A love letter to the 16-bit era, Arelite Core is a great indie addition to the JRPG library. With its excellent battle system and colorful cast of characters, this game is a great trip down memory lane.

I know it isn’t fair to judge a game by what isn’t there, but I was really hoping for a deeper crafting system. Arelite Core’s aesthetic didn’t hit the mark for me, but if you like what you see and hear, check it out. Flaws aside, there’s a heart to this game.

Arelite Core is obviously born out of a great love of 16bit JRPGs and a lot of heart has gone into its creation. The first thing budding game designers are taught, however, is to imagine a game they’d love to play but doesn’t exist and think about reasons why that game doesn’t exist. This sets them up to design games that no one has played and to attack as yet unsolved challenges. I feel like I’ve played Arelite Core before. I feel like I’ve played myriad versions of Arelite Core before. Therefore, although I can appreciate the love and effort that went into creating it, I cannot recommend that you pick it up over the fantastic classics of the 16bit era already available on various platforms.

I wanted to give Arelite Core a chance, and found little things to admire even while the package as a whole was a disappointment. It's pretty hard to forgive a game in which beating the final boss is greeted by an immediate unknown error that crashes the whole shebang though. I'm hopeful Dragon Slumber will be able to move on to better things in the future, because this isn't a very good advertisement of whatever talents it possesses.