Earlier this year, Nintendo announced that it will shutter its 3DS and Wii U eShop storefronts by 2023. While this means that avid fans are trying to scoop up missing holes in their collection, some developers have instead decided to release more titles for the 3DS, with Squire Games coming out with Fragrant Story. While the game will leave strategy fans wanting much more, the game is a loving tribute to 2D isometric tactics games.

Fragrant Story is a game that’s related to the developer’s previous game Otosan, so the cast features children from that game. As defenders of the floral kingdom Flowergard, you are joined by Rhubarb as he saves the land from evil creatures. The main campaign mode has you traveling on different terrains on a square grid as you fight waves of enemies. Depending on your difficulty (piquant, pungent, and putrid, based on easy, normal, and hard respectively), you can bring a handful of characters from your party. Be careful though; if you lose someone in battle, you’re going to lose them for the rest of your run.

Gameplay in Fragrant Story is simple yet surprisingly versatile. Each character has base stats that can be leveled up (either at the beginning of the game or by beating up enemies). There is a max of four for each parameter: HP, critical, defense, and movement. This means that combat isn’t complicated; each successful attack hits for one HP, a critical attack is worth two, defense means you nullify damage, and movement denotes how many squares you can move on the grid. When you or an enemy attacks, you stop a wheel to check which action will occur; successfully attacking or defending will depend on how you manage your timed hits. These timed hits stop immediately on piquant difficulty, with the wheel being much more unreliable on pungent and putrid difficulties.

I think Fragrant Story is aimed towards casual players of tactics games (perhaps even a first choice for those intimidated by the genre). The game is easy to pick up and has a surprising amount of variety with its units (from melee-focused characters that can drain the HP of enemies to support characters that can buff characters). However, for those coming from Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem, you might be disappointed at what’s on offer even at the highest difficulty.

That said, Fragrant Story’s greatest strength lies in its presentation. The whole package looks amazing and polished. The cutscenes (as scant as they are) are fully voiced, with Rhubarb being voiced by the voice actor of Final Fantasy XII’s Balthier! Even Hitoshi Sakimoto, the composer of Vagrant Story, is involved in this project. The 2D art portraits and sprites are hand-crafted and look very well made. All in all, the art and music in this game are top notch, and I’m surprised with how much talent this indie game has!

While the game’s presentation is amazing, the amount of content leaves much to be desired. The $4 price point (for the digital version) is appropriate for the game, because the story mode is literally just three stages. On pungent difficulty I was able to beat the campaign on my first try in around half an hour.
You can unlock three characters on each difficulty, but there are also a couple other modes that will grant you Mango Tickets that will unlock other aspects of the game. There’s a quick play mode where you can play with a random team and against random enemies, as well as a challenge mode, where you can play other scenarios. While this does inject life into the game, after a few instances of playing these modes, it feels like padding. I would say you could get about 2 or 3 hours of playtime from the other modes before it gets grating.

Morally, this game is rather clean compared to its contemporary competition. While you attack hostile animals and defend Flowergard from evil, the enemies instantly vanish should you defeat them, with no blood or gore present. The opening cutscene also hints at your party serving under a supernatural Ancient Aroma, which could be interpreted as a god of some sort. However, not much else is given to this premise (and background materials frame this whole experience as kids in a VR café playing this title), so this point gets a backseat to the main gameplay.

As one of the last 3DS digital games ever to be released on the handheld (with a limited physical run available at the time of writing), Fragrant Story is a curious bite-sized tactics game that is worth a download if you have a few minutes to spare. Its loving tribute to the genre is worth overlooking its lack of content, and gameplay works very well for casual players too.