Fallen Legion Revenants is an Action JRPG Indie developed by Yummy Yummy Tummy and published by NIS America. Taking place in a fictional world, Inspired by… the events of the 1918 Pandemic, released in Feb 2021 for very ironic timing. The world is being devastated by a disease known as the Miasma, which starts as a slowly lethal respiratory disease but progresses into a mutating Zombie Plague. A colony of healthy survivors have taken shelter in the floating Welkin Castle, which was a former prison ruled by its Warden the Sorcerer Ivor.
The game features Dual Protagonists. Rowena is the titular Revenant, having been Ivor's right hand before being wrongly executed for treason. With her young son imprisoned and starved for her perceived crime, she can't move on, but initially cannot do anything either. A young member of Welkin's ruling council, Lucien, has found a way to contact her spirit and arm her with Legendary Living weapon spirits called Exemplars. Together they plan her revenge and the liberation of Welkin castle from Ivor's tyrannical and capricious rule. She and her party being spirits can travel the blighted country without fear of disease, while Lucien feeds her information and uses materials she sends back to him to gain favor with Welkin's populace to start a revolution.
This game is a sequel to YYT's earlier game, Fallen Legion, which was an evolution from their earlier mobile game Trigger Knight. Other than a few name drops and the mechanics of Exemplars, the games are independent as they take place 100s of years apart.
The game features a battle system that borrows the 1 button per party member combat from Valkyrie Profile, timed blocks from Super Mario RPG, the level design of Endless Running Game, and a light grid system in real time fights like Mega Man Battle Network. The art taking cues from 1920s fashion, Odin Sphere, and Castlevania. It also has a series of choices Lucien must navigate similar to a visual novel like Telltale Games.
Tropes found in Fallen Legion: Revenants.!!
- Action Girl: Protagonist Rowena, while only being able to attack through the Exemplars or some spells, does the majority of the game's combat. The Female Exemplars themselves (Burgundy, Jacquine, Kali, Valeria, Evania, Dardenelle) were heroes from the past. Evie (reanimated), Rayne, and the Goddesses prove to be formidable combatants too.
- Anyone Can Die: Rowena starts the game dead, but she's trying to get better. All but 5 of the NPCs can be permenantly killed by your choices, and it's impossible to save 1 of the 4 councilmembers from creating a vacancy for Lucien to fill. Lucien himself is supposed to die to take Rowena's place fighting for the Epilogue
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only command 3 of the 12+ playable fighters.
- Art Shift: The Sprites look like Vanillaware Characters with realistic proportions. The face portraits closer to Castlevania, and the Fullscreen art for special scenes in a style not quite the same as either.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Basically all of Chapter 6 as Ivor pulls the castle into the Cognitive Realm, but special mention to Lucien "weakening" Rowena's opponents with various puzzles.
- Bittersweet Ending: There's two ways to finish Chapter 6, with the former being rather melancholy. The standard way has Lucien trapped in the Dying Ivor's mind, so he dies and becomes a Revenant but is able to teach Rowena how to resurrect herself. With special key items, you can choose to save Lucien from Ivor, but doing so causes the Oracle/Human Save Point to complain that the story can't proceed like this since no one can command the Exemplars while alive. To keep you from messing the narrative further, the Oracle joins as a playable character. The Epilogues themselves have mixed outcomes. Of the 6 endings on Rowena's path, only one is truly happy, with a cure for the Miasma being found. On Lucien's path it's even worse, with the "happy" endings all involving his love marrying another man with a sordid past and him stuck indefinitely as a ghost.
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Breather Boss: The Tormented Duke only attacks with Revenant casts, meaning you never need to block anything except his getup attack from staggers. - Combat Exclusive Healing: While every mission starts the Exemplars at full, HP is healed mainly through attacking on while standing inside the Celestial Grace spell. Averted with pumpkee treasures, but they'll only help one Exemplar and are static to certain portions of the level. Therefore, it can be wise to leave a single enemy alive to heal up before a new fight.
- Combatant Cooldown System: Every Exemplar has 3 AP that only recovers when they are standing idle.
- Combos: Hitting the enemy at least once every 4 seconds and not letting the enemy hit you unblocked grows a combo count. At certain hit counts your damage multiplies significantly and Kali's final mastery activates.
- Early Game Hell: Each chapter unlocks a larger Mana Pool and new mechanics to recover mana, stronger Archeus, and more options to handle rough situations. On top of that, the Secret Boss of Chapter 2 hits harder than most lategame opponents, has very high defense, demands rapid dodging of his casted spell, and is one of the only things that can bind your party. The main boss of chapter 2 is much harder than those that follow as well unless you figure out the gimmick to neutralize it's minions.
