Much like its rating suggests, EGGLIA: Legend of the Redcap is aimed at all ages. Its graphics and JRPG style also make it a perfect for lovers of said genre as well as those who are fans of its development team’s Legend of Mana. However, EGGLIA is not just another Mana game, in fact, it’s quite different! Depending on your taste and playstyle, this could be a good thing. Or not.

In EGGLIA: Legend of the Redcap, we get to explore the land as a gentle goblin boy who must navigate the world via a turn‐based RPG system while hunting monsters to gain experience and gathering resources on a hexagonal grid, using a turn‐based die combat system. As the game progresses and the player levels up, a series of mythical eggs are uncovered which can be hatched to unlock different lands in the world of Egglia to explore and gather materials to grow their village – in doing so, players can evolve a variety of spirit companions that will assist in future battles.

In the adventure through Egglia, players meet a host of companions throughout the journey and are able to build homes and grow a village for them. These homes can be upgraded and furnished with numerous fun decorations, allowing players to customize and decorate as desired.

EGGLIA: Legend of the Redcap delivers a memorable experience set in a new yet familiar setting. Players will find themselves instantly captivated with the beautiful world and amazing story that could only be told by the veteran team comprised of Shinichi Kameoka, Head Producer, Character Designer and President, CEO of Brownies Inc.; Michio Okamiya, Head of POWERCHORD STUDIO; and Yoko Shimomura, Composer.

Playing as little redcap goblin Chabo -or whatever name you choose to give him-, you land in a little empty village -which you can also name!- and are tasked with opening eggs where different lands that make up the world of Egglia have been sealed away. Each egg opens up a new area to explore and in them you will find new items, materials, friends, and monsters. As you complete quests, you’ll unlock more eggs and restore Egglia to its former glory.

While this sounds like Legend of Mana, this is where most of the similarities end. Each area you unlock is made up of one or more levels which you must complete to move forward. Each area is a hexagonal board filled with monsters, trees, and treasure chests, which you advance through by rolling a die, much like in a board game. Your attack strength depends on what you roll, with the higher numbers dealing more damage when attacking monsters.

You don’t have to fight on your own, however, as your friends can accompany you and boost your stats as well as help you collect materials while you advance through each stage. The more you hang out with your companions, the closer your relationship, and the more they can help. Friends’ morale drops with each adventure but is replenished in real time, or with potions if you have them. The higher their morale, the more they can help you. You can also collect spirits to help you in battle. These can be leveled up by feeding them potatoes and you can even evolve them with special stones. Where do spirits come from? You are give 3 at the beginning, but after that, you must prepare carefully selected meals -which require a TON of hard-to-find ingredients- to attract them.

Working your way through each stage, you will collect materials and food items by cutting down trees and defeating monsters. As you meet more villagers and grow the village, you will receive more and more quests. Each quest, including expanding your own home, requires tons of materials; as does making good food to attract spirit helpers. In order to do this, and to level up, you will need to grind through each stage several times. There are sub-missions in each stage which, if completed, will earn you bonus items. These submissions are usually simple, like bringing along a specific friend, a certain combination of spirits, cutting down all the trees, or completing the stage several times or in under a certain number of turns. Do expect a lot of grinding in this game.

Chabo is a young goblin boy who one day suddenly falls from the sky onto an empty village. There, he is met by a beautiful elf girl named Robin and her little fairy friend, Marigold. Worried at first because goblins are aggressive killers, Robin calms down when she notices Chabo’s horns have been cut, turning him into a harmless little guy.

It turns out that Robin and Marigold are from Egglia, a kingdom filled with fantastical creatures which was suddenly attacked by vicious ogres. The only ones capable of fighting the ogres were the redcap goblins, known for their love of battle. The war grew more and more violent between the aggressive races, until Kuff the wizard sealed the land into many eggs to protect it and its inhabitants. As luck would have it, only goblins are able to crack those eggs open and so, as the only goblin in the village, Chabo must find the magical eggs and release the lands from within them.

EGGLIA: Legend of the Redcap is completely dependant on having an internet or data connection as everything is done online, which may be a turnoff for some; especially of you’re on a plane, for example, and want to use that time grinding through levels. The mechanics are somewhat easy, though somethings aren’t clearly explained, like when a sub-mission calls for ATK or DEF “Rune Links”. We had to look up what exactly that meant, and by everyone’s answers on the forums, we weren’t the only ones unclear on this or other parts of the game.

There is a lot of interaction with other characters, which requires a lot of reading through puns and jokes and mostly pointless banter, which -if you just want to play the dungeons- can get a little annoying. However, the writing and translation is extremely well done and, if getting a feel for each and every character’s personality is your bag, you’ll certainly enjoy this aspect. This also helps to move along the story, along with the beautifully animated cutscenes when you enter a new world or start/finish quests. However, if you don’t care for all the talking and scroll too fast through the conversations, you might miss a vital bit of information. There are tips and info in the loading screens, but they pass so fast, there’s no way to read the whole thing.

