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(Bounty) A Broken, Painful Gamble

  • Ratty524
  • 05/21/2013 05:53 AM
  • 1426 views
Before I begin, because this is a demo, and not a complete game, I am not giving this a star rating in my review. It would be unfair to do so as what I have played right is severely unpolished and giving it a score would hurt this game’s chance of getting the future recognition it (might) deserve.
I will also use the following grading system for each category of the demo, including story, gameplay, and audio/visuals:

A – The Highest score possible. The game excels in this particular area and contains little to no flaws.
B – Still a good score, but due to some fallacies, this category falls short of becoming ‘A’ material.
C – This is an average to mediocre score. Not bad, but not good either. This is the start of scores that are generally undesirable, and requires attention from the developer.
D – Bad. Not as horrid as an ‘F’, but that’s the only good thing about a score like this. Categories that receive this score are poorly functioning in the game and cause some sort of frustration with players.
F – The Lowest score possible. Simply put, the developer failed with this aspect of the game. To get this, a category has to be so dysfunctional or poorly implemented all around that it spurs a negative emotion with me as a player.

Now that we have covered scoring, let’s get on with the review. First, I will cover the game’s story. Typically, the story of a game goes hand-in hand with the game itself, and even if it lacks a story, your audience will still try to make something out of your product. Sometimes, however, a game can survive with a bad story, and opposite is true in some cases. If both the story and the game play fall flat on their faces, however, well… You will see what happens for yourself.

STORY: C
Let’s start with a direct quote from this game:


… You’ve got to be kidding me. The golden rule of game making, as well as any type of media, is not to turn off your audience at the beginning! My hope for this game being a fun, enjoyable experience was gashed right against a concrete wall as soon as I read this. No one wants to lose a game out of sheer luck, and its very concept is just horrible design and vastly decreases the replay value of your game. I will cover this a lot more in the gameplay category, though.

The story is that you are some explorer who has discovered an ancient tomb known as the Devil’s Quarry. You venture in with the hopes of finding either treasure, knowledge, or whatever MacGuffin this game ambiguously refers to, depending on your choices. This is essentially it, and in a game like this it was expected. What is at least nice, however, is how the story largely centers on you, as a player of this game. This stays true with the classic RPGs and rouge-likes this was based on, and it was surely welcome.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of patience caused by some of the worse factors about this game, I could not see more of this game’s story. It’s so simplistic and predictable, however, that I honestly feel like nobody would miss much. What’s disturbing to me is that this game’s story is the only category that won’t piss you off.

GAMEPLAY: F
I don’t mind hard games. I’ve played the Megamans, the Cave Stories, and all other games where seeing the “game over” screen was a commodity, yet I still love them. Descension, however, is hard for the wrong reasons. The game mechanics are broken, the control is slightly clunky, and the whole thing is too dependent on chance. As a result, this game no longer becomes challenging, so much as frustrating. Your battle is not against the onslaught of creepy-crawlies that await you in the Devil’s Quarry, it would be against the game’s flawed mechanics, poor difficulty pacing and your own patience.

You are given three basic classes to choose from: a warrior, a rogue, and a mage. I’d say the mage is the best somewhat, but it really doesn’t matter, as no choice will affect your inevitable, frequent demises with this game. Enemies move towards you in a typical “mystery dungeon” type fashion, where every one of your actions will give them one turn to move towards you.

What’s bad about this? If you are facing the wrong direction by the time an enemy approaches right next to you (which will always be unexpected, because you are constantly surrounded by a “fog of war” that limits your vision), that enemy will get free hits off you and you can’t react in time unless you spend precious MP (and it is precious, resources are terribly limited in this game) on a skill.

It doesn't end there, the evasion stat exists in this game, and more often than not, you will be missing your attacks (skills included) a lot more than your A.I. opponent, so they’ll usually stack more damage than you ever will.

There’s more, it’s possible for you to be ganged by two or more enemies, and with how costly area of effect skills are in the game, coupled with the already shifty mechanics, you might as well turn off the game, because it’s instant death.


Getting sandwiched like this is extremely common in this game.


