Dhux's Scar

I want to begin by saying that, after playing it, I was trying to decide whether Dhux's Scar is the best RPG I've ever played. I have no answer to that, but the question itself says a lot. At the very least, this is definitely my favorite RPGMaker game now.

Let me just try and explain why I think this game is so great, and why it is my belief that everyone should play a game like this before working on their own.

Story
Story and character development are the highlights of this game.

Dhux is an evil creature from the past, whose powers were taken away by God. God also put a scar on Dhux's forehead, so even though Dhux reincarnated every 500 years, people would recognize her for that scar. Rumors go that Dhux is back, and the church is offering a good reward to whomever finds her and hands her over to the church. Elijah, a weak/coward/cynical merchant is really interested in that reward, and luck has it that he finds a little girl named Celliann with Dhux's scar on her forehead. He decides to take her to Jehridan and get his reward, pretending he doesn't know who she is. Problem is, Celliann also has her own motives to go to Jehridan, so she is happy to play the innocent little girl and go along with Elijah's plans.

That's the basic premise of the game, but it really doesn't say much, because nothing is what it seems in Dhux's Scar. There are so many plot twits and revelations in this game that it is really hard to say anything without passing on a major spoiler. There is a heavy focus on character development, and I consider the game to be completely successful at this. Although the game apparently portraits the old "good vs evil" battle (church vs demons), no single character is purely good or bad for that matter, and I ended up liking and sympathizing with almost every single one of them. There is just so much detail, care and originality in everything, from the apparently meaningless characters to the religious agendas, from individual behaviors to cosmic concepts.

Trying not to spoil much, all I can say Dhux's Scar made quite an impression on me... I thought it was kinda brilliant.

Graphics
There are two great things about the graphics in this game: one, they're beautiful. Two, they're custom. I just consolidated my view that custom graphics are indeed very important, because they give a necessary unique feel to the game. When I play a game with overused graphics (like RTP), I feel a terrible deja-vu, like it's something I played lots of times already, and not even something like Dhux's Scar bizarre plots and characters would prevent me from feeling this (if Erilex had used RTP, for instance).



I was blown away by the violent, gory, bizarre, yet charming animations and graphics of Dhux's Scar. You'll find plenty of disfigured demons, mutilation, blood, nudity, sexuality, and more. There are also some cute tender moments. Graphics greatly enhance the power of the dialogs and story, and I really admire Erilex patience to make so many animations using pictures. It definitely pays off.

Battles
I am usually annoyed by difficult games, especially ones with good stories. If I'm interested to know what'll happen next, being stuck on a difficult battle or puzzle is the last thing I want. But Dhux's Scar battles are somewhat... shall I say... intriguing. Most of the game you have 3 party members, one of them very strong (Faye), two of them very weak (Elijah and Celliann). Every single battle is challenging, so you can't just hit "attack" button and wait for the battle to end. Most of the time you have to worry about making a rational use of items with Elijah, trying to prevent Celliann from dying, and causing massive damage with Faye.
Item supply is very limited, so you have to rationalize everything, every single healing. If you fight too much, you'll run out of items, but you don't fight often, you'll stay underlevelled. It gets very tense.

I like the fact that Dhux's Scar battles escape traditional RPG formulas, but are still very well balanced. I also like the fact that Erilex managed to create a sideview battle using RM2K DBS, looks very nice.

Still, overall I thought battles were excessively difficult and excessively frequent (considering their repetitiveness), so even though they don't fail on originality, in my opinion they're not one of the game's strong points. I also thought save points were not well distributed, so you'll often find yourself watching the same cutscene many many times because you'll keep dying in some boss battle. I actually got to the point where I killed a very difficult boss, watched a big cutscene after that, fell immediately in a forest packed with enemies, and died to some generic monster... having to do everything all over. Very frustrating.

PE system
This is probably the most interesting aspect of the game's mechanics. You start the game with 50 PE (apparently it means Puntos de Estancia, something like Staying Points). In my understanding, they represent Celliann's disposition to keep following you and pretending she's not a badass demon.

There are two ways in which you can lose PE: moving from one area to the other, or using Celliann's special attack that instantly kills any enemy, including bosses. While it doesn't seem like a big issue avoiding going back to places at first, sometimes you may find yourself out of items in your stock, and tempted to go back to a village and shop. Boss battles are super hard, so it's also very tempting to use Celliann's ability all the time. Problem is, if PE reaches zero, game over. Not only that, but if you reach a certain point in the game and you have low PE, you get the bad ending.

Bottom line, there's a lot of tension and fighting temptations in this game, which adds a nice flavor to the story itself. These mechanics help the storyline, instead of interfering with it.

Music
Music is great. Fits the game well.

Pacing
Apart from battle and saving issues I have mentioned, I thought Dhux's Scar flowed quite well. The story doesn't rush, but it's not too slow either. Sometimes you'll see cutscenes representing side events happening somewhere else in the world, but it doesn't get confusing at all. Someone complained that dungeons (mainly forests) are too linear, but I hardly see that as a problem... I mean, come on, battles are too hard already, no need of walking back and forth in mazes hitting switches to go places. You don't really need to stay too much in an enemy area to train, towns are kinda small with no need for exploration, so everything is pretty straightforward.

I think everyone should play Dhux's Scar, not just because it's an awesome game with a brilliant story, but because it proves that you can make good games without following most of the overused RPG formulas.

If you are planning on playing it, one last suggestion: no peeking on game folders or editing mode, no spoilers. This game is all about surprises.