Antiquia Lost (PlayStation 4) Review

Antiquia Lost tells the story of Bine, a small town hero type who practically oozes "hero." He's a sympathetic, courageous, and adventurous young man who just wants to help. Soon, he meets, Lunaria, a charming young girl who kick starts Bine's quest in many ways, although there are many times where she feels like the main character. This does a decent job with character development, despite many of the characters feeling banal from time to time. Along the way, you'll meet others, some of whom join you, and the story unfolds.

Honestly, despite hitting many of the familiar RPG beats, Antiquia Lost feels like a very unique tale in many respects. In terms of gameplay, though, this is largely a standard affair. Move around from town to town, dungeon to dungeon, across a large world map, and fight random encounters and demons along the way. The pace is good, and while in many ways it feels rushed, a lot happens, even in the early hours. The game controls well and is easy to understand, regardless of what is thrown your way.

There are several other elements at work here though, and while they aren't revolutionary, they do a spectacular job of bringing the package together. Early on, the player is introduced to weapon refinement and amalgamation. Refinement is a lottery style system where the player uses tickets or diamonds to randomly create a new weapon or gem. Amalgamation allows one to combine weapons, adding stats to the base weapon in the process. Both of these systems are incredibly simple, but they work well and give you a sense of agency over how the game plays out for them.

There are also gems, which can be fed to Lunaria to increase her stats, or can be equipped to each character to raise theirs. There's a lot of customization available here, even if it's a very basic kind of customization. It is fascinating picking up a weapon early on, and watching it grow with your character, as opposed to just tossing it to the side and moving onto the next upgrade.

All in all, Antiquia Lost is an excellent title, though it has some issues of its own. One minor inconvenience is the lack of a cross platform save mechanic, although this doesn't really effect the fun factor as a whole. The game is available on both PS4 and PS Vita, and being able to share the save would have been a pretty nice inclusion for those who have both consoles.

The biggest issue here is the tutorials, as they get a bit desensitizing after a while. This is not to say that they are a constant burden. In fact, this does a good job spacing them out - it is how much they explain. There's a tutorial for almost everything, and not all of them do a good job of explaining things. Worse yet, this sometimes explains things, and removes the mystery entirely. Hidden passages are a norm on most maps, and the game has a tutorial for them, which is like giving someone the directions to their own surprise party and telling them it is happening.