Sometimes I have a tendency to request things based on what a trailer shows me, rather than what the game actually is. At first glance, Marchen Forest (formerly known as Marchen Forest: Mylne and the Forest Gift) looks like an RPG similar to the Atelier franchise. Upon actually sitting down and playing the game, however, I realized that it is nothing like the Atelier franchise that I thought inspired it.

Marchen Forest seems like a game that doesn’t really know what it wants to be, mostly because it is 3 separate-ish games that constitute an overarching “storyline”. The game is broken up into acts, which represent the evolution of the game itself. The first act was the entire game when it released on Steam back in 2018, then act 2 released as DLC. Now, with this revamped version of the game, the west gets both of the previous acts in English, as well as a new act with new mechanics.

The first act is a sort of Point-and-Click puzzle adventure of sorts, where you play as Mylne, a girl living in a mysterious forest. Her adoptive grandfather is an alchemist, and you spend the first few hours of the game following Mylne’s desire to learn to be an apothecary and make potions. Sadly, this was nothing like the Atelier games. There is no synthesis, there is no real alchemy, and you just undergo a myriad of fetch quests until you finally reach a “boss” at the end of the act.

It wouldn’t be bad to have the game be an adventure style puzzle game if the dialogue was any good. However, the game seems like a drug trip that has bizarre pacing and nonsensical progression. Sometimes, if you don’t look up solutions to progress, you may be fumbling around for a while until you accidentally stumble across the solution.

The second act shifts into a dungeon-crawler like Chocobo Mystery Dungeon but more low-budget. You have a food bar and a health bar, and the combat with enemies is reaction-based in real-time. You have to time your attacks, blocks, and evasions so you can avoid enemy attacks and parry them. However, the dungeon-crawling aspect of this game is incredibly difficult and doesn’t provide much in the way of enjoyment.

For example, you can’t heal during the dungeons. You are meant to progress until you die or teleport out. You retain all your combat levels if you die but lose any items you acquired. There’s not much incentive to push on through the risk of dying though. If I’m honest, there’s not much incentive to progress at all really. The story just has no urgency to it and nothing to make me want to continue on.

This feels like a common theme throughout the game really. If there had been more time put forth to polish things like characters, storyline, and gameplay mechanics, then the game would be better off overall. The first act has decent enough mini-games like fishing and trivia, but they aren’t all that impressive compared to other games I’ve played.

For someone who watched this game grow over the years on PC, I could see possibly finding enjoyment in the new Act 3, with new mechanics and presumably a whole new style of gameplay. I say presumably because I just couldn’t stomach the dungeon-crawling sections long enough to get there. I wanted to like Marchen Forest, and I appreciate those who do, but it just doesn’t work for me.

The visuals are cute, the characters are designed in a way that isn’t totally offensive, but the game just feels like several things were missing from the recipe. If Marchen Forest looks to be your cup of tea, then by all means give it a look. However, if you’re thinking it is a suitable substitute for an Atelier game or some other RPG, this is not that type of game.

A Nintendo Switch review copy of Marchen Forest was provided by Clouded Leopard Entertainment for this review.

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Marchen Forest

$34.99

2

Score

2.0/10

Pros

• Cute Visuals and Soundtrack
• Decent-ish Mini games

Cons

• Horrendously Overpriced
• Lackluster Gameplay
• Chaotic Presentation
• Gameplay Needs Work
• Feels Unfinished or Unpolished