Monochrome Mobius: Rights and Wrongs Forgotten

If you're in the market for a mostly typical JRPG, and you can stomach some low budget presentation along with slightly flawed gameplay, you could do a lot worse than Monochrome Mobius. It's one of those games that feels like a heartfelt effort, and that might be just enough to outweigh its problems.

Monochrome Mobius is a solid first attempt at a JRPG from Aquaplus, but falters due to a number of plot, pacing and user interface concerns.

Monochrome Mobius: Rights and Wrongs Forgotten lays a solid foundation, but its many flaws make it a game that is likely to only be welcomed by die-hard Utawarerumono fans.

Monochrome Mobius: Rights and Wrongs Forgotten is a tale of two games. The storytelling remains a strong point and is what keeps you playing. The combat, however, is a bit vanilla and the exploration drags the overall experience down. Fans of the series will still want to play it for the story, characters and world building. Newcomers, however, might feel differently.

Monochrome Mobius: Rights and Wrongs Forgotten is a below-average JRPG in almost every category. But, it has a fantastic Grandia-inspired action ring combat system that fans of turn-based JRPGs should experience. The story is good, despite its poor presentation. I would recommend Monochrome Mobius to fans of turn-based JRPGs, who are starved for more games in the genre. But there are a lot of excellent JRPGs getting released right now, and the combat won’t be enough for casual fans to prioritize it over other genre offerings.

Monochrome Mobius: Rights and Wrongs is full of interesting nuggets of narrative revelations for fans of the long-running Utawarerumono visual novel series, but its pacing problems and lacking quality make it much less suitable for newcomers than it should be.

The expanded Utawarerumono franchise might never elevate beyond the most niche of niche properties, but it is a wonderful, positive contribution to video games, and Monochrome Mobius continues translates this from a blend of visual novel and tactics to a traditional JRPG with complete success. This is a beautiful, heartfelt and sweet little game that, at around 30-40 hours, doesn’t outstay its welcome. It also reminds you that sometimes a determination to tell a good story really is better than AAA-blockbuster production excesses and flashy and overly complex gameplay gimmicks alike.

Monochrome Mobius: Rights and Wrongs Forgotten is a partially successful experiment, as Aquaplus' inexperience in the JRPG and the tight budget have influenced almost all aspects of the product, starting with the obsolete graphics sector and a combat system not entirely in focus.

Monochrome Mobius: Rights and Wrongs Forgotten is a perfectly serviceable RPG, but with so many great alternatives it's hard to recommend.

Monochrome Mobius: Rights and Wrongs Forgotten is an attractive first entry for newcomers while being an opportunity for fans to get to know the origins of some characters of the series. Using a classic RPG formula, the game has everything it should need to satisfy genre fans, yet it lacks a voice of its own as it takes no real risks.