Wanderjahr is an indie JRPG developed by Workyrie Game Studio. I was provided a free Steam key to write this unbiased review and to share my thoughts. There are a few things I don’t like, but before we get into the details of the game, I will quickly recap the main story.

You take control of a rookie squad that is part of UN Jariya Team 736. The story is about a research team discovering the universal source code, and with it they are able to accomplish almost impossible things with this power. After researching this code for years, the humans have decided to use this new power to delete all evil from the world. With two weeks left on their deadline, monsters have flooded out to attack the world. It is now up to team 736 to save the day to stop the rampaging monsters and find the source for their arrival.

Graphics And Sound
The first thing I noticed when starting the game up was the music, it sounds like it came out of a handheld game. As I listened to the songs play out they were reminiscent of Pokemon from the gameboy Advance era, while other songs reminded me a bit of Secret Of Mana from the SNES. A few of the songs aren’t bad, but a few have random singing that starts to play in the background that threw me off. I’m sure some will like it, but it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.

I originally compared this game to something you would see from the Gameboy Advance when I wrote the preview article, and after playing it for several hours, I am sticking to that comparison. Graphically, Wanderjahr has cute little sprites that move about the stage.

The animations in combat are very simplistic, with most of the characters only having a basic walking animation, and a simple attacking animation. I would compare it to classic titles like Maple Story in appearance. For the most part, the art style is consistent throughout the game, so monsters operate in a similar fashion, and majority of the parts that moves the story along or parts in the main menu are nothing but static images.

The options are simplistic, all you can choose from is audio levels as well as making the game window mode or full screen, but there is no way to adjust the resolution or change the controls. As you progress through the game, more items on the main menu open up, such as the world map to choose levels, shops, your inventory to manage your team and items, as well as the gallery mode to read about defeated enemies or character journal entries.

There is some “Engrish” text I found which made some of the entries hard to read, and since it didn’t tie directly into the story, I eventually just stopped reading the new entries altogether. I also found broken code for the Steam Cards, but it didn’t affect gameplay so it wasn’t a big deal to me.

Wanderjahr’s Real Time Combat
As for Wanderjahr’s combat system, it is automated, so the characters will move around and attack enemies on their own, all you have to do is manage the team to keep them alive. However, you can use the mouse to manually select a target, which will allow your team to focus their damage on a single enemy. Before the battle starts you can buy supplies and items, with most of it being in the form of junk food, that you use to heal your team or revive them.

You earn money and EXP by winning battles, but majority of the money you earn will be from monsters dropping it, which you manually have to click on to collect. Leveling up characters is interesting because you can choose where the EXP goes, so the person that deals the most damage could stay at the same level if you choose, and instead you can invest the points into another character to make them stronger.

Combat isn’t as simple as it sounds though, as the actual combat system slowly becomes more complicated as you go along. You start off with four heroes, and as you progress through the stages you will randomly unlock more heroes to assist you in battle, all of which have their own special abilities to help you in combat. Some of the characters are damage dealers, others are healers, buffers to increase your defense or attack powers, and certain characters can lower the defensive abilities of your enemies. You have to use strategy to plan out how to win battles to make the most out of what you have, especially when healing supplies are limited. As the stages progress you will need to swap your team around frantically to keep them all alive, debuff the enemy, while buffing your team to increase defense, so it did add a fun little strategy element that had just enough challenge.

Managing Your Team And Items
Wanderjahr uses a drag and drop system for healing your team and swapping out your team members on the fly during battle. You can only have four active heroes fighting at once, so you have to plan out who belongs in battle. I think that this system would be great for a mobile title, but I’ll explain why in a bit.

You can manage and organize your team’s items and party members before battle, and than use the drag and drop system to manage your members depending on the situation in battle.

You can also unlock special attacks from your enemies, or call in air strikes for devastating attacks to wipe out groups of enemies. As for boss battles, the enemies have a guard break meter, if you perform enough damage the enemies defense will shatter, allowing your team to deal out extra damage. You can also Right click on enemies using your mouse while in battle to take a look at enemy weaknesses to give you an edge in battle.

If a character dies in battle there are items to revive them, but you can only do so four times.

A Few Problems
I did find a bit of a problem with this combat system, especially with the first boss because it was extremely difficult to beat if you follow through the stages in order. The reason for this is because they only give you two damage dealers for the first world and the first major boss battle. But the other characters that don’t have physical combat abilities won’t attack if they have completed their actions. For example, the character Fibo has a poison like gun that lowers the defense of enemies, while the character Sprite can steal items from enemies.

If an enemy’s defense is lowered or Sprite has already stolen the item the monster has on them, those characters are now useless in battle because they can’t deal out damage or contribute anything to help end the fight.

This made the first boss extremely difficult, because if a character dies one of the four character slots will be greyed out until you revive them. If both of your damage dealers die, this essentially means that you have absolutely no way to deal out damage using your surviving team members. This problem evens out a bit by the time you make it to the second world, but your main damage dealers are always the most important because there is no other way to win a battle.

If you’ve ever played Pokemon and you were left with nothing but a Magikarp or a Metapod with no attacks to defeat the enemy, then you’ll be able to relate how frustrating it is to end up in a standstill with no way to win. Wanderjahr’s combat system sadly suffers from this, as your buffers and healers become a group of Metapods.

In order to win you will need to replay older stages to level up and get stronger, farming easy locations until you can tank the difficult levels that were giving you a hard time. Otherwise, there is no other way to scrape through a battle by telling your healers and buffers to go offensive and hit an enemy with their staff, because all the characters are locked to have one specific function.

My Overall Thoughts
Overall, I think that Wanderjahr is more of a Strategy game than an RPG, because it doesn’t have a lot of key elements that classic JRPG games had from the Sega, SNES or even the original Playstation era, so if you are looking for those things in this game, you aren’t going to find it. Dialogue, NPC interactions, adventure, a grand story about saving the world, its not really there. This is more like a battle arena strategy game where you have to plan out your actions to survive waves of enemies to progress to harder stages, to survive more waves of enemies. After that, you will unlock a new ally to help you defeat a new monster type, and then rinse and repeat.

Wanderjahr isn’t a bad game if you like this type of setup, but I think that the tag saying it is a JRPG is misleading. If you purchase this you need to know it isn’t like classic JRPGs. Wanderjahr has potential, but it is also very grindy since the only thing carrying it forward is the combat system. After the intro sequence, there is very little story or dialogue to keep you invested. You can read about characters in the Gallery from the main menu, which has a variety of entries for you to read about the characters and the world, but for me it wasn’t enough to hook me and grab my interest or make me care.

As a Steam game I can’t say it is worth the full price of $9.99, but I think it would be a fun mobile title under $4 USD. The clicking system would work perfectly if you could tap your finger to collect coins and items, target monsters, and drop new allies onto the field, but as a PC title it feels incomplete.

If I had to give the game a rating, I would say 6 out of 10. I think most gamers will be wise to buy it at a discounted price during a Steam sale instead of buying the game full price. If the developers ever decide to lower the price and make it a mobile title for casual gamers, I think they could have a fun Strategy game on their hands.

For additional information you can learn more by visiting the Steam Store page for further details, or by visiting the official Wanderjahr website.

Author: Nick