system even exists there’s pretty much nothing to indicate its existence. The characters don’t even acknowledge when the threshold is reached and they’re considered ‘friends’. Nevertheless, I liked EBF5’s story a lot. It’s still the humorous, (mostly) lighthearted JRPG you’re probably already accustomed to with some extra flavour.
Summary
Overall, I’m happy to say that EBF5 is one of the best Indie games you can buy and arguably the best turn-based RPG Indie game there is. Earlier games in the series were already amazing and special in their own right and EBF5 builds on this even further with numerous changes that make it even more fun and ‘epic’ to play. Unless you dislike turn-based RPG’s, there’s no reason not to at least try it out. You can play most of it for free on Kongregate and transfer your save to the Steam version if you decide to purchase it. The extra content is more than worth your money and will keep you occupied for dozens of hours at least. In fact, I’m not even sure Matt and Phyrnna can top this game. It’s by far the best game in the series and I’m unsure whether it can ever get any more ‘epic’, at least in the main series. If that doesn’t convince you to buy it, then I don’t know what will.
Presentation: 9/10 Unique and beautiful art style and animations.
Gameplay: 7/10 Can be repetitive, but has interesting deviations from the Turn-based RPG genre.
Content: 9/10 Beating the main story alone will probably take you at least a couple dozen hours and there’s tons of side content. My first playthrough took a total of 50 hours.
Story: 5/10 Good for what it is and clearly has some effort put in, but is mostly generic and somewhat forgettable. Achieving the best ending needs to be explained better.
Sound & Music: 9/10 Amazing; the soundtrack alone is worth the price of admission.
