Earthlock: Festival of Magic Wii U Impressions

Earthlock: Festival of Magic is a brand new turn-based rpg for the Wii U eshop. Yes I just said a brand new game for the Wii U! You do not see that very often, especially now that even Nintendo has abandoned the system for the Switch. So I have to admit I was pretty excited for this game. I love rpgs, I love the Wii U, and I think its great to play a new game on the system again. Thanks to the publisher of this game, Snowcastle, I was able to get a review copy of Earthlock. I’m still early into this game, but I thought I’d ofter some impressions of what I think of it so far! Is Earthlock: Festival of Magic a good game?

I wanted to like Earthlock: Festival of Magic on Wii U. I went into the game prepared to like it a lot. Unfortunately, so far, I do not like this game.

The main problem with Earthlock is obvious from the first time you boot the game up. There is a really long load time. You could definitly take a nap during that load time. I’m only sort of joking. This load time is the worst I’ve ever seen on the Wii U. Heck, its the worst I’ve seen on any system for awhile now. But you think, surely after that long time, the game is all loaded in and there won’t be anymore load times…

Nope, there are tons of load times. There are load times whenever you enter or exit a new area, a new room, or go into a cutscene. Its amazing that the load time for the battles is so short. The load times everywhere is, maybe not as long as the first load when you start the game, but still very annoying. Its just annoying how frequent and long these load times are. It makes the game hard to enjoy. My progress on Earthlock is not very good.

The frequent load times make me want to play this game less. Its such drag trying to play this game. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Earthlock doesn’t do a good job of letting you know where to go. For instance, in the area I’m in, the game’s graphics are so muddy that you can’t tell where some of the doors are in the game.

Earthlock also has some other annoying issues. The dialogue text in this game is ridiculous. The text should be bigger so that everyone can see it clearly. And the text bubbles with huge amount of text in them are just groan inducing. There is something much worst than the dialogue text though. The text for the battle system is so small that I think you must have to have perfect sight to see what the commands are. Oh and did I mention that Earthlock doesn’t have off-tv play? So forget putting the game on the gamepad and getting to see things up close!

Do I have anything good to say about Earthlock: Festival of Magic so far? Well…I guess, besides the text, the battle system seems alright. I am figuring out how to navigate the battle system despite not knowing what every command says. Oh and the Talent system is a kind of neat. The design of some of the characters in the game are not bad and some of the game’s graphics, like the first town you encounter or the overworld, are actually pretty good. None of this makes up for the game’s faults though.

I had high hopes for Earthlock: Festival of Magic. I’ve seen some really great Indie games on the Wii U and all of the trailers for Earthlock made me think it would be wonderful. But so far I just have to shake my head and hope I can get further into the game. I’m really struggling with Earthlock: Festival of Magic.

I dislike being so negative about Earthlock. I really wanted to love it. I’m not sure when I’ll have a review for Earthlock: Festival of Magic, but I will eventually have one. Please stay tuned to GamesReviews.com!