Setsuna's developer — Tokyo RPG Factory — is a new studio created by industry juggernaut Square Enix. Square's expansion over the years into everything from book publishing to toy-manufacturing, as well as the growing complexity of its new games, has been a source of frustration for fans that grew up playing the company's acclaimed Super Nintendo games. This new studio appears to have been created explicitly to address this, so if you have fond memories of Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana or the Final Fantasy series, you'll feel right at home here.

The game takes place in a frigid world where every 10 years a young girl sacrifices herself to prevent a monster-fuelled apocalypse. This time, sword-for-hire Endir is asked to end her life before the sacrifice is complete, and sets off without question. In a textbook turnaround, however, he ends up joining her guard and leading their pilgrimage on a long and dangerous journey.

This setup, like so many of Setsuna's elements, seems at first like it could have been ripped directly from any 90s RPG. What makes this game interesting and refreshing however is the subtle tweaks and polish it adds to the formula.

A good example of this is the beautiful musical score. The compositions sound like they might have been written for an adventure in 1993, but instead of being synthesised by audio chips they're performed on piano. The game's graphics and mechanics are in this same spirit, not exactly modern but reimagined with contemporary tools.

The battle system, meanwhile, manages to stay satisfying while keeping complexity to a minimum, something that's often lost in bigger games. Most fights consist of using your party's turns strategically to attack with weapons or magic, keep your characters healed and monitor any adverse effects. In a nice layer of depth, having two party members learn the same skill will allow them to burn their turns simultaneously for a powerful combo attack.  It's simple yet gratifying, especially when working out how to defeat a super-powerful boss.

Most pleasantly surprising is the story in I Am Setsuna, which is very sweet and very sad — if a little contrived — sticking to its theme throughout and never falling into the old trap of too many twists or a deus ex machina before the third act that changes everything.

More than anything, Setsuna proves that these types of games don't need modern-day Final Fantasy's cinema-quality visuals or bloated 100-hour quests to stay relevant. The game is by no means as powerful now as Chrono Trigger was in 1995, but it's a reminder that many of the things we loved about those old games is timeless.

I Am Setsuna is out now for PlayStation 4 and PC.

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