caravan stories is a game that's far better than I think it ever got credit for, it came with a lot of hype with it because it was stylistically very similar to the older crystal chronicles games, which i think are some of the coolest FF spinoffs, it carries that energy well and i even seem to remember the games even shared some developers, though I'm not sure they ever actually did since it's so hard to find credits for this game, but even with the hype that came with this it just kind of came and went, never even releasing in some regions like the EU and quietly dying on console this year, it's a real shame because this game is amazing, it's one of the best games I've played this year and one of the best gacha games I've ever played, this was a very special experience and one I'll find myself treasuring.

the first thing that I just need to talk about is the games visuals, it's so pretty, like absurdly pretty, like one of the best looking games I have ever played pretty. it uses a really cool style of shading that reminds me a little of how Naruto shinobi striker did its shading, but just taken to a whole new level, because of the games very small areas it uses this shading super well because the game can handle it and it means every area of the game is super high detail and just beautiful to look at, the characters too are super high detail and the shading always gives them so much life and style, it's something special to look at, it makes me wish we had more games that look like this, I loved just walking around this games environment and taking in the sights more than I did many games actual loops and stories, I could leave the autowalk on and still just relax and watch the environment go by, if I did that in say FF14 or many other MMO's I don't think it'd have that same entertainment value, it's a real testiment to how nice this games world is to exist in, i could just walk around and take in the sights all day and still have a better time than i could in a lot of other games, sure it's not perfect because many zones can often be samey, every race has at least one grassy forestry zone (though the ogres do have a nice rainforest with rain effects to boot and the dwarf one is a big junkyard) and some like the elf zone and the human zone are more or less only these types of environment, but others like the dwarf regions with their snowy mountains and deserts do make up for it a little I think, that snow area especially rivals even the best snow zones in even the best rpgs, you can even find penguins there, the lizardmen have some desert and the gessy also have some tropical and deserty zones too, though that is an unlockable race and it will take a while to get to them. i daresay it's almost like a vision into an alternate future, where the highly detailed ps2 and early ps3 environments JRPG's tended to have never went out of style, only growing more and more dense and more and more detailed as the generations went on, it's really a sight to see and i mean it when i call it one of the best games ever made, the game in general feels very of this era, even down to how rudimentary the gacha and combat mechanics are, they feel like they're from a time far older than when the game actually came out.

the gameplay is a little weird though, while a lot of it is pretty standard with equipment and leveling up and all that, the games combat is all just autobattles that you can kind of control, but you don't have much reason to, you pick your party members and let the battles play out, which isn't all that boring thanks to the cool art style and the super varied party members, but it can for sure feel a little weird to have such little direct control over things, I do like it though. there's also a cute little home base building system, where you build things for your caravan like crafting benches or collectors for the games currencies or stuff to upgrade your abilities and you place them around it, slowly leveling it up and gaining more space and floors as you build more things, unfortunately this is on a timer and it is super slow but it's at least not pay to win seeming since you can't just buy that currency, though you can skip the waiting times with one currency, which I'm not a fan of at all, but I love the models and stuff for what you build, they remind me a lot of cool ps2 renders like from something like rogue galaxy, which is what this caravan system reminds me of the most I think, with placing down the items, a lot like something like dark cloud or dark chronicle. that's more or less all i could find to do , you can explore towns and get items, you can collect some characters with the gacha and grab fast travel points and there seemed to be some high level arenas and PVP if you want that, though those weren't really things i was super interested in, the game felt like it was the kind of thing that could be very P2W for those areas, considering how little actual gameplay strategy there is. you could automate so much of the game, it feels kind of weird, like you can hit a button and have the game auto-walk you to the next objective, something i assume was put in because of the games mobile version, i actually did like this though, it let me sit back and really take in the environments and music, which was very welcome since these are the games best points and it felt nice to just sit and watch my character walk around, it made grinding a heck of a lot easier too which is very welcome, though it does mean the games interactivity can be super limited unless you plan explicitly not to use this. you actually can beat the whole game in a super short timespan too, at least all the main questlines, i beat most of them in a day and you could probably 100% the main storylines in 2 easy if you really tried to, which is nice for an mmo, it's very succinct and doesn't waste your time, easy as heck too and near the end they even upped rates of XP by a large amount which was really generous of them.

the stories and structure is a little strange too, so first you'll pick a race and they're pretty varied. humans and orks and elves, dwarves and multiple factions of furries, then you go through a few zones, do battle and level up, meet some new party members, like maybe an old gambler who was a former important mage or a flirty archer who moonlights as a vigilante and eventually hit the centrepoint of the game, a huge city that is set in what looks like Aztec or Mayan ruins, then you hit a brick wall and pick a new race to redo it all, it's a very strange structure, no one really gets much of a payoff and it just leaves you with nothing much to go on, on top of being pretty repetitive, it's not too bad since the characters and zones are really varied, though the autobattle systems and auto-walking you can do make the game feel pretty automated a lot of the time which, combined with the repetition, could probably make this game really unappealing to some, but for me? i like how short the campaigns are because it let me see a lot of what the game had to offer in such a short timeframe, plus it gives it a really fast pace which is something i think more MMO's need to try having, FF14 for sure could learn from it here. the bunny people do have a slightly more conclusive ending at least, but not as much as you may want, most of the really in depth stories i think were saved for the events and gatcha characters, of which the game had tons, including anime crossovers! generally the story that is here isn't great though, similar beginnings with the big enemy faction making an appearance where you'll be sent on a quest to get help or backup, with you going through the towns and zones and picking up the prior mentioned party members before getting to the end and being denied help or given an "ill see what i can do" and being told to just try a new campaign, it's built on an anticlimax almost, which does hurt the game a lot, but the worldbuilding in those stories is really solid at least and i think the cast is super varied and likable.

