• Price: $19.99
• Developer: Stegosoft Games
• Publisher: DANGEN Entertainment
• Release Date: February 10, 2022

A review code was kindly provided by DANGEN Entertainment. We thank them for being able to cover this lovely game from developer Stegosoft Games.

Check out the AMA recently held by the developers on Reddit here!

From the developers of Ara Fell, Rise of the Third Power is a retro-inspired RPG with a world loosely based on the political environment in late 1930’s Europe. (I think it’s safe to say that Rise of the Third Power’s land of “Rin” will be facing a lot of difficult situations here.)

As soon as I started the game, it asked if I wanted to disable lights flashing. (Yes. Always yes.) You can also adjust the intensity of the shadows in the game to help you see things more clearly. There’s also a colorblind mode! I really appreciate the accessibility options, because they are really important but are often not included in games.

The game’s story starts you off as Corrina and Rowan, who are currently attempting to kidnap a princess. They seem pretty certain that at least one of them is going to die doing this (which, you know, makes sense since they’re trying to kidnap royalty, heavily guarded by soldiers). The music that plays here reminds me a bit of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme. One of my favorite tracks was what I affectionately dubbed “Riverdance metal.” 😂 I really like the soundtrack!

You go into battle with soldiers, and the game starts a battle tutorial; apparently, you can build up MP in battle by either gaining it automatically (Corrina) or by taking damage or using specific abilities (Rowan). After you finish a battle, your characters’ MP is restored by 50%, which I really appreciate because of the convenience!

Corrina and Rowan have some interesting skills. Corrina seems to focus a lot on weakening enemies by making them fall asleep or giving them the “bleed” status effect. Rowan uses “Booze” to heal his HP and increase his attack and defense (which may not be the best message to send).

When you level up, you level up as a party; this is meant to simplify grinding for when your party expands. You receive talent points when you level up, which you must distribute among the individual party members.

Something I like here is that should one of your characters die in battle, they revive at the end with a small amount of HP. This was a relief when I inadvertently got Corrina killed in the first hour with no healer in sight! 😂 I also appreciate that when you attempt to kill your enemies, it shows how much damage you’ll do before confirming your choices so you can be more strategic in battle.

I will say that once I got the healer in my party, it took me a few hours to realize that when it says “restores HP to one or more allies,” I had to press right in order to have the spell cover all three of them. Simply pressing up or down only targets one of the party members for the spell. I had initially assumed that I’d get an upgrade for the spell at some point that would let me target all party members, but it was just me not understanding how to do it.

Eventually, you’ll get your hands on crafting materials and recipe books to upgrade your equipment; in this game, you don’t buy new equipment and simply update it with new crafting options! I particularly liked the names of Aden’s equipment options (“Socks of Suffering”).

When you explore the castle, you may come across the sleeping King and Queen; for some reason, your objective is to kidnap the Princess, preventing her marriage to the Prince of Arkadya. So you leave the King and Queen alone and continue on your quest.

I really liked the third party member, Arielle, because she uses a cannon and has skills that target multiple enemies. I probably would have preferred a healer at that point in the game, but she’s still pretty cool and handy! I ended up keeping her in my battle party for the entire game.

Eventually, I find a makeshift Inn, which lets you restore your health, but also has a menu with items that will buff your stats for a few battles. You can select as many or few items as you want/can afford, too! What I found perplexing was the exhaustion meter; I didn’t really understand the purpose of it. You use an item called “Second Wind” to help cure some of the exhaustion levels. I didn’t ever have my characters hit 100% exhaustion, so I’m uncertain as to what will happen there. I’m also unsure of the all of the factors that determine how exhaustion builds up, although it seems that keeping a character out of battle will help decrease it? Some of the game’s mechanics could perhaps have been explained a bit more.

The enemies don’t reload until you sleep at an inn or ask the traveling merchant to respawn them. They all appear on the overworld – but only within dungeons and not on the world map. There aren’t random encounters surprising you in this game, which I liked. I also very much appreciated that they included warnings before you enter an area where you will fight in a boss battle, allowing you to save before proceeding.

Speaking of the map, for the most part it was easy to navigate and figure out. However, there was one long side quest called “Marceline’s Quest.” The required items were not terribly difficult to find if you take the time to explore, but I could not remember where the quest came from when I went to go turn them in. I probably traveled across the entire world map 3-4 times before realizing it was in a side street in Riverton. Most of the quests will include information on where they originated, but because this one said “all around the world,” by the time I was near the end of the game I couldn’t remember its origin.

Anyways, while traveling across Rin, I finally obtained a fourth party member, and you can only have three in battle. At the start of each battle, you can select who you want in battle with you – and you can also swap them out mid-battle. I particularly liked the fifth party member, Aden, who summons demons and reminds me a little bit of Yu-Gi-Oh’s Bakura. I also liked that whenever there were back-to-back battles, I could select the party members I wanted to use again.

I thought that they did a good job fleshing out the backstory for the heroes of the game, which can be difficult when you have a larger party. Arielle’s sass frequently made me laugh, which was often necessary to contrast the seriousness of the world on the brink of war. I highly recommend exploring the entire map in order to complete quests with additional character development.

After around 40 hours of gameplay, I finished my playthrough of Rise of the Third Power. While I was not completely satisfied with the ending (and wonder about the potential for a sequel with the same characters), I came to love many of my party members over the course of my playthrough. My favorites probably had to be Rowan, Arielle, and Aden. I wish I’d gotten a little more of a sense of closure for some things. But overall, I really enjoyed the handling of the plot. While there were some elements of the story that I predicted, others were pretty surprising to me.

Switch it ON or Switch it OFF? Rise of the Third Power is a profound game that respects your time with its convenient leveling and equipment crafting mechanics. Some of the mechanics could have used more of an explanation. The plot can be quite serious, but the game’s writing does a good job of balancing the darker sides of the story with some much needed cheer at the time. The soundtrack is one of my favorites in recent memory. I would really love to see a sequel because I enjoyed the game and its characters so much. 8.5/10