Lost Sphear

Lost Sphear is a role-playing video game in which players take on the role of protagonist Kanata and a growing party of companions. Players explore between non-hostile towns, a semi-open world map, and dungeon environments featuring enemy encounters; they complete both main story quests and side quests given by characters in town areas. The main goal of the game is for Kanata to restore parts of the world that are fading away. Restoring areas and landmarks is done with items representing the memories of a place.

Some areas called Monuments can have their properties changed using different memories, which impacts factors such as movement speed and gains of experience points, ingredients for cooking, and in-game currency. Items and equipment can be found while exploring, or bought from shops in towns.

Lost Sphear takes place on an unnamed world where its Moon is treated as its creator. The opening scene shows Oboro, a king of the ancient Plated People, watching his soldiers and world vanishing into nothing. An unspecified time later, the young Kanata, together with his friends Lumina and Locke, explore the land outside their village Elgarthe, encountering a rise in monsters. Returning to Elgarthe, they find it transformed into a white void called "Lost".

Using the memories of prayers from the villagers to a local alter, Kanata unlocks a power to restore the town, and upon learning that other parts of the world are also becoming Lost, he resolves to save the Lost using his powers. He is initially employed by the powerful Gigante Empire, but upon learning their lack of ethical methods and the fact that their actions are worsening the problem, he defects and sets out on his own.

Lost Sphear was developed by Tokyo RPG Factory as one of three concept titles created following its founding as a subsidiary of Square Enix; the studio's goal was creating homages to titles from the "golden age" of RPGs in the 1990s. The first talks about Lost Sphear began following the release of I am Setsuna (2016), with production running parallel to the earlier game's Nintendo Switch port. Among the returning staff were director Atsushi Hashimoto, art director Jun Suzuki, and scenario writers Hirotaka Inaba and Makoto Goya. The characters were designed by Mari Yorumachi.

While their production process was unchanged, the team's experience developing I am Setsuna allowed them to work more smoothly, increasing the game's content. The game was built using the Unity game engine.

Initial Japanese sales for Lost Sphear were notably lower than its predecessor I am Setsuna; the game sold over 7,000 copies on PS4, and over 5,500 on Switch. Dengeki stated that the game sold through about 20% of its initial shipment, indicating that Square Enix expected higher sales. During its fiscal year ending March 2018, Square Enix stated Tokyo RPG Factory had achieved a profit of ¥83 million, down over 60% from their profits the previous year following the release of I am Setsuna.

The four reviewers for Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu were generally positive about its homages to earlier titles and its improvements over I am Setsuna. Mitch Vogel of Nintendo Life, while noting a large number of derivative elements in its design, called Lost Sphear "an engaging world, deep battle system, and plenty of replayability which will likely delight many an RPG fan." RPGFan's Rob Rogan summed Lost Sphear up as "an unremarkable yet pleasant JRPG experience", feeling that the studio had potential to further refine the systems they had built on and introduced in the game. Eurogamer's Simon Parkin noted some interesting and innovative mechanics, but otherwise felt a larger team and budget had caused harmful bloat in the game's design.