 Snustruck! Energy Breaker is yet another Japan-only RPG that not many people elsewhere in the world have had the opportunity to play, but around this time three years ago, the Energy Breaker Translation Project was finished. And take a moment to appreciate that because according to the people in charge, the translation took 12 years to complete, and be made available to be played in English by any curious RPG fans looking for a new kind of experience. And Energy Breaker is certainly that. This was developed by Neverland, who earlier created the Lufia games on Super Nintendo, and later went on to create the popular Rune Factory series. However, Energy Breaker has more of a tactical slant, which might drive some people away, because it's pretty complex with kind of a steep learning curve, not unlike games like Bahamut Lagoon or Treasure of the Rudras. I should point out, it's not entirely rigid in that manner, it is similar to the Lufia games in that you can explore freely, and often find tons of hidden items all over the place. Most of the battles themselves are scripted, but I did find that if you return to an area of a completed battle, it can start again randomly, so just FYI. The tactical slant is in the battles as you might expect, and the way they are here are unlike any other game I've played, it's pretty complicated. To begin, you have these balance points, that you use anytime you want to attack, move on the grid, or use items. Your ability to do anything revolves around them. If you take damage, you have less balance and consequently less flexibility. When you level up, you accumulate energy points that you have to allocate to either fire, water, earth, or wind, each of those having a light side and a dark side making for 8 total elements. How you distribute these points throughout the game will determine your character's strengths and weaknesses, and what your character can do in general. You find out what elements unlock which spells by finding or buying scrolls that contain explicit instructions, and those are scattered throughout the game. Needless to say, there's a lot of replay value just messing around with how you want to combine these elements as you progress through the game. And of course, each character has their own default traits that they bring to the table as well, so that's pretty cool. And like I said earlier, you are able to walk freely between battles and find items, and in addition to the scrolls, there's all sorts of other stuff you can find as well. Another interesting feature is that you can choose your mood when talking to people, like you can tiptoe on eggshells, you can be all pissed off, or all casual. It's a nice idea, but I don't think it really does a whole lot. I'm not sure anything changes based on what you pick. In the story you play as Myra, who's trying to recover her memory, a fortune teller lets her know the key to remembering who she is lies with this mysterious guy named Leon, and his nickname, the Whirlwind General, implies that he might be a bit difficult to find. So on her quest to find this dude, she runs into all sorts of other people that enlist her for help with various other quests, and it's off we go. This is a nice way for the player to get to know him, the Myra character, organically, and the story as a whole is pretty dang impressive for a 16-bit game. I won't give away too much, but I'll just say that Energybreaker gets into some surprisingly heavy themes like religion versus science and that sort of stuff. It's well told though, and I grew kind of attached to the Myra character, and for me personally that doesn't happen all that often in games like this. I'm not sure the story is for everyone, but I liked it, and I especially liked how it was told. So yeah, like Chaos Seed, which I looked at a few months ago, Energybreaker is another Japan-only RPG that's something a little different. As you can see, the game certainly looks great, and the music is fantastic too. The soundtrack is surprisingly deep here, so all the bells and whistles that you'd hope for in a game of this nature are all here and are all well done. So if you're into role-playing games that are a little off the wall, take a risk and try out Energybreaker.