While it has been fascinating to see the evolution of the RPG genre, whether visually or in terms of the expansiveness of the worlds they involve, I’ll admit that I retain quite a bit of love for the classics from the 16-bit age. While I discovered JRPGs specifically a few years before they absolutely exploded in the SNES era, I still have incredibly fond memories of the dramatic stories, interesting characters, and plain charm of multiple titles from that generation. It has been really cool to see so many indie RPGs embrace this time, with some top-tier games even managing to eclipse some of the classics, but what I haven’t seen have been many that have felt like their goal was to craft an experience that would be difficult to say wasn’t made way back when.

Starlight Legacy manages to not only look and sound the part, but also generally play that way as well. Certainly pixel art styles have typically emulated the visuals from that era, but I can’t say many have gone to the trouble of even aiming for recreating the Mode 7 graphics that were a feature of the SNES. Seeing that instantly brought me back decades, and while it absolutely has an unusual look, I’d imagine people who grew up seeing it will have the same nostalgic reaction I did. In terms of the overall experience the game’s soundtrack also acts as a bit of a time warp, capturing the spirit of chiptune music from that generation wonderfully, though perhaps in a somewhat derivative way.

Moving on to the gameplay itself, for the most part it feels like it’s content to go safely with what would be expected of it, perhaps a little disappointingly so. I’ll give it credit for hewing to the simplistic classic combat options most would remember, but I do also remember games with more involved and elaborate systems that this falls short of. There’s definitely a focus on specific enemies having certain weaknesses that you’ll quickly learn to exploit, and you’ll want to keep a reasonable stock of reagents for when enemy attacks manage to inflict some sort of malady on one of your characters. It may not be impressive, but it is consistent with expectations at least. As you may suspect, given the time that inspired the game, random encounters tend to be plentiful and they are unfortunately a bit predictable since you’ll tend to face the same enemies or combinations of enemies pretty regularly, so once you find your groove for dealing with them you’ll tend to be a little too safe.

While Starlight Legacy may not be ambitious enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best JRPGs from the 16-bit era, it is at least at a respectable distance overall. Unlike too many titles in the genre that seem to have a goal of taking a ridiculous amount of time to complete, I also appreciated the tendency here to get down to business, provide some enjoyment, and then wrap things up. This isn’t going to be one of those quests where once you complete it the world then opens up even further, with an even more ambitious set of objectives to complete. You’ll travel to each of the key areas, take care of the local threat, and then come back to finish the primary job. If you don’t mind that being a limitation, and are a true lover of the 16-bit era, this should be a fine match for you.