Grace of Letoile (Android) review "I guess it's a bit different from the Kemco norm. In some ways. Maybe. "

When it comes to the developers who’ve produced games for Kemco — at least the ones whose stuff I’ve played — Magitec has always come off as an odd duck. When it comes to graphics and sound, they’re pretty no-frills, with simplistic visuals where your characters’ battle sprites have a couple frames of animation, enemies are stationary at all times and the music tends to be short compositions that loop incessantly.

On the other hand, Magitec probably puts the most effort into trying to tell a deep and thought-provoking story. The key word in that sentence, though, is “trying”. I got spoiled early on when I played Chrome Wolf. While that game itself might not have been particularly special, I was enthralled by its tale of a land at war and a few characters trying to fight against that conflict up until the ending, which resided firmly in the bitter end of bittersweet. Maybe the Magitec games I’ve played since then have tried to replicate that quality of storytelling, but their success in doing so have been limited.

Such is the case with Grace of Letoile. You control Vedley, a young man with a huge skeleton in his closet. When a child, he decided he was ready to be a hero and ventured out alone, only to be confronted by a monster. Fortunately, his parents were able to rescue him; less fortunately, he and sister Moniya became orphans on that day.

The world Vedley lives in doesn’t possess the psychiatric help he seems to need to get over his guilt, but it does have the next best thing: A weird stranger who comes up to him one day with an offer that sounds too good to be true. He offers Vedley the services of an artificial human known as a Letoile. There are six of these beings, each with their own keeper, and their purpose is to go all Highlander on each other until only one remains, at which point the winner’s keeper will be able to have his or her wishes fulfilled. Vedley hops on this opportunity immediately, figuring that if he and his Letoile, Ajin, wind up the winners, he’ll be able to go back in time, save his parents and no longer be a sad, depressed little man.

Of course, there will be complications. While Ajin comes off as quite competitive and very eager to win the “game” with no outside distractions, Vedley is the sort of JRPG nice guy who’ll drop everything the instant a chance for do-gooding arrives. And then there’s the opposition. Sure, one of the Letoile owners, Blart, might be a nice guy with his own altruistic wish he wants fulfilled, but others won’t be quite so reasonable to deal with. The hot-tempered Sulliver relies on sneak attacks and other tricks, while whomever is currently working with the Letoile Dovar had best be able to match her capacity for cruelty because she’s willing to do anything to win, even if that means throwing her partner to the wolves. Oh, and the most powerful of the Letoiles happens to be aligned with the local king, a man who simply is looking for some excitement because he’s so much better than everyone at everything that life has gotten pretty boring.

When push comes to shove, this is a perfectly acceptable role-playing game where you go from town to dungeon to town to dungeon while walking a completely linear path through its world. Several dungeons have various gimmicks, with damaging floors being the most common. You’ll regularly engage in battles with the usual Kemco small handful of monster designs. Much of this is RPG 101, but when you’ve played this sort of game as long as I have, you grow to enjoy and even crave the familiar and much of what you’ll see in Grace of Letoile is quite familiar.

And if you’ve played anywhere near as many Kemco games as I have, you’ll find one particular aspect of its combat system to be very familiar — how it designs what seems to be a pretty original and complex way of doing things, only for you to discover that simplistic tactics can easily carry you through it all. Each character has a wheel with 12 slots that gradually unlock as you play. You can buy or find gems to place in those slots that bestow skills and spells. Every turn in battle, there will be a number corresponding to one of those wheel slots and if you use the corresponding ability, you’ll fill up a meter that allows you to use certain powerful abilities that are cast off this meter, as opposed to your magic points.

So, what does this mean? Quite simply, fill as many of those wheel slots as possible, so that you can keep that meter raised as much as possible, as they are tied into some of the game’s best attacks. Since you’ll want to use those attacks often, always keep your eye on what number comes up each turn of battle, so you can build that meter up regularly. Do that and this game will fit into that zone where it’s not easy, but also not overly difficult. The sort of thing where if you pay attention and be careful, it’s pretty easy to find a formula that allows you to tear through the opposition.

I did have a couple issues with this game that dipped it below “enjoyable” to the level of “competent”. The final dungeon was the game’s second that featured one-way platforms taking you from one place to another. However, this one was littered with platforms that would take you back to near the beginning of the dungeon. In a maze where a lot of the scenery looks the same. By the third (or was it fourth?) time I realized I had to retrace many, many steps, I was beyond tired of that place and just wanted the game to end.

More annoying was just how long it took for the story to heat up. With a cast that focused on six Letoiles and their masters, Magitec seemed loath to dispose of anyone for as long as possible, leading to a lengthy period of time where you’d get into a fight with someone, beat them and then watch them pull off some sort of distraction to get away. It was nearly the midway point of the game before any pieces got taken off the table, meaning a large chunk of this game had me feeling like I was just spinning my wheels, wondering if anyone actually was aware they were in a “winner takes all” competition. It takes some work to make an RPG I beat in under 20 hours feel like a tedious time-sink, but having half of it do little more than set the table for the other half can accomplish that.

So, once again, Magitec created a game that had the potential to be a really intriguing experience and, once again, they fell short. The premise got my attention and the gameplay was at least decent enough to carry me through, but not so good as to get me to overlook how slowly things were progressing. Grace of Letoile is short enough to be an okay diversion, but probably won’t be something you remember long after finishing it.

Staff review by Rob Hamilton (August 28, 2026) Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.