Rise of the Third Power from Stegosoft Games and DANGEN Entertainment is an old-school infused RPG that you’re going to love on Nintendo Switch. Find out why in our Rise of the Third Power review!

 

Rise of the Third Power from Stegosoft Games and DANGEN Entertainment is an old-school infused RPG that you’re going to love on Nintendo Switch. The indie team and publisher combo previously gave us the excellent Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition for Nintendo’s console, so I was definitely up for checking out their latest release. The story takes place in the land of Rin, in an alternate take of 1930s Europe and its harsh political climate. Can you do whatever it takes to stop a disaster from a great war on the horizon?

Before you start, you can select between four difficulty levels: Story, Normal, Hard, and Expert. Story gives you access to a special ability that can be used in battle to easily win most fights – including boss fights! This is an optional ability that can be used as needed so that you can progress through the story at a faster pace. Normal offers the standard experience, just as the team intended. As expected, Hard increases the challenge by boosting the power of enemies, which means that you might need to grind a bit here and there to gain more power. As for Expert, you’ll need to learn what every enemy and boss can do at all times so that you can counter with the best gear, grind for a handful of extra levels, and use the best abilities to defeat them as fast as possible, or else you’ll be destroyed.

 

The battle system for Rise of the Third Power offers an interesting evolution of what was presented in Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition. While it features a turn-based battle system, and you’ll have three characters active at all times, you can swap the other five party members in and out as needed at any time. Since each character has its own strength and weaknesses – and its own personality – you’ll be able to find the right combination to overcome even the worst of odds.

MP is used for activating abilities and is obtained in different ways depending on each character. For example, Corrina will recover MP during each battle turn, while Rowan will gain MP when taking damage from enemies or when using his Slash ability. On top of said examples, after a battle, all of your party members will regain 50% of their MP so that they can be ready for the next fight up ahead. MP is important since it allows you to use skills like Sleeping Powder, which puts a target to sleep, or you could use another character’s Taunt to draw the attention of its target while another party member handles defeating enemies one at a time.

 

Something that a lot of you are going to greatly enjoy is that experience is shared by the entire party. That’s right, it’s your party that levels up and not your characters, so there’s no fear of one of them being left behind by a few levels if you favor a particular combination in combat. By leveling up, the party receives Talent Points. Talent Points are also shared across the entire party, so you’ll have to decide how to allocate them so that you can make the most of what you can unlock.

For example, when you first level up, you’ll get two Talent Points. Since you only have two characters to control when you begin your journey, allocating them won’t be much of an issue. You could either unlock the Fury skill for Rowan and then also unlock the Speed Up boost to increase his speed by five, or unlock Death Blow for Corrina, along with Critical Up to boost her critical hit percentage by 2. Or perhaps you’d like to unlock one skill for each character to balance things up and then go with unlocking further boosts and abilities as you go. For Corrina, I do suggest you increase her Toughness as soon as possible since this will directly affect her vitality!

Instead of having to find treasure chests in dungeons with better weapons and equipment for your characters or buying them from a store only to find something way better for free in the next dungeon, Rise of the Third Power uses a crafting system. During your adventure, you’ll find recipe books – in treasure chests, as rewards for completing some quests – that can be used to unlock the knowledge needed to craft more powerful equipment. You’ll need special stones for crafting, which are under the hold of elite enemies, so there’s certainly a risk/reward component to the whole thing.

Each character can also equip one accessory at a time, which will grant it some extra bonuses. There could be a ring that greatly increases a character’s speed or another one that can boost how much damage is dealt during a critical hit. These accessories will also gain experience points from every successful battle, which will go towards its attunement. Once attuned, said accessory will gain additional stats, as well as increase its overall value, in case you end up deciding to sell it.

Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition was a very fun, solid homage to the JRPG classics of ages past, and Rise of the Third Power sets out to give us a retro-infused experience within a new universe, with new characters and some changes to the battle and equipment systems that help to keep it interesting. Rise of the Third Power does a great job at channeling the look and feel of the old-school JRPG of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System era, along with the extra bells and whistles you’d expect from a game released in the 21st Century on Nintendo Switch. Rise of the Third Power is out on Nintendo’s console with a $19.99 asking price, and it’s a must-play for RPG fans.

Disclaimer
This Rise of the Third Power review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by DANGEN Entertainment.