It takes something  truly special for me to pay attention to a genre that I simply cannot gel with. Everyone knows about the success of games like Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley and other titles that ask you to dedicate your time and life into building a world that isn’t real. Earlier last year, I had my own revelation with Grow: Song of the Evertree, which I praised for its relaxing approach and adorable aesthetics. Maybe I’m just changing as a person, and games that used to annoy or bore me are now something I’m willing to put my time into. Or, more likely, developers are tuning in to designs and ideas that jive with me regardless of pretext. Playing the hell out of NBA Jam and NFL Blitz didn’t make me a sports game guy, it just meant that I found two titles in the genre that were fun as hell.

Brownies, the little development team behind EGGLIA: Rebirth, are doing something fascinating and, while not unique, are doing it with gusto and flair. Egglia: Legend of the Redcap is/was a mobile game from 2017 that I hadn’t heard of before this point, but I’m honestly a little surprised. It was created by veterans of the Mana franchise, and that certainly shows in the character design and color styling. Additionally, it’s a game that did so well that the developers, instead of continuing to just milk the smartphone crowd, wanted to bring a better, upgraded experience to the masses on the Switch, and that alone was intriguing.

With EGGLIA: Rebirth, you play the aforementioned Redcap, a type of goblin who is known for being hyper aggressive, but you’re quite calm because your horns have been broken off. Starting with total amnesia and no idea what’s going on, you’re quickly found by a fairy and an elf who beseech you to open up a Niebel Egg that they have, because I guess only redcaps can do that.

Turns out a majority of your world was sealed up into individual eggs and scattered across the lands, and they sure would like to have their planet back. Unlocking and discovering your world one egg at a time, your character (who I named Mambo!) will slowly revive other beings of different mythic races (gnomes, dwarves, brownies) and help them to find their place in the world. Also, over time, let’s get some questions answered, like who the hell are you? How did this all happen? And is there simply enough room for all this cuteness in one village?

EGGLIA: Rebirth is a crafty balance between town builder and turn-based exploration game. A majority of the playtime will be spent out in the field, where you have a limited number of turns to look around a grid-based level that you move across with a die. In so many turns, you have to get to the goal, and, in the meantime, interact with what’s available. You can/should cut down trees, harvest berries and extract minerals from different sources in order to have materials to help improve your town and meet requests from villagers. There are enemies that you can fight to get experience and also obtain additional items.

Plus, there are errant treasure chests to open up, as well as multiple paths to suss out the further along you get in the game. Eventually, you will run into bosses, which you can only defeat with the help of whatever friends you brought along for the journey and the elemental spirits that you’ve decided will join you in either defense or offense modes. There’s a lot to unpack from each fight, and, trust me, it only gets more complicated the further in you get. The best thing I can say here is that the basics can and will get you very far: by the time you really need to worry about spirit synergy and such, you should be fairly powerful and it’ll be easier to assign.

Back in the village is where the game takes more shape, and also where EGGLIA: Rebirth shows a bit of its roots in terms of being an upgrade from a mobile game. As more personalities are uncovered, you need to find them places to live, and also upgrade the homes they have so that they are significantly more comfortable. Each and every villager that joins your town has the potential to upgrade their relationship with you (relationship systems: because making friends should be points based), and getting them to be friendlier with you can aid you in combat and also get you better random presents throughout the day.

Also, some of the best things come with time, quite literally. The stones to help the elemental spirits evolve need to basically sit in the ground for real time hours, and the berries required to capture more elemental spirits need to grow at a clip of ten to thirty minutes, depending. There are items that’ll help speed along the growth of both, but it’s fairly obvious this is a holdover of some in-app purchase effect from the original EGGLIA title. Thankfully, with so many people to talk to and so much to do, I never found a time where I was waiting around for something to finish: I just set my “crops” and went about my life.

