I Am Setsuna evokes classic games like Chrono Trigger, but it's no simple nostalgia play

Square Enix's latest game is unusual, as far as names go: I Am Setsuna. Period included.

There's an elegant brevity to it, but more importantly, itwants to set a mood.And boy, does it deliver.

Setsuna is a girl from a small village chosen to be a sacrifice. Only the life of a sacrifice every generation or so can stem the tides of monsters that regularly threaten to overtake human settlements.

The player takes on the role of Endir, a mercenary on a mission to kill Setsuna before she completes her pilgrimage to the Last Lands, where she is to be sacrificed. But he soon has a change of heart and joins her on her journey instead, as part of agroup ofbodyguards.

If this sounds like a familiar setup, you'd be right. The main premise isnearly identical to the 2001 classic Final Fantasy X, with Setsuna taking the place of that game's heroine, Yuna.

True to the recent resurgence in nostalgia-driven video game releases, I Am SetsunawhichhitsPlayStation4's online store and theSteamStoreon PCs todaytakes direct influence from Square-Enix's library of Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs), including the Final Fantasy series, but especially Chrono Trigger, originally released in 1995 for Super Nintendo.

'Heartfelt sorrow' a key theme

Don't take the comparisons toChronoTrigger literally, at least in terms of the plot. While that game was a mostly light-hearted adventure that began with a mischievous boy goofing offat the Millennial Fair (what a name, in retrospect), I Am Setsuna's plot is unrelentingly sad.

According to Usuke Kumagai, the director for the English version of the game, the name Setsuna is derived from the Japanese word for sorrow.

Not only is Setsuna on a mission designed to end with her demise, every main character confronts questions about his or her mortality andplace in the world. From a town populated entirely by orphans and war widows, to a village of wizards whose magical powers shortentheir life expectancyto 30 or less, everyone you'll meet seemingly lives with the weight of the world on his or hershoulders.

But it's not all a downer. Brief moments of triumph andcomic relief savethe story from becoming drenched in blood and nihilism.

You'll come to appreciate theplayful banter and bickeringbetween the young wizard Kir and Nidr, a grizzled grumpy swordsman. None of it escapes the archetypes familiar to fans of Japanese animation, but it comes at just the right time to bring some levity to the proceedings.

Minimalist presentation

The reverence for past classics is a strength forI Am Setsuna.Stumpy, cartoon-likecharacters travel betweensparsely populatedminiature villages, icy caverns and snow-swept mountains, all set to a remarkable piano-only score.

The entire world is stuck in aseemingly eternal winter, as though we're looking at the remnants ofsocietyafter the White Walkers have taken over in Game of Thrones. (Don't worry, though,enemies for the most part are cutePokemon-likecreatures instead of flesh-eating zombies.)

Indeed, every part of its presentation and storytelling comes from a restraint that, 20 years ago, came out of the necessity of fitting a video game into a cartridge that could only holda couple megabitsworth of data.

It eschewsHollywood blockbuster-level set pieces filled with explosions battles on the scale of The Hobbit films in favour of quiet conversation between only a handful of characters at a time rather like a small-scale theatre production.

Unlike the sprawling 50hours-plus epics that have come to define the genre, you'll be able to finish I AmSetsunain around 20 to 25 hours, thanks to a focused storyline rarely distracted by narrative tangents.

It's a stark change from many of Square-Enix's modern takes on the role-playing game, punctuated by bloated nonsensical scripts more interested in hitting a high word count than telling a coherent story.

Only near the end doesitbecome more expositionheavy, but even then it dispenses world-building details that would have bogged down the personal storiesthat rightfully dominate most of your screen time.

Familiar JRPG mechanics

JRPG fans will have little trouble learning the basics ofI Am Setsuna's mechanics, almost all of which are pulled or remixed from past classics.

Characters can combine their attacks and spells such asin Chrono Trigger (some attacks are taken directly from it), while spells are assigned by equipping heroes with magically infused stones called Spritnite essentially Final Fantasy VII's Materia with a new name.

Slowly, though, it becomes a little too unwieldy when you're forced to manage weapons, talismans, Spritnite and other systems all at once.Most inscrutableare Fluxes and Singularities, effects that can empower your party during a battle, yet seem to activateat random.

While you'll be able to coast through much of the game essentially on autopilot, a few exceedingly difficult boss fights will force you to re-examineyour spell loadouts, and you'll get bogged down in the unnecessarily complex menus.

Despite the arcane interface and some pacing issues in its third act, I Am Setsunaresurrects much of what longtime gamers loved about the JRPG genre when it first grew in popularity in North America.

Genre fans won't be disappointed.