Gale of Windoria (Android) review "More like a light breeze than a gale. "

In my resurrection of the Kemco Khallenge for reasons unknown, I hadn’t yet delved into a more recent effort by prolific design team Hit-Point. When looking at the games they’d released after I initially abandoned writing about Kemco’s many, many JRPG releases, it took virtually no time at all to choose Gale of Windoria.

Why? Because when viewing trailers for their games, I got a hint of Chrono Trigger from this one and that was all it took to make my decision. Now, I should explain, I didn’t get this hint from anything resembling actual gameplay or anything logical like that. That ain’t how this brain works! Instead, my notion came into being as a result of a few random snippets being twisted and contorted into something my poor, tortured brain might have hoped to see. There was a red-haired lad as a hero! One of his companions was a large robot! One image had those two and a couple others camping! You know, maybe it’s time I pull the plug on this whole “Rob uses his brain to come up with ideas” experiment.

I mean, by Kemco standards, Gale of Windoria isn’t that bad. I had some amount of fun for a decent amount of its quest and was in and out in under 20 hours. But if you’re even remotely thinking about it in comparison to an all-time classic, it’s not going to wind up looking good. Much like the majority of Hit-Point’s (and, for that matter, Kemco’s) output, this is a disposable game that’s best downloaded, played through and deleted. And it’s also best if you’re an RPG junkie who’s looking for a quick fix.

You control Shan, a lively lad living in the country of the wind in a world where all the major lands seem under the jurisdiction of one element or another. Also, from looking up the little twit’s name, I just noticed his hair seems to be orange and not red. Man, when trying to tell myself this could be something special, I couldn’t even get the details correct… This whole thing was destined for failure, wasn’t it?

Anyway, you control Shan, who is trying to get accepted into the kingdom’s prestigious group of knights, even if he’s a mere child whose presence seems to be a bit annoying to those guys. However, things soon change! By which I mean that demons (called “Nabulas” by this game) invade the country. Like any good medieval sort of land, this sort of crap can only be resolved in one way: By sacrificing a young maiden in order to purify the Wind Crystal to drive out the evil forces!

One small problem lies in the way of that solution, though, and that problem is named Shan. Said maiden, Wina, is his friend and he’s not cool with her impending demise, so he embarks upon a course of action that will make him a much bigger annoyance to those knights. Yep, he simply grabs Wina and runs off with a well-thought-out plan in mind that would make South Park’s Underpants Gnomes proud.

1. Go to other kingdoms and look for help.
2. ???????
3. VICTORY!

Well, to be fair, this game does mention Shan isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. And this is a JRPG, so the fact that he actually is able to quickly gain allies and strike blows against a sinister cult looking to summon a world-destroying god by using those Nabulas to destroy each land’s elemental crystal also shouldn’t be a shocker. He’ll go to the lands of water, fire and earth to fight the cult’s presence, as well as get closer to learning a special song that can reverse the damage their machinations have already caused.

Battles will be done in typical turn-based fashion, but there are a few alterations to things that make the process of devising a strategy work a bit differently than in the average game. Each character can equip a number of Quartzes. Some of them improve stats, while others bestow skills. Each turn in battle, you start with so many skill points and gain a certain number every turn. Those points are spent on casting your skills, so you have to be smart or risk having your party in dire straits with no one capable of casting a healing spell. Also mucking up the works — a few of the better skills can only be cast once or twice a battle, so you have to be smart about using that spell that cures a certain percent of everyone’s health because once it’s cast, it’s gone until the battle is over.

After you’ve gotten a full party, it’s easy as hell to win regular encounters. Just use your best attacks that hit all foes and it’ll be rare that they even get a turn. Not that it matters if they do, because your health is restored to full after each fight. Bosses will be a different matter, as you’ll have to be smart with your team to make sure they’re able to use their heavy-hitting moves as often as possible, as well as heal when necessary. The latter is because there also are no usable items in this game. When it comes to restoring life, you’re at the mercy of those skills and hopefully always being able to use them at any time.

One thing that will help in that regard is how Quartzes can be enhanced by “feeding” ones you’re not using to them. With the stat-boosting ones, you’ll simply get more bonuses. With spells, you’ll get a variety of potential benefits, including lowering their skill point cost.

All in all, that sounds like fun, right? Sure, getting to those bosses might be a bit tedious, but being able to count on those major encounters to be fun and challenging is a good thing! And, even better, a lot of the major enemies look pretty nice, especially in comparison to the generally generic small fry foes. The thing is, Hit-Point being Hit-Point, one can usually count on them coming up with some neat ideas and then finding a few ways to shoot themselves in the foot.

One is something this team had never been able to shake. Whomever handles the English translations for Hit-Point games is just sub-par at their job. I mean, I could say that to varying degrees about the translators for each Kemco team, but I find myself most annoyed with Hit-Point’s. They’ll use terms that, while technically correct, are not how people normally talk. Therefore, the cult and their Nabulas are “sullying” the crystals of each land. Was there a reason a more commonly used synonym like “defile” was ignored? Probably the same as why, in another Hit-Point game, the mohawk haircut was referred to as a “mohican”. Making a direct translation with little knowledge as to which words fit best in today’s lingo.

Also, the way the script is written, many characters regularly sound like over-excited children. This makes sense when we’re talking about Shan, but it is weird to see characters like a prominent cultist or your robot ally phrasing things in an “I don’t wanna do this!” sort of way. And with this game being fairly verbose, you’ll notice stuff like this on a regular basis.

Perhaps most annoying for me were the weird difficulty fluctuations. Things start out kind of tough, as you start out with just Shan and then add one party member in the water capital. Then you get a second ally from the kingdom of fire and have enough firepower to trivialize most regular encounters and will cruise for a while…until Shan runs into the captain of his homeland’s guards and gets forced into a one-on-one duel. That sucked! After that ordeal, the game was easy again until the very end, when Hit-Point finished the game with back-to-back boss fights with no auto-recovery between them. It took a good bit of grinding to overcome that roadblock.

So, in short, Gale of Windoria is a typical Kemco release in many ways. It has its good points, such as challenging boss fights and a combat system that keeps one thinking as to how to maximize their characters’ effectiveness in those battles, but there are flaws. There always are flaws. Poorly translated dialogue that detracts from the narrative and a handful of annoying difficulty spikes prevented me from truly enjoying this game. And, while this probably should go without saying, the average Kemco game tops out as a decent offering for RPG addicts. All things considered, this is an average Kemco game.

Staff review by Rob Hamilton (May 02, 2025) Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.