JRPGs are a dime a dozen these days, so many take a single idea that was popularised from an older game and make that their entire project’s main focus. Adding absolutely nothing and presumably hoping to generate a quick buck, it can get tiresome to weed through some of these games just to find one that’s actually worth your time. Presumably that is why you1ve come here today, to see if the time and money spent in Chroma Quaternion is worth it.

Chroma Quaternion is focused around the four seasons, the justice they do to each season, alongside the 16-bit art style actually gives me distinct images of The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons. The characters are written in an easy to understand way, and, as a teacher, your professional subject is essentially how to be a JRPG character, before taking off into the world and meeting new characters and building up your party. The overworld is similar to that of early Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest games, but a bit more streamlined and linear for the most part. As someone who was never particularly good at the old ambiguous JRPGs, mostly due to a bad tendency of having ADHD kicking in and completely forgetting what the last character said to do, I appreciate having a quest list to tell me what the next step in the story was.

Chroma Quaternion‘s characters are pretty simply written, making it easy to follow everyone’s story and what they have to say, and the same can be said for the music. While it’s all fitting, suitable to the mood and tone of the world around it (bouncy in the spring areas, atmospheric in the winter sections), there wasn’t a whole lot that stood out and made me want to listen to the OST. With that said, the boss theme in Chroma Quaternion is bar none one of the best songs I have ever heard in a JRPG. With so much excitement and such a big hook to the instruments in it, you’ll almost want to make sure you don’t kill the boss too quickly.

One very big thing that I absolutely respect about Chroma Quaternion is how it actually respects your time. Exe-Create, the game’s developer, know that, while there are lots of people who want to get into JRPGs, a genre known for not exactly being very newcomer-friendly, not everyone has a ton of time to spend on them. This can be noticed on the game’s simplified, streamlined, but not less interesting list of quests.

You can also actually affect the frequency of random encounters you’ll face when exploring a dungeon. There is a crystal inside each one of them which allows to “customize” the encounter rate, letting you tone it down to just half of the normal rate if you’re not into the combat that much, but also letting you double the encounter rate if you’re into the game’s simple but efficient combat system. I also loved the fact that most dungeons usually feature another crystal located more or less halfway through their length, letting you, once again, modify its encounter rate as you see fit.

Long story short, KEMCO has, once again, published quite a unique and very enjoyable JRPG experience. While it may follow some simpler story bits, I actually appreciated its lack of over-the-top set pieces and emphasis on being laidback and easy to understand. If you want to tackle an old school JRPG, but can’t be bothered with the clichés and excessive grinding sessions featured in older Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest titles, then Chroma Quaternion is a pretty good (and cheaper) way to get accustomed to the genre’s tropes and mechanics.

 

Graphics: 7.5 While the graphics aren’t over the moon, everything has its place ,and the colour schemes all work with the variety of areas presented throughout the game.	Gameplay: 8.5 A typical JRPG battle system would make you think this is just another JRPG, but the innovations not seen elsewhere are where Chroma Quaternion really shines.
Sound: 7.5 Ideal and fitting music for all of the areas. While only one song truly stood out from the rest, it ended up being a real earworm.	Fun Factor: 8.0 All in all, one of the better JRPG hidden gems out there, sadly likely to be glanced over. With the fact that the devs obviously appreciate the player’s time, it’s worth looking into if you’re newer to the genre.
Final Verdict: 8.0

Chroma Quaternion is available now on Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, PC, and Mobile.

Reviewed on Xbox Series X.

A copy of Chroma Quaternion was provided by the publisher.