Players who love fast movements will love Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire. Decision making plays a critical role not only in combat but during moments that you must make a choice in leading your empire. Maybe someone is stealing from your empire. Do you then choose to have that person executed or simply imprisoned? These choices affect not only morale but also buffs and debuffs that are applied to your warriors instantly. Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire will be an action RPG that makes players think of every action made as quickly as possible to win.

Being an action RPG title, Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire allows players to manipulate four characters at once as they fight in consecutive battles per stage. Choose wisely your team of warriors prior to battle and then go into stages where you’ll face several waves of foes from various shapes and sizes. Developer YummyYummyTummy made sure to give Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire a unique feel not only in the 2D art style but also in how a lot of traditional elements of a RPG are nonexistent. Expect a story that has deeper meaning and context as well as fast gameplay that feels fresh and kinetic. Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire will make you feel as if you are leading a battle and time is not on your side.

Princess Cecille is facing a kingdom that is falling apart all around her. Her empire is slowly facing various trials and tribulations that seem to warrant its inevitable end. After Cecille’s father—the current king—dies, Cecille is left to rule over her kingdom as well as inherit a strange talking grimoire with an odd thought process. It is up to her to save her dying land by removing those who aim to ruin all that Cecille’s father built. However, in Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire, not everything is at it seems…

Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire plays in a very interesting manner. When you’re not in combat, Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire is bare boned. All you’ll be doing outside of combat is equipping minor items—or Gemstones as they are called—and choosing the next stage to go to battle or watch more narrative. With no leveling system—Exemplars do evolve though when certain demands are met—party members just need to switch out for your own play style which at times is cool but again gives the game little in terms of RPG elements. The greater elements of Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire lie with the main gameplay. Trust us folks, Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire shines with its combat.

In combat, players take control of characters known as Exemplars—souls of fallen warriors—and each of the four characters is assigned to one of the face buttons. In the back lies our princess—or Laendur, if you’re on the PS Vita—and the Exemplars must keep them safe. Each of the Exemplars has a limited amount of AP—or ability points—that allow them to attack but they begin to gradually refill as time goes on. However, Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire incorporates a guard system and combo meter that keeps battles fresh and tactical. Those who button mash will get slaughtered quickly so players need to learn to time defensive blocks and attacks to pull of strong moves and keep the flow of combat in their favor. If all your Exemplars die and your main character is hit, it’s either retry the battle or stage.

What’s also very interesting is the other element that takes place in combat. After fights, occasionally a message will appear on screen in the form of a situation occurring. Players must choose what to do—there’s always three options—that greatly affect not only the story but the current stage you’re fighting on. An example of this can be in the form of a coup taking place and the game asking what you will do. You could be natural and allow the people to side with who they feel is right, you could have the leader executed, and/or you can bribe them to stop. Your choices will give your party of Exemplars stat bonuses or debuffs depending on the scenario and will change the story’s path in unseen ways. We kind of wish we could see how much change is actually occurring—if it’s obvious that we somehow missed it—but it offers some replayability to see what can be done differently in a situation.

Now, while all the elements above seem to be perfect, it’s where those same elements hurt Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire. While combat is fun and the fast paced choice system keeps you on your toes, these same elements become repetitive very quickly. Fights boil down to learning how to time attacks and defense and then most of the challenge from regular enemies is eliminated. Bosses are a bit more complex but after a few moves you can easily determine their patterns. If you do want a challenge though, you can play the game in One Life Mode where even one death restarts the whole game.

Graphically, Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire is very impressive. The 2D sprites and background are very well animated and detailed. Characters look stylish and unique as well as some of the various enemies you’ll face. However, we would have liked more variety in the sprites. Within the first few hours you’ll see the same enemies a lot with just slight differences in colors and appearances. Though this is a small issue as the new recruitable Exemplar you gain are really different and very detailed.

One of the things YummyYummyTummy takes pride in is that they have some well-known voice actors and actresses taking the helm of the main characters. While we’re glad to hear Xanthe Huynh—Persona 5 fame—helming the princesses, we at the same time feel these voice actors weren’t given enough lines. Too often voices aren’t even used so while it’s impressive in terms of whose acting behind these characters it feels underwhelming in the grand scheme of things. Though what doesn’t disappoint is the music which even though is reused a lot still impresses us and never gets grating as the hours fly by.

Finally, let’s talk about Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire’s story. While we can’t describe the PS Vita version—as that has another protagonist and view of the story—what we can say about the PS4 version is that we weren’t too impressed. The dark truths and story twists that present themselves in Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire are decent but not that thrilling. We here at Honey’s Anime would have liked more background story and the lack of talking party members—aside from Cecille and the Grimoire who together—can’t keep the story afloat. The evil intentions of the Grimoire do make the story go forward but as we progressed we felt ourselves not caring. That doesn’t mean the story is horrible mind you but you’ll find yourself not caring what happens and just want to get to the next battle or big event in hopes something changes.

Overall, Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire takes several steps forward and a few steps back in the action RPG genre. While the ideas in play are really cool, they can feel bare bones—especially in the equipment side—and gets repetitive too fast. However, despite the repetitive nature of the combat and gameplay elements we still felt Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire was a lot of fun in short bursts. The gameplay ideals and mechanics in short bursts can be a lot of fun and definitely challenging at times. Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire we feel is definitely worth the asking price and we here at Honey’s Anime think that alone says a lot.

Our time with Fallen Legion Sins of an Empire felt worth the price of admission. What is cool is that for those who preordered—and if you have a PS Vita—you get the chance at getting two games which are two perspectives of the same story. Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire isn’t perfect and suffers some odd design choices here and there, but for what it’s worth the risks YummyYummyTummy took in Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire offer up a fun action RPG that we haven’t seen in awhile. We hope you enjoyed our review of Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire and would love to hear from you as well. Comment down below and keep your eyes focused for more game reviews from us at Honey’s Anime.