So, it’s a console port of a mobile game with upgraded graphics, new quests and better balances to help make it more appropriate to play on the big screen and not on a smartphone. We’ve seen this song and dance before. What, then, makes EGGLIA: Rebirth shine? For starters, the look and feel of the game is off the charts. If you have any interest in the graphical design of The Legend of Mana, you’re going to get it here in spades.

The world making is identical, mostly because the same people made the two games, and the sprite work is handled in the same vein but lighter. There isn’t as much grittiness, which is saying something, as the Mana series is like a fantasy novel dipped in anime paint. EGGLIA: Rebirth is so full of whimsy I’m surprised it doesn’t ride out on a unicycle. From the initial dopey looking redcap to the talking dog in a nightcap and even the gothic dark faerie twins, you’re totally inundated with characters who stand out visually and have their own appeal in all aspects. This is only further boosted by the amazing soundtrack, which gives me such echoes of the PS1 era that I wanted to dust off my copy of Chrono Cross and dive back into being sad.

Additionally, the writing, and I mean this, is hilarious. Brownies has done a fantastic localization job of giving each and every race of EGGLIA: Rebirth a different speaking style, and the way they all interact is top notch. Marigold quips and speaks like she’s from the bad part of town, Robin is proper and demure, and the dwarves all sound like they’re from Wisconsin. Though there’s no voicework to speak of, the textual delivery of everything makes it utterly engaging and so much fun to read. Often times, especially for games that I’m reviewing, I start to gloss over the filler text because it’s just preamble before doing something necessary for the main game. Not the case here: if I miss a second of Baba and Yaga scheming together, I’ve missed out on a great moment in the game.

Now, the combat is, to be honest, lacking. In an effort to keep things simple (probably as a result of the mobile beginnings), there’s not a lot to EGGLIA: Rebirth when you’re doing the stuff outside of town. You run and rerun the areas in order to grind out materials for the town, and fighting enemies is as simple as not dying. Hit them by rolling a decent number, and, if it’s really tough, use one of your overpowered elemental spirits to hit them harder.

There’s a great variety of spirits (the Pokémon of this game), and there’s a gatcha feeling to trying to get them and then upgrade them, but, once you have some decent ones, they’re the permanent ace up your sleeve. Hell, the game purposely gives you a good synergy out the gate of three powerful spirits that all mesh well together, and you don’t even need to change them if you just want to stomp. Basically, don’t bother getting this game unless you know that the combat and exploration is a means to an end, not the centerpiece.

Having said all that, I was utterly enchanted by playing EGGLIA: Rebirth. It gave me the sensation that I was watching a mythical legend opening up before me, and I fully plan to dive back into the game between other titles to see how far I can go in terms of building up my town even further. The potential to continually keep improving and seeing how well you do with certain characters as your BFF combat buddies is high, and the grind gets a lot easier once you can just buy raw materials from the local shop (I believe my purchases are funding an evil plan, but that’s not my problem).

This is a game where I wish the Nintendo Switch had a true multitasking system, because I would 100% run EGGLIA: Rebirth in the background while I planted my crops in Sakuna and did my daily challenge in The Binding of Isaac, then returning to EGGLIA to harvest my berries. It’s not a game that I could play for hours on end, but it’s one that I could see dropping into at least once or twice a day. For fans of the Mana series or ones who just love to dive into a world and bathe in the atmosphere, come on down: we’re always happy to see new friends in EGGLIA.

Graphics: 10 I am utterly enraptured by the visual appeal of this game.	Gameplay: 7.0 Everything becomes a little repetitive, but in a comforting way, not a boring one.
Sound: 9.0 If the gorgeous soundtrack didn’t abruptly change between tracks during conversations, it’d be perfect.	Fun Factor: 8.5 A blissful exercise in exploration and adaption, I could see myself picking up and putting down this game for months.
Final Verdict: 8.5

EGGLIA: Rebirth is available now on Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of EGGLIA: Rebirth was provided by the publisher.