 STEAM DRUNK! Up front I gotta let you know that Tyler, if something classic games provided me with a steam key to play this one, it's Shadows of Adam, a 16-bit JRPG styled game from the same vein as Stuff Like Dragon Quest or Lufia, so if you've played those games, or really any turn-based RPG from Squaresoft or Enix or Neverland back in the day, you get the general vibe that Shadows of Adam is going for. The question is, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Does this game only exist to prey on people's memories of games they might have played 25 years ago, or is it its own thing? This game marks a tricky line between simply replicating stuff from the past and refining old ideas and giving them a little bit of a modern spin, so to speak, and that's not to say this is just an old game with a new coat of paint, but I can see it how it would come across that way. I think Shadows of Adam manages to become its own thing well enough, as long as you keep in mind that you're not going to find any original and groundbreaking never-before-realized game mechanics or whatever. This is like a newer rock band covering an old song and giving it a couple modern updates and a new wrinkle here and there. One thing this game does well is dungeon design. Maybe I'm in the minority, but when I play a game like this I like to wander around everywhere and talk to everyone, and Shadows of Adam rewards that mentality by putting all sorts of treasures and odd little side quests here and there. It keeps you engaged as you move from battle to battle. Don't worry, there's no random battles here as all the enemies are on screen to be approached, a la Chrono Trigger. I will say getting everything in the tower early on got kind of tedious. That might slow some people down, but there's at least some nice gear in it for you if you go through the trouble of finding everything. The combat system has your typical physical and magic type attacks, only there's no MP. This game has an AP percentage meter. Magic attacks drain a specific percentage of that meter, but the end of each turn earns back each character a certain amount. This is kind of interesting because if someone's percentage runs low, you have to use up a turn to boost it up as a way of creating your own ether I guess. I think the AP meter is a good idea and a nice way for the combat system to stand out a little bit, but ultimately I was never at risk for it to become much of a challenge to manage. So while the AP system is kind of a new wrinkle, it's still kind of the same old stuff that you'd expect. I will say the move set is fun. Who doesn't enjoy a good suplex? I love that move and it's particularly fun to do it to one of these oversized bosses. The boss fights are where the combat system is at its best, they're balanced reasonably well without being too easy or too cheap. Onto the story, which starts in a village named Adam, so no, don't assume like me that Adam is this big dude who stands around in daylight casting shadows or whatever. Anyway there used to be magic, there was a big war, the war ended, magic went away, fast forward to current day when out of nowhere this gal, Azrael, is able to wield magic, which scares the crap out of all the villagers of Adam to the point that they blame everything going wrong in their village on her. So in order to do right for the village, she and her companions, Kellen and Curtis, go down into this nasty pit of thorny vines to try and get to the bottom of what's really going on. They find a magic book that's somehow embodied Kellen's father and things go on from there. The story arc is fine, but the real highlight here is the dialogue. It's nice to play a game like this where it actually feels like how real people would talk once in a while, plus there's some funny lines here and there. So yeah, Shadows of Adam is pretty good, the older game it comes closest to in terms of tone and layout is probably Luffya 2 Rise of the Sinistrals for Super Nintendo. I don't think it's as good as that game, but I will say if you liked Luffya 2 you would enjoy Shadows of Adam. There's some great pixel art here, the music fits the game really well, and it's evident that the people that put this game together have spent a lot of time playing JRPGs of the early to mid 90s. I wouldn't call Shadows of Adam great, but it's definitely not a shameless nostalgia bomb either, it's pretty good and a worthwhile playthrough.