Kage Akashi (影明かし)

Kage Akashi 影明かし (roughly, Bringing Light to Shadow) is an independent RPG by a developer called Foomal (website), made using the Wolf RPG Editor tool. I've been recording myself playing it for the past week or so, which should be up on Twitch for another few weeks. 

It's meant to be played through in just a couple hours. It has an incredibly fast and pared-down battle system, and the in-game fast-travel system (which can bring you to discovered points in the world or any locked door you encounter!) makes exploring and backtracking painless.

For the first half or so of the first playthrough, it's hard not to look at  all the abilities and weapons it tosses haphazardly out for you to pick up and feel overpowered. Eventually, a sense of challenge does set in, but you can switch equipment on the fly in battle and use as many items per turn as you want. If you get to know the systems, there's no reason to die, ever. 

It's a game that's meant to be optimized, for speed, for efficiency in battle. It knows that's what's fun about it, and is good at placing very surmountable barriers in front of you and enticing you forward with locked doors, so you always feel like there's a clear thing to progress to.

It's possible to play this without understanding Japanese if you're willing to experiment with a few trial-and-error menu selections, but I had fun trying to on-the-fly translate the names of items and moves, plus the occasionally-arcane speech of NPCs and bosses. Had fun playing it. Try it out or check out my videos on it (labeled Kage Akashi)!