While nostalgia is often to blame for blurring over weaknesses and fogs up negatives, Full Circle has leaned heavily on it and for the better.
If you ask people of a certain age about their favourite game then it’ll almost certainly be one of the ‘jRPGs’ of the 90s. Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy 7. The two of them, despite being a generation apart, inspired a wave of games that we can still see the ripples of today. Full Circle isn’t just a small ripple though, it feels like it contains some of the initial energy that kicked it all off.
For a start, its world toes the line between 2D and 3D, with sprite-based characters that stick out against the PS1-style backgrounds. However, unlike the PS1 classics, Full Circle’s backgrounds aren’t pre-rendered and stretched over paths, with most areas being wide and open to exploration – often even layered over each other in vertical levels. A lot of effort has gone into making it look like you remember, rather than how it was: backgrounds fade and fuzz as you climb ladders, there’s almost always a foreground object that makes the scene feel busier, the map screen is rife with places to visit. None of these were the case in the PS1-era, but as I played through Full Circle at Gamescom, I could have sworn that they were, and that Full Circle was a tribute, rather than an improvement.
And that’s the big thing. Full Circle, even in its early, demo form that I played, already clearly stands on the shoulder of giants, and uses the nostalgia that would often work against it (as we see when people discuss RPGMaker games) to strengthen it. It’s not just mechanical or design either, the storyline — which follows a group of outnumbered survivors, battling their way through a world that initially feels like a corruption of our own — is also instantly familiar.
I did run into an issue, however. While the areas of the demo were incredibly well detailed, the camera shifted its facing angle (cinematically behind the characters) at times, which was disorientating. Combine that with hidden interaction points and no indicator to show direction or objective and wider levels can start feeling like mazes. Full Circle, at least from my time played, is best when its levels are tight, linear, and rife with dialogue.
Full Circle is expected to release on PC later this year.
