Lumentale: Memories of Trey (PC)- Preview

In my never-ending quest to find new and interesting monster-catching RPGs, I decided to try the demo for Lumentale: Memories of Trey. Developed by Beehive Studios and published by Team 17, this game will be released on May 26th for PC as well as Nintendo Switch

Lumentale is quite similar to Anode Heart, another indie monster-catching game that I recently played and discussed here. You play as an android who has lost his memories. The android is taken in by a well-regarded inventor and scientist known as Dr. Kapan and his nephew, Ales. After learning to tame Animon, the collectable creatures of the game, Trey and Ales set off on a journey through the diverse and ancient world of Talea. I was initially drawn in by the graphical style and world, which looked quite clean and well-realized. However, I found myself enjoying the story a lot more. The game plants some interesting plot threads surrounding an ancient conflict, and Trey’s past, even in this brief demo and the characters are pretty well written.

However, Lumentale’s battle system left a lot to be desired for me. It’s a relatively basic turn-based system that allows your party to use extra actions after filling a meter. This meter is, of course, filled by attacking the weakness of your enemy, which is easily obtained by either memorizing the game’s type chart or using an action to scan a foe. The system certainly works, but doesn’t offer anything new and encourages minimal strategy like your standard Pokémon game. The creature designs are also a little bit bland for my taste, though there are only a small number available through the demo.

I’m sure the full game will offer a range of exciting creatures to collect amongst 140 unique species. I enjoyed the progression, which offers more options than a standard Pokémon game, such as allowing you to freely distribute stat points or customize wider move pools. I’m not entirely sure of the true extent and freedom of the stat altering as it still seems like each creature is geared towards specific builds through level up progression. Nevertheless, this is still a nice feature to have at your disposal from the beginning.

Outside of the main story, this demo also showed off the side content that will be available. Players can take on various side quests for rare items, which can then be utilized through the crafting system to make various upgrades and health-restoring items. The full version of the game will also offer multiplayer content such as trading and battling. I didn’t mess around much with the Anispace, a digital environment where your Animon reside. For those who enjoy customizing rooms or houses in something like Animal Crossing, this allows you to create custom living quarters for each creature.

Traversing the world is quite fun as environments are beautifully detailed. Additionally, Trey can utilize his Holoken device in order to interact with objects, such as smashing boulders to collect items. The Holoken can also be thrown at Animon traversing the world in order to catch them without initiating a battle. This is a nice feature that makes exploration feel seamless and encourages you to expand your roster quickly. Experience is quite generous, with your entire party gaining some from each battle. This allows you to take full advantage of exploring potential team compositions without having to worry about grinding for hours at a time. Lumentale’s demo is quite short with only about two hours of content, but it certainly offers a nice taste of something potentially worth your time in the future, especially if you enjoy this particular subgenre as I do.