Massive Chalice feels like a PS1 game to me.

Now I don't mean graphically or in presentation. I actually like the way the game looks (outside of characters faces) and the music. I also don't mean this in a negative way. I played the game to completion on normal and I liked it. I'd give it a 7 out of 10.

What I mean is in terms of complexity of mechanics and amount of content. Massive Chalice is a pretty simple game at its heart (not to say it cannot be challenging). It has 3 basic character classes, a couple dozen skills, half a dozen basic enemy types and maybe 10 map variations. It has a pretty basic strategy (as opposed to tactics) portion, some voice work, a lot of menu driven text stuff including the random events, and that is about it. It is also kind of unbalanced, with alchemist variations being overpowered, especially as they level up and get 2 throws per turn and 10 flasks per battle.

I could easily see this having been a PS1 era game at least mechanically and in terms of amount of content. It's interesting to me because we've seen a retro revival for 8 and 16 bit games but not 32, partially because PS1 era graphics are so ugly. Could this be a way for the retro revival to reach 32 bit era? Use cleaner modern graphics but the old style and scope of those games? I also realize it may be a budget thing. Maybe this is what you get with a game budget in the low millions rather than eight figures.

I don't know but as I played the game I could not help but feel like I was playing some lost obscure PS1 era strategy RPG.