Riviera is a charming game full of life and beautiful graphics.
The gameplay is rather very easy. But what will bug you is that you can only carry up to 19 battle items. You don't know how to use each weapon because you may want to save it for a real tough boss battle, but you end up discarding it to make room for another weapon. Basically, you have 5 different characters (with the exclusion of Ledah) who excel at different weapons, and by using those types of weapons, you will learn an overdrive for that member using that certain weapon. And by learning new overdrives, your stats will increase everytime. That is how you level up. There is no running around and getting into a random battle. The number of battles and when you encounter a battle, is all fixed. Basically, you just explore by choosing wich direction to go and wait if a demon appears and says "Stop, no sprite shall go any further!" or something a long the lines of that. But there are practice battles where you can access one anytime anywhere through the field menu. But there are few places where you can't practise. Each battle item has durability. You can only use that item "yay" amount of times. The amount of times the item can be used will be displayed beside the object. Once that number falls to zero, it will break and you can not use it anymore. Unless you get another one. The game plays in chapters. Once you finish the mission, the chapter will end. There are a total of 7 chapters in the main game. There is no money involved, you do not shop for anything. All items are aquired by chests, picking them off the ground, NPCs giving them to you, or any other way besides purchasing them.
The graphics are beautiful. All the scenes are anime and they are very detailed and well done. You could tell it took a lot of time to do them. All the CG cinematics are anime and are still pictures. And at the bottom of the screen will show head shots of the character who is currently speaking, and what is even more better is that the head shots of them will show different kinds of emotion depending on how they are talking and how they are feeling.
The musical score in this game is quite catchy, and you will find yourself humming to some of the tunes once you memorise them. But what makes this game so much better is that there are battle voices, You will, half the time, hear the characters moan when they are badly injured or struck. At the beggining of the fight one character will say something like "You're goin' down!". When you perform a level 3 overdrive, you will all the time hear them say a phrase. Serene the Arc usually says "Here's my Trump Card" and then the name of her overdrive. The character who finishes the last enemy off, will say "We won!" or a quote parallel to that.
You can play this game a few more times before it starts to bore. But knowing that there are multiple endings might want to make you keep playing until you have seen all of them.
Overall, I believe that every single person should own this game, even if you are not a fan of RPGs, this game may actually get you into them.