Dragon Spira is an RPG developed by Exe-Create and published by KEMCO. It contains turn-based strategy combat, a deep story, and a good cast of characters. If you’ve played RPGs before, then this title will feel all too familiar in terms of gameplay. However, there are many extras within the game to help Dragon Spira stand out.

The story begins with an origin tale from one thousand years ago. The Divine created the land and six eggs infused with its power that hatched into Spirit Beasts. These Spirit Beasts were entrusted to keep the land in prosperity. However, they ended up angering the Divine and were punished back into their egg forms. All but one of these eggs were sealed away inside a volcano and were replaced by humans. For the next thousand years, humans cultivated the land until we’re brought to the present day.

The volcano erupts (the second time in thirty years, which caused monsters to appear in the land) and three eggs get shot out. Thus, our hero, Fal, comes into play. He’s part of the Guild who gets a mission to rescue two other members lost in the forest. They find the eggs and come across some enemies also after the eggs.

From then on, Dragon Spira is a cutscene, then explore a dungeon, defeat the boss, another cutscene, and repeat in a new area. The formula is pretty cut and dry compared to other RPG titles, but this game does have extra features about it to help keep it interesting and different.

First, let’s talk about the dungeons and battles. To get from one place to the next, your party travels over the world map, occasionally getting into a random battle. Once you’ve been to a certain town or dungeon, fast travel unlocks, which is a huge help. The overworld map isn’t too large or confusing, but the fast travel helps cut out a bit of time.

The dungeons themselves are pretty standard, each one having about three areas to get through. At the beginning of each area, there is a warp you can activate by stepping on it so you can fast travel to the beginning, middle, or end of a dungeon. Also by these warps is a beacon where you can change the encounter rate of enemies. For example, you can triple the encounter rate if you want to grind, or you can set it to none. The beacons also allow you to do three consecutive battles in a row, so I often did that a few times if I felt like boosting my party up a level or two before a boss.

The battles are simple enough, being turn-based strategy with your party having physical and magic attacks. Magic attacks are categorized by the elements: water, fire, wind, and earth, each having one strength and one weakness over the other elements. Enemies have an element icon beside their health bar. For example, if you’re facing a fire enemy, you’ll want to hit it with water attacks and avoid wind magic.

The turn order is listed at the top so you can strategize, but you can also set the party members strategy from the menu. You can customize the strategy however you want, but there are some presets you can choose from. For instance, there’s offense, defense, balanced, and support. Balanced means the characters will use all their attacks. Support means they’ll often use heal magic and items. I used auto battles often enough when I needed to grind for levels, and assigned my Priest to be the support since she had the most heal spells.

Jobs are also a feature in Dragon Spira. Fal is a Warrior and the guildmaster, Mian, is a Priest. You can also have characters be a Hunter or Mage and there are a handful of others to unlock. The customization options feel nearly endless. You can choose the difficulty at the start of the game, too, from easy, normal, hard, or very hard. Your party automatically heals their HP (even if one has zero health) as soon as they’re out of battle, though their MP doesn’t heal. Once they level up, everything gets fully healed.

Luckily, experience points and job points are generously given, so you can expect your party to level up and earn new job skills at a good pace. You can also turn on Battle Shortcut, which automatically completes the battle for you if you’re much stronger than the enemies. This helped when I needed to backtrack to previous areas and cut out some time.

But earning experience points and job points and leveling up isn’t the only way to make your party stronger. You’ll also earn Roulette Points (RP), which allow you to play a mini-game, Sugoroku. It’s essentially a board game, where you spin a wheel to see how many spaces you move. The spaces may give you a full heal, increase certain stats for your party, give you gold, and more. Enemies can also spawn on the board and if they catch up to you then you’ll have to battle them. The board game felt out of place, but I enjoyed it. I haven’t seen anything like that in an RPG before and even though it didn’t progress the story at all, it was a unique way to take a break from the dungeon grind but still be able to increase your party’s overall stats.

Dragon Spira is easy on the eyes with pixel-art graphics. It’s  also easy on the ears with fun, atmospheric music. Plus, with the difficulty options and customizations in the game, this title has high replayability. Sure, the story will always remain the same, but you can always challenge yourself in another playthrough. If you enjoy RPGs and are looking for something familiar, but also a little unique, then certainly pick up Dragon Spira.