The stages/dungeons are easy to navigate, as you roll a die which decides how many spaces you can move, and if you’re attacking, it decides the strength of your attack. Spirits are elemental -fire, water, wind, light, and shadow- and can be used for attacking or as support. When you form your team, you can have up to three spirits with you; two as Assault spirits and one as Support. They all have different abilities in both of these categories and you can arrange your teams depending on the enemies and their elemental types, as well as the stage’s sub-missions. When “Assault” spirits attack, their range varies according to their powers, sometimes reaching several spaces, which is useful when surrounded by enemies. Support spirits, on the other hand, are usually there to replenish your HP, raise your defense, increase your resistance to certain elemental attacks, and more, so their range is only the spot you’re standing in at the time.

To acquire food, you must beat monsters by attacking them either yourself, or with your spirits, remembering that the higher number you roll, the stronger the attack. To acquire the materials to build homes and furniture, you must cut down trees and other giant plants strewn about the stages. Each world has different monsters and plants, which give you different materials, foods, and other items. The number you roll doesn’t matter when cutting plants down, so there’s no worry there. Another way to acquire items is by opening trunks, for which the number rolled also doesn’t matter.

In order to level-up your spirits, you need to feed them potatoes, which you can grow if you feed Tao Xin -a plant goddess of sorts- buds you find while going through dungeons so that she can turn them into potatoes. The time it takes to harvest potatoes varies and it’s in real time. To evolve your spirits, you require stones. These stones are grown much like potatoes, except you give them to Tekko to eat and… digest them? in order to turn them into stones. This is also done in real time and the wait varies and is at least 5 minutes.

Acquiring spirits is a whole nother ordeal. You must prepare foods to attract the kind of spirit you want, but you need to have all the ingredients necessary, and the cooler the spirit, the more exotic ingredients you need, and the more time you need to leave the bait out at the shrine to catch them, which varies between 5 minutes to an hour. And if you repeat a recipe, you’ll just find one of the spirits you already know! Luckily, if that happens, they’ll give you items in return.

The maps, world illustrations, and character designs are all beautiful and reminiscent of a more streamlined and less pixelated Legend of Mana. The music is perfectly matched to each land, like Elysian Meadows sounding lively and campy; while Sela Swamp has a calm, soothing soundtrack. The monsters and spirits range from odd-looking to simply adorable, and even the most terrible of beasts is kind of cute in its own way. EGGLIA: Legend of the Redcap is truly a beautiful and relaxing experience aesthetically.

The bosses are basically just much stronger, more relentless monsters that you need to be well-prepared for with leveled-up spirits and friends with full morale gauges. The music accompanying bosses also wonderfully matches the gravity of your being faced with these creatures.

As for side quests, there are many. There is no instance when you don’t have at least a couple of pending quests on your to-do list. And, have I mentioned that there’s a lot of grinding involved if you want to get anything done? For example, just to expand your home, you require 20 “Brawny Logs” and 30 “Grass Logs”, but Dunkel -the gnome who’ll be doing the building- wants to expand his business too, so you need to find him a couple dozen “Flora Logs”. All of these logs are found in different areas and you will only find a couple in each stage runthrough. This is not counting all the other stuff the other villagers need or want, or the quests from Robin to simply finish certain levels. As you continue, you meet more villagers and creatures, and they all want something from your little goblin butt.

You can also receive lottery tickets from friends online and send them some as well, which can be used to acquire special items once you advance enough to get a lottery tent in your village. Not that you’d know this, as it’s never explained other than in the loading screens, which, as mentioned before, pass by way too fast to read, so you’re left mostly in the dark.

EGGLIA: Legend of the Redcap is a beautifully crafted JRPG, complete with quests, side quests, quirky characters, tons of maps, the ability to choose your companions and with stages/dungeons that are balanced between really tough and easy-breezy.
Slowly uncovering new worlds as you complete quests is fun and is even more interesting because you can unlock content by connecting landmasses to each other in different arrangements!

There is definitely a lot of work to be done, but you also get to customize everything, from the village you and your new friends live in, to the placement of land and the size and decoration of your home and others’.

It’s overall a very entertaining game, especially for those who like JRPGs and would enjoy a little bit of a board game feel to shake things up. We only wish there was more in the way of explanations of how the world works instead of having to figure things out by trial and error, or sometimes, by pure accident or coincidence, as you can end up missingout on some cool upgrades and such.

Overall, EGGLIA: Legend of the Redcap is a fun game for those interested in the genre. Again, if online play isn’t something you’re happy with, or if you get bored playing the same levels over and over, this is not the game for you. However, if you like don’t mind the online play and enjoy grinding, leveling up, customizing your world, and developing friendships with NPCs and PCs alike, you will absolutely love saving Egglia and becoming part of their big, quirky, happy family.

Brownies Inc. has shown that they can push the envelope and take risks with their games and we’re looking forward to what else they come up with in the future! Have you played EGGLIA: Legend of the Redcap yet? Do you have any tips to share? If you haven’t played it yet, did our review motivate you to give it a try? Share your experiences with us in the comments below!

Nya~!