Strangers of the Power 3 is a 3D RPG adventure game by the indie developer Tuomo Laine and is published by Tuomo’s games. It uses a classic turn-based combat system, like Final Fantasy or Pokémon. You control a 4 person party and are free to explore the world as you please! Just don’t forget the main storyline!
- Nostalgia: The game feels quite a bit like an old school RPG. One you’d play on your OG Playstation, like FFVII. The combat system is a classic turn-based system, you don’t have a quest log, you can’t save just anywhere. A lot of things about the game tugged on my nostalgia strings. It made me remember the time where I’d give the controller to my big bro because he’d be able to complete the thing that bothered me.
- Freedom: With these retro games you better pay attention to the story or you’ll get hopelessly lost. There’s no quest log, you can walk to wherever you please on the world map and there isn’t anything to push you back onto the main quest line! I love this! A lot of newer games hold your hand way too much, but this one makes you work for it!
- The controls: If you’re playing with a qwerty keyboard or a controller, you’ll be fine. But if you play with an azerty keyboard, you’ll get frustrated just like me. You can’t change the control settings, and the movement keys are meant for a qwerty keyboard. WASD to move on an azerty keyboard is a special kind of torture. At least I figured out I could use the arrow keys to move as well, but still, give us the option to change the keybinds at least!
- No customization: Your party setup can’t be changed, you’ll have the same characters in your party no matter what. And the characters themselves are also locked into their roles with no real options to change their playstyles. It’s boring and limiting and drags the entire game down. There’s no Materia to equip, skill trees don’t exist and it makes the entire progression feel linear, which is just a shame. Let me make my characters unique, let me experiment.
- Boring combat: Since there’s no customization, it makes the combat feel boring as well. Every character has its set role in the party, with barely any real choices to make. Sure, you got a few abilities so you got some options in combat, but it feels shallow. Combat is boring, unchallenging and just a chore to get through. Why would I care if I level? I’ll just get an extra predetermined ability that I’ll barely use. Like the ‘cure poison’ ability, which I only really used against the spider boss.
- Resource management: A joke, the mana costs are minimal, so you can just spam your spells either way. Health isn’t an issue either since you healer can just spam ‘healing’ for the entire fight, because she won’t run out of mana either way.
- The story: The story is boring, the characters are uninteresting and the dialogue falls flat. Normally I’d also say something about the bad jokes, but even the bad humor was an improvement over the flat conversations.
- The launcher: The game feels like a bad emulator. The game is run in a small window and you can’t even play fullscreen.
CONCLUSION
Score: 15%
The game is boring. It pulls on your nostalgia strings but that’s about it. I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone, if you want the nostalgia, just play FF7 on an emulator. Or even better, wait a bit and play the remake that’s coming out rather soon!
Developer: Tuomo’s Laine Publisher: Tuomo’s games
Played on: PC / Steam
Time to beat: The storyline will take quite a few hours, but there are also side missions.
Perfect for: A quick nostalgia trip, but that’s about it.
Steam Game Store link: click here
