Ever since the rise of the modern era of video games, there has been a significant effort from independent developers into bringing back old-fashioned games with design that resembles the ones many of us grew up with. Many developers have modernised the sauce, taken new steps with it, and with reason, there's a lot of players that couldn't put up with some of the bullish that some 8-bit games pulled back in the day anymore.
There's also a fair share of players that are molded into the bullish and have adopted it, so many retro indie games don't quite hit the spot for them because they don't feel the same. Personally, it's the case for me, I do play and enjoy a lot of retro indie games, but few of them actually hit that "true retro feel" spot. They fill other blanks nicely, but this is one many fail to fill up. Ringlorn Saga is especially special, because it somehow manages to fill both shoes. It feels accessible enough to be played by just anyone who are into 8-bit Action RPGs with push combat, and it feels retro enough to feel like it was released thirty years ago.

Let's get into the gist of it.
It begins with a young woman named Fiona who, on her 16th birthday, asks a bard to tell her about her father's adventures, the bard specifies that he has told her this story countless times and asks if she really wants to hear it again, she replies "Yes, but I want the full story today". The bard then proceeds to tell her about the protagonist of the game, and you are thrown into the story.

The premise is you are Prince Gerhard, one of two sons of royalty, and a mysterious magical barrier that reeks of evil energy has appeared in the land next door. Your father and his men decide to investigate the barrier, Gerhard wishes to follow him but his father refuses, saying that his brother must take the throne if he does not come back within a month. A month passed, and Gerhard needed answers.

Many indie games try to mimic a retro artstyle, and over time indie developers have taken the liberty to enhance/modernise the concept, but Ringlorn Saga is extra faithful to the graphic limitations and palette swap trickery of yesteryear, which makes it feel genuinely retro, it's color count is low, yet all the art falls right into place and feels at home. There's a CRT filter, as shown in the screenshots, that you can either turn on or off.
The level design is easy to read and has a few visual clues for the player to interpret as they will, and for what it's trying to accomplish, it's all in all quite tightly designed and simple enough to navigate around. You're often asking yourself "Where was that again? I think it was that way", but at the same time, you never feel lost because you mold yourself into the map design very quickly and understand how it's built fast enough.

You are almost never forced to fight anything if you strategize your movements well, which doesn't make the game drag on if you don't want it to. It can also be done without any grinding, simply clearing the screens as you explore is plenty enough. The combat is driven by a push mechanic, and you have three attack types and two fighting stances. The fighting stances are either attack or defence, which will change how much damage you take per hit and how much damage you deal, and the three attack stances are slash, crush and stab. Every enemy is weak to a certain attack type, some enemy types have a set weakness, whilst other enemy types, usually humanoid ones, will have varying weakness depending on a setting I haven't figured out. It makes the combat a bit more dynamic by encouraging the player to pay attention to their stances and their surrounding at all times, as you can get overwhelmed with enemies sometimes, so picking the right rotation of stances can be advantageous.

I had no problem exhausting every dialogue the game has, the writing is simple but quite enjoyable, pretty much every NPC has an anecdote to tell and a personality as well, and best of all is that it doesn't overfeed you with filler dialogue, even if the number of NPCs in the game are slim. Your involvement with the number of dialogues you read is up to you, all NPC's have extra dialogue but it's mostly flavor text, so the player isn't punished if they're not the kind of player that likes to exhaust dialogues.
The soundtrack is a soothing and mesmerising FM soundtrack that'll be sure to keep you hooked to it's catchy tunes, never letting a single loop get tiring if you're into VGM. The town theme is particularly comforting and evokes a deep feeling of nostalgia and serenity. Some of the loops are also quite long, sometimes you don't even have time to hear them all the way through before you're done in the area you're in.