- Fantasy Conflict Counterpart: The plot is a fantasy world's take on the 1918 global pandemic.
- Forced Level-Grinding: Averted; there's no traditional levels. However each Exemplar has 4 Masteries that work like achievement quests (Block 30 times, Push 100 times, etc.) Having more masteries completed allows you to wear more accessories, but you can only actively wield one mastery and the passive 5th mastery from completing the other 4 at best.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: When Rowena is cut off from Welkin in Chapter 4/5 Lucien cannot help her and you can't return there between levels. When Lucien is trapped in Ivor's mind in Chapter 6, he's not there to mix Rowena's potions and she's not corporeal enough to mix them herself until she revives and takes Lucien's place in Welkin.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: For the sake of playability.
- Two Non-Player Characters can actually become secret playable Exemplars. You can use them anytime after you've unlocked them, even if they die in the plot.
- Lucien takes over the Exemplars in the Epilogue. Despite being a scientist/sceptic and demonstratively poor at using the Exemplars at first, he'll be just as competent with commanding and casting as Rowena. Interacting with Syrene suggests that learning magic is significantly easy as a Revenant.
- Golem: Golems of the 3 elements are encountered in Chapter 6 and the Epilogues. Each can counter either your attacks or blocking, something no other creature can do. An Epilogue Sidequest for Gideon has you battle the ultimate Golem created by Ivor with the ability to counter multiple things.
- Jerkass Has a Point: The Chapter 2 Boss warns that revolutionaries don't think far enough ahead. True enough, Lucien's plans never go as smooth as he thinks they will.
- Mental World: Ivor takes all of Welkin into a world of linked consciousness in the final chapter.
- Multiple Endings: There are two ways to finish the final chapter, and various possible epilogues after depending on the player's decisions.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Most of the plot, to provoke the populace into overthrowing Ivor. Both Rayne and Ivor call you out on various crimes.
- Chapter 1: Poison the food stores.
- Chapter 2: Stop replacement food.
- Chapter 3: Crash the castle.
- Chapter 4: Take down the emergency shields by killing the loved half of the twin Goddesses.
- Chapter 5: Stage Lucien defeating a giant horde of monsters.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo: A Hidden Exemplar, Legate, wields the Exemplars from the first Fallen Legion.
- Redemption Equals Death: Inverted. Dying turns Syrene, Larkin, Rayne, and Evie into vengeful murderers, anyone else who dies optionally was either innocent or unrepentant at the moment of death. After Chapter 3, you can Save Opal or Nigel at the cost of the other- this second chance turns their life around. Saving Opal has her quit drinking and become actively involved in the council. Saving Nigel makes him realize he should stop assuming Ivor will take of everything.
- Shout-Out:
- Barmaid Weer's fantasy book series, Lord of the Rhombuses, is part Lord of the Rings, part Game of Thrones, and even has a Moby-Dick reference baked in their somewhere.
- Drakina's mythology includes a biblical flood.
- Status Effects: Burn acts like JRPG poison. There's also Chill and Shock which act like slow for different gauges. Seal (mute), Cripple (don't move), Sap (don't act), and Petrify from one endgame enemy. Other statuses lower attack and defense. Blight prevents the unit from healing. Everything except Seal and Cripple works on boss enemies; but players cannot inflict Petrify, nor can they cause Sap without Burgundy's Random debuff mastery.
- Stripperiffic: Surprisingly averted in a T rated JRPG. There's no sexy monster girls and the female characters all wear period attire, except for Kali's hunting rags and Valeria's Steampunk cosplay outfit, which are still very sensible.
- Tennis Boss: Drakina's final fight.
- Unblockable Attack: Magic that targets Rowena instead of the Exemplars must be dodged instead. Anything else can be parried for zero damage, even endboss supermoves.
- Victory Pose: There's one at the end of each level. Some remarkable ones include Evania gaining Red eyes, Burgundy removing her mask but facing away from the camera, and Grimwald dropping his hammers to let birds perch on him.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Archeocetes, the Flying Whale, has 3 lifebars instead of 1. It also becomes impossible to stagger in the final phase without reflecting it's 1 shot kill attack.
- We Cannot Go On Without You: Inverted. Rowena loses her form if all three of her Exemplars are dispelled at the same time. She can regenerate them indefinitely with enough time or with her life spell.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Myra disappears from the plot regardless of whether you intercept her warning regarding the castle sinking. She's gone from the castle too in Chapter 4, only if you complete Edwin's quest in the Epilogue do you learn Ivor killed her for experiments.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Lucien's plans have little regard for the means to their ends. Rowena can earn control of the Epilogue by calling out or rejecting his ideas.