Now wait a minute, Ratty, don’t you have recovery options? Don’t you start with a few potions and MP items? Yes, you do. However, not only are these items limited in quantity, they barely even work. Don’t ask me how you can screw up something as basic as recovering HP from an item, but this game did it, somehow. There are many moments where you have to click on your character in the status screen repeatedly in order to get these items working, and sometimes they don’t do squat to you at all. They will magically start working again after walking a few steps, however, just in time for you to run into another ridiculous enemy and die again! Fortunately, enemies will frequently drop items that to aid you, but they are randomized. Most items you get will be useless, and the chance they’ll drop a recovery item that you will need is slim. The whole game is one big dysfunctional gamble where every odd is put against you.

To emphasize that last point, there was one situation, one situation, where I actually survived more than three minutes in this game without dying, even getting to the coveted level two (yeah, just level two!). This was because somehow, my attacks landed without missing much, and somehow, I got more recovery items from drops, and SOMEHOW potions decided to work. The problem here is obvious; the game is about 80% based on luck and 20% based on skill.

Nobody likes luck-dependent games, unless it’s a goofy board game they're playing with their friends. The reason is even if you manage to beat this game (which is highly unlikely in its current state), there is still no satisfaction acquired from winning, because anyone can technically beat the game in the exact same way you did. If the game was more focused on skill, however, players will feel accomplished, proud, and willing to brag about their glorious achievements, because they feel that they've mastered something nobody else has. Right now, the only sense of accomplishment I get from this game is finding the patience to replay this repeatedly after the first two tries; and boy, do you need to be patient.

Why do you need patience while playing this game? As soon as you exit the game over screen, the game crashes with an RGSS error of some sort. Once you replay it, you have to go through the same walls of texts for the intro over, and over, and over again. A feature to skip the intro sequence entirely would be much appreciated. What’s better? A feature to skip the overly elaborate game over sequence would be even better, because it’s even more slow-paced and since you’ll be dying so much, your frustration will elevate further by not being able to skip that same nonsense repeatedly.

Without the plethora of game-breaking bugs, this category would be a “D”, and without the bogus game mechanics and chance-based gameplay, it would at least be a “C”. All of this is present, however, and so much more, which is why, as it currently stands, this category gets the big bad “F”. Moving on…

AUDIO/VISUALS: D
I get you are imitating classic rogue-likes. That’s fine. After dealing with the other major flaws of this game, however, I can hardly say anything in this category is passable. The maps are concise, which is nice, but also kind of bland and lacking in visual variety. Even though this game uses almost completely custom graphics, it does not excuse the quality of them. Characters look oddly flat and the enemies are facing in one direction for every movement. It looks boring.

That’s not the reason for the “D”, however, it mainly lies with the audio. It’s a repetitive, slow-starting track that’s easily forgettable, and coupled with the other problems with this game it only served to frustrate me even more. I’m sure you can find plenty of spooky cave themes that don’t sound as bad as this.

THE OVERALL VERDICT:
All I have to say is that I’m glad this is still in development, because the way it is right now is bad to the point of unplayable. Add more recovery options, overhaul your gameplay to make it less reliant on chance, and if a certain script is only making your game worse, GET RID OF IT. In spite of being filled with flaws, this game still has a chance to shine, so I hope that you, as a developer, consider my advice to make a potentially better game than what I’ve just experienced.


"If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again."
~William Edward Hickson

Posts

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Very interesting review.
One thing I figured out early on was to get a whole bunch of mobs near me, and kill them with the warrior or mage's AoE. I do this until I can one-shot things. Also, if you attack the air, the enemy will continue to move toward you. Instead of running into mobs and getting hit, I force them to use their turn getting into my melee range.

Those are the two tips that probably made this game a lot more fun for me. Of course, your critiques are very much valid.
If I had to rate this out of personal enjoyment, I would give it a 3.5.
Yeeouch!!! I was thinking of playing this game other than Jack the other day but ultimately gave up on playing both games because it was pretty late in the evening. Hmmmm...perhaps you have done me a good favor by doing this review and warning me about it in advance...

Although you may have not enjoyed it, I'm pretty sure it's not ALL that bad...right? Right...?
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
author=Addit
Although you may have not enjoyed it, I'm pretty sure it's not ALL that bad...right? Right...?

If you have doubts, go ahead and play this yourself. Citicism is always based on opinion.

@Clareain: Interesting. I don't really know how it makes this game fun, though. It feels like a trial and error method to solving some puzzle.
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