the music is also absolutely beautiful, Moreso than the graphics it might have been what sold me on the game as i first started to play, it was amazing, it was catchy, it was some of the best music I'd heard in a game all year. Yoshimi Kudo was the main composer here, he's been super prolific over the years with games like dodonpachi resurrection, bleach heat the soul 5 onward, vanillaware games like muramasa and 13 sentinels, games like grand kingdom and grand knights history, criminal girls, denpa men, caladrius, devils third, raiden 5 and Alice gear aegis! more recently even working on Elden ring, guy has some real talent. Masaharu Iwata is even more renowned, he worked on magical chase, ogre battle, tactics ogre, final fantasy tactics, bloody roar 2, shadow hearts, evolution, mushihimesama, stella deus, FMA dream carnival, bleach heat the soul, mana games, ff12, opoona, some vanillaware games also like Odin sphere and grimgrimoire and he also worked on devils third. Mitsuhiro Kaneda of fantavision, bleach HTS, FMA dream carnival, metal slug 6, tactics a2 and revenant wings and dozens of other games shared by the rest, like alice gear, 13 sentinels and devils third. Azusa Chiba also shares most of the credits of the prior people, but she also worked on stuff not mentioned like lord of arcana, fate unlimited codes, phantom breaker, valkyria chronicles 3 and 4, another devils third moment and granblue versus. Kazuki Higashihara who has more or less only worked on games mentioned before, same with Rikako Watanabe . killer list though, all things considered.

the OST very much reflects that list of talent, every track was memorable and i find myself listening to them all the time. there's almost 200 tracks i can find and that's just the stuff that's been preserved, there's almost too many for me to give many specific shoutouts but the main theme which if you have sound on will be playing right now is a specific highlight i love, it sounds very FF11 to me, like a playonline track which is as high as praise comes from me, i love the town themes, the victory theme, even some of the battle themes, they all give similar energy to that era of FF, that playonline FF energy, with the piano in tracks especially and the strings, "open the map", "toasting dance", "folka village", "baldu pipe town" "scott battlefield" and its night version both are all great examples of this, the latter night theme especially, they're all real treats to listen to. "mauriana region" sounds right out of the hamauzu handbook and is a particular highlight, same with its night theme which would fit right in with some of the better tracks from something like FFX or musashi: samurai legend, "gherisk arctic theme" and its night theme also as well as "mt shofell" and its night variant, "tenement of the blue spirit" plus the elf battle theme "sword of aurous" (this one is just a hamauzu battle track i swear they nailed his style" are all worth mentioning here too. while songs like many of the night themes, like "foothills of carvendel" and "garuhdom woodland" and "kurhani cascades nighttime give me FF14 shades. others like "free city of nero", "billbino pumpland" and many of the battle themes give me big FF12 also, these comparisons alone aren't meant to diminish this OST as a work on its own but more to show how good it is that it can be compared super favourably to some of the best music around, not only that but a lot of these songs, specifically the world tracks and town themes even have night and day varients similar to something like FF14 which gives you even more variety to each. i will say it's not just comparisons to FF here, in songs like "luweira's forrest" you can hear a *lot* of 13 sentinels in there, a game many of these people would go on to work on, this track specificially stands out as arguably being the games best since it incorporates almost every influence they had into one, while still showing their own specific style they would go on to perfect in 13 sentinels, it's really good. the last tracks i want to mention are just the night version of luwrira, "luweira town", "glenmore fault valley nighttime", "aliea", "Rocca wetland" and its night version, "raging spirits", the two "tunturi valley" themes and "lappi mine" which are all also amazing, many of these last tracks come from the elf campaign specifically and this was the one with the best music to me, it was the games peak in general but the music here is just on a whole other level, this isn't even everything i want to talk about, there's tons of other amazing tracks here and they all deserve spotlights, but i can't talk just about this all day. if you take nothing from this article, at least take my recommendation to give this OST a listen to, there's over 8 CDs worth of music here and it's all catchy and varied, it's really beautiful and it's made by some of the most talented people in the artform, plus its all free over on youtube and KHinsider, so what do you have to lose.

sadly the game wasn't made to last, while the phone and PC versions are still up and playable and also free like the console versions were, the ps4 version shut off earlier this year and the switch version died before even that, dying sometime last year, it's a real shame since this is the kind of game that could easily be fully offline with some mild tinkering and fixes, it didn't need to be an online game at all, i hope it gets a release like that some day because i would 100% pick it up, heck if it had a physical copy i'd even grab a limited edition of it, the game is just worth it. the developers: aiming inc more or less only make uninteresting licenced mobile gatcha games like "2.5D seduction: angels on stage' and multiple eminance in shadow games, though they did also do dragon quest tact and is it wrong to pick up girls in a dungeon: battle chronicle, another game with a home console release that's shutting down soon, so you know i'm going to play and cover it. the main other game of note they worked on is world of demons, the weirdo apple arcade platnum games co-developed action game, so that's neat, that's another game i'd love to see somehow come back in an offline capacity, their most recent game was based on the delinquent series "wind breaker" which looks really good, though i just think its very funny to type out the sentance "wind breaker" out loud, it's a perfect title. the experiance was very bittersweet, playing it so close to the end, having to rush it and being there in the world chat as it shut down, seeing all the people spamming thank you and emotes, it was sad, but i'm really glad i got to experiance it at all and i've been considering going back and doing it all again for the computer version while it's still around, i loved my time with it and i'd love to have more of that.