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Freeware RPG that initially seems like it's got a very detailed levelling system, a large number of characters to experiment with, and an interesting battle system to play with. The problem is that the levelling and advancement is very poorly done.



In order to get stronger, you need to find better equipment after battles, get drops to change characters in battle, and use EXP/extra drops to increase skill levels. Skill levels are the most controllable, as you can easily dump lots of EXP into them. The problem, is that getting better flan types is totally random, and some of the higher level flan are missing some very crucial skills (only three flan in the game get Refresh Drop for instance). Some items are extremely important, such as getting a Major Shield Drop item or getting the drop that blocks status ailments at the start of a fight (giving you time to apply buffs), but these are very random - there's no chests to find, so it's entirely possible to get through most of the game without finding better ones.



Even when using Loot Drop to raise your luck stat to 99, it can be very tedious to get a team you want, as when a new flan appears you don't know what skills it has if you've never used it, and you can't choose which of your 4 characters to change flan on - it's entirely possible to drag around a flan you really want to change to a different one, but to spend dozens of battles unable to do so because they need to be the one to receive the new flan chance (instead of being able to choose who gets the upgrade).



Finding character/flan type upgrades is based on your luck (boostable to 99 by Luck Drop) as well as your current team strength. In the very first battle in the game you can boost luck to 99, and with patience get a team of rank 3 flan by manipulating this. Apparently flan upgrades have a 1 in 10 chance of appearing, so actually upgrading your characters and getting a team you want requires an amazing amount of patience, especially if you want to find and use the secret characters (rank 6).



It has several secret bosses and high level secret flan (rank 6) but powering up is so tediously random that it's not worth it. Even games like Wizardry that have a lot of random item drops to farm for still have a fairly linear element of levelling advancement in spells and abilities, but Legacy of Flan feels like luck (rather than skill or perseverance) plays way too much of a factor in getting stronger.



If you had the ability to choose which character to use specific flan type drops on, I suspect that would have made it a lot less of a hassle to come up with a custom team.



The game can also be a bit buggy - on a long play session it actually slowed down and ended up freezing in battle. In another battle against a large group of Brikats, my speed meters would not rise when they started attacking, leading to roughly 1000 HP on all characters getting slowly plinked down, while my healers sat there and ate it all, all over the space of about 20 seconds. I stopped playing and deleted the game at this point. There is a harder difficulty that's playable if you complete the game, but honestly it's not worth investing any serious amount of time in this.

- November 20, 2016Though it has a large number of skills, its execution leaves a lot to be desired.