Recent reviews by Zen Dragon

The game is fun, just watch out if you have a keyboard because Rivals of Aether 2 has way less functional keyboard controls compared to the original Rivals of Aether. Strange instances of missed inputs, no double-tap functionality, and the choice between the slipperiest controls you can manage or more effort to get anywhere depending on whether you choose auto-walk or not.

Really nice game, nice and soft aesthetic with good music. The combat was definitely quite fun with each character having a use specific to them. Even the addition of a fourth character doesn't feel like it's stepping on any toes which is quite nice. I would definitely suggest this to people. The only real gripe about this game is that it doesn't have a price tag, even if the game cost 2-5 bucks or more, it would've been worth it.

The game, in the short time I've played it, is fun, but it's not without some issues. I play on keyboard and I found the controls somewhat lacking in terms of accessibility. Some things I put together was the following:
-In order to walk, you have to either give up your ability to dash (Left and Right) or holding down then the direction you wish (DigitalLeft and DigitalRight).
-Not only is there no way to turn tap jump off (except with Up), you can only do full hops with DigitalUp.
-DigitalDown will cause you to fall through platforms no matter what and regular Down won't allow it.
-The nondigital directions of up, down, left, and right have a weird feeling of slowness about them that you have to hold a direction for a certain amount of time in order to for an attack button to register as that direction.
Overall, the characters are fun and do show promise, but the experience is currently geared towards controllers and not keyboards.

This game is a great time with a solid story theme and amazing characters easily helped with the stellar character design and dialogue. The dialogue helped me immerse myself in the characters when it came to the heavy story beats. The game's combat is quite engaging if a little unbalanced at times (the difference between a boss being a cake walk or a nightmare is if you have Klein in the party). I do have things to complain about:
- While the way party members enter or leave the party is very realistic, it ends up making certain enemies nightmares to fight (especially poison mogs, especially since you don't get a reliable wind mog for a while {the little moth you get doesn't count, as even they don't get strong wind options}). A simple way to fix this would be to try limiting the effectiveness of elements against each other, but that'd be a hard system to balance, I'm sure.
- The other endings you can get are very much downers with some outright ruining the tone of the game and turning it into a horror/tragedy RPG Maker game. I feel like the story, as a whole, would've had a stronger impact if those optional endings weren't there (of course, if I weren't a stupid idiot, I wouldn't have such a sour spot about this).
- The true ending is buried in a side quest that the game phrases as optional (red eyed mogs). I get it how this could've or why the creator(s) thought it was necessary, especially with the demo release needing to be close to the beginning of the game. However, the entire thing feels a little unplanned. The dialogue for completing the side quest also makes me think it was planned to be able to be completed WAY earlier into the game, before a lot of reveals happened.
- The puzzles and level design, while expertly made, would've done better with a higher camera so that you could actually see where you're going, I tended to get lost a lot, especially when backtracking (while I do have bad directional skills, this kind of made me double guess it). It was also a pain, especially with one switch puzzle, to go back and forth between multiple paths with different characters in a screen not meant for that many switches was really bad since I had to count back and forth several times. I admit this is a limitation of the software as RPG Maker tends to have a fixed camera height all the time.
- There tend to be some odd game design when it came to the fights. I admit the shared heart meter was a good idea and the idea of your character, being the only neutral element, could change elements for a piece of that heart meter was a great idea. However, I found it a clunky system to use as the elements wasted your turn and the meter and you could only get rid of it early by filling it up again and releasing it, making it useless against teams of mogs with multiple elements. The enemies also jump in difficulty between areas rather quickly and it's never entirely obvious when you trade from normal attacks every turn to beat attacks every turn, it's a feel it out system there. I also found the main character's moveset kind of weak, she's best for a hopeful chance of stun, refilling Heart, and making boss fights go more quickly (Klein steals the spotlight by doing more damage, healing, and preventing Boss DPS which is far more useful). As for other creatures stealing spotlights, there's the moth, or Mao, who is really good or really bad depending on RNG (its light sheepsquatch form is outright broken, especially if you go for the balanced stat mog [in fact, its balanced stats are the only really good form it has on its own with a chance of double turns]). Also, I think this is an oversight, but one of Mao's ice DNAs deal fire damage instead of ice as a beginning attack? Some of the characters are either really good or really bad, one character even outright loses her niche to Klein (speed buffing)!
However, the complaints I levy at the game are niche and just meant to show the developers I care about the product being better and better, the game is really good and I would suggest any fan of good story telling or of RPGs (both of which I am a fan of) check this game out! It's much more worth 15 dollars!

This game is fun, but with some UI problems here and there, with some problems being that the game has lengthy loud screens when going from menu to overworld, I like it that there's no loading screen between battles, which is good, but it ties into the fact that this game does not tell you what attacks some characters do; which means you have to jump into the battle with them to see what they do, because that means you have to go into the menu, apply characters, leave, wait for loading screen, trial battles, then come back to change your team again. The easiest way to fix this is to let their attacks be visible when you hover over them and let the player be able to see what they do before they jump into battle, because if they were explained, players could more easily optimize their teams instead of having to rely on a wiki or from straight memory.