Introduction

Ephemeral Fantasia (known as “Reiselied: Ephemeral Fantasia” in Japan) is a JRPG from the year 2000 on the dot. For the most part, it’s a fairly standard one with a battle system akin to Final Fantasy’s Active Time Battles. It also has a smattering of musical segments where you have to perform songs like you’re playing Guitar Hero.

I am going to be upfront about this: this is a really, really bad game. It is distinctly worse than Legaia 2: Duel Saga, the last game I LP’d, and if you followed that thread you know how that went. If you google this game, you will likely find several references to it on “Worst Games of All Time” type posts and videos.

You will quickly learn why, but the game must be played through to the end to truly appreciate the depths of its failures. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Why this game? No seriously, why the HELL?

As with Legaia 2, my primary reason is that I just find bad media like this entertaining sometimes.

However, similar to Legaia 2, I also have an odd history with this game.

I first played it years ago as a kid, having rented it from a store. I was very much a stupid child, and quickly failed to play it properly. I also didn’t really appreciate just how craptastic it was due to my limited intelligence and exposure.

I remember managing to rent it again as an older kid, and managed to get a lot further into the game before quitting over one very obnoxious dungeon. After that, I’d never see the thing again until I decided to google it out of curiosity when I was older. I saw (almost) everyone thought the game was shit and had a good chuckle to myself. Masochist that I am, I decided to download it on emulator and play the whole thing through to the end. I got exactly what I expected.

And now I am going to play through it once more so you can experience the pain and joy of Ephemeral Fantasia.

What the heck is Legaia 2?

Legaia 2: Duel Saga is the first and last game I LP’d on these forums. It was a bad game in my opinion, but there was a whiff of a good game that might have come to be if the devs had done better with it. I will likely reference it here and there due to it being fresh in my mind as well as being a JRPG from the same time period as this. If you wanna know what it’s all about, why not read my thread?

What to expect of me

With one LP under my belt, I have hopefully learned a lot and will do better this time, but that will remain to be seen. I am still a bit new at this, of course.

As with Legaia 2, this won’t be explicitly completionist in the sense that I’m going to turn over every rock to see what’s under it, but I will show you every drop of content I can manage.

Always remember, :siren:

no spoilers. :siren:

The Let's Play Archive

Ephemeral Fantasia

by LJN92

Introduction

Table of Contents