LumenTale: Memories of Trey Review – Flexible & Convenient Creature Collecting

The tale of a protagonist waking up in an unfamiliar land with amnesia is a familiar trend. Starting a journey to potentially regain those lost memories also falls under that category. Collecting creatures to form a team? Almost standard at this point. Where LumenTale: Memories of Trey makes its mark is making the process user-friendly. Developed by Beehive Studios and published by Team17, raising a powerful monster team has never been as easy as this.

The protagonist has been thrown from a timeline where things have gone horribly wrong. Unsure of their surroundings, they wake up after being taken in by a scientist and his nephew. The world is filled with creatures called Animon and the people who use them as companions are Lumens. You become a Lumen and explore the world to find the truth about your past and mission.

It’s a story I’ve seen several times before with all the familiar twists and turns of an amnesiac hero. It’s fairly light-hearted with some serious moments, shedding more light on the true state of the world you are in. There are occasional flashbacks as you make progress, revealing your true objective over time. I found the story predictable even if I did like how it was told; it’s not hard to see how the story unfolds since the elements it covers are common in creature collecting games.

Every town you visit has a problem that only appears once you arrive. While these do help you realize the unique aspects of the places you visit, it does feel like padding at times, and that padding is apparent when you are looking for side quests. LumenTale: Memories of Trey doesn’t tell you what side quests are in a city or area, you must find them yourself. A few present themselves to you, but otherwise you must talk to every person. While I found that I got to listen to different perspectives of residents, it also meant I spent lots of time combing the map. Rather than appreciating the odd conversation, I was hunting for side quests or anything I might’ve missed.

Fortunately, the game has some of the most user-friendly creature collecting mechanics to make up for it. You carry a team of six Animon and deploy four of them in combat. Catching Animon can be done on the overworld while traveling or through combat. You can always access your team through the Anispace and switch your team around quickly. Adjusting stats and moves is encouraged and never permanent, allowing you to experiment.

Other creature collecting games I’ve played often lock you into your choices, making you wonder if you made the right one. Here, it was easier to experiment and make choices as when something didn’t work out or wasn’t as useful as I expected, I could switch. This also made it easier for me to try new strategies during boss battles without having to train new Animon from scratch. It’s also easy to switch your team around while using their powers for exploration. You can interact with them in Anispace, boosting their affection and decorating your own “secret base”. Should you encounter certain obstacles, you can quickly rotate to certain Animon and use their powers. It was one of the smoothest transitions I’ve ever seen and it made exploring the world less daunting. The downside is that there are also lots of complex mechanics that you must wrap your head around. Not everything is fully explained, contributing to the appeal but also resulting in lots of self-study. Knowing which stats influence move power, the proper time to use Trait-enhanced moves, or evolving Animon isn’t easy. Even as a veteran of several creature collecting games, I still had to spend time experimenting and learning. It’s a big learning curve that you can try to avoid but it makes the game harder. Spend the time and it will pay off.

You also can’t get around the grind that’s a key part of any creature collecting game. Even if experience and battles are easy to come by, you always need to train. Your team can fall behind if you don’t keep up and that makes the adventure tougher. This is especially true with the padding since you often have lots of story battles with few opportunities to heal. I did appreciate that this is mitigated through the user-friendly gameplay, but it’s something you can’t get around.

LumenTales: Memories of Trey makes the creature collecting experience easy to learn. Despite the presence of several advanced mechanics, it’s never hard to learn what you need. You still need to grind several Animon to adapt to various situations and work without prior knowledge. However, this is an accessible creature collecting game that’s perfect to dive into, whether you are a beginner or a veteran.

Victor reviewed LumenTale: Memories of Trey on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.