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Tries your patience, but a decent game lurks somewhere underneath.

Little Wing Guy plays White Reflections an Rm2k3 game made by Meadzy. Demo Version 1.

Why should you play this game?
- It has both a functional custom made menu and battle system, which some people go totally gaga for.
- Mapping is good and keeps a consistent level of quality throughout the demo.
- A professional presentation and bug-less gameplay may keep you playing.

Why should you give it a miss?
- The game is so damn slow at times. The ATB bar crawls along at a snails pace, screen pans are set to the lowest speed and even doors take forever to open. Fuck!
- Battles do not have much strategy, mostly consisting of attack and wait. Joy.
- Plot is not very immersive and builds gradually.


Review:

I dare say, even at the very beginning of the demo, White Reflections comes off as a somewhat pretentious game. The game opens with a woman and child sitting by the fireplace, the door suddenly unlocks and you waltz in unannounced. “Oh a visitor! I didn’t hear you come in. Lets read a story together!” she says with a smile, and since I am an unknown intruder in her home; that is quite clearly what I want to do. You agree and she begins to read the book about a young man named Reiji, that she probably found in a bargin bin. While she’s distracted; let’s hope you rob her blind. Cue unskipable introduction sequence with panoramas, slow text and credits!

Now, before you actually begin the real start of the game, an introductory section occurs, which has you invading a town because you‘re the good guys? It does provide a decent opening to the game as you are trust into action and combat isn’t far away, although it doesn’t work like much of an introduction to gameplay features. Reiji is some sort of army general and all-around badass, you have five different skills available but they’re all the same really, targeting all enemies and dealing a different elemental damage. Ultimately it leads to every battle being won in two turns because you can’t select anything other than skills at this point. You don’t get a feel of what the battle system in this game will be like, or why these pointless easy battles are present. After the introduction is finished you discover that Reiji is actually a prince, and all those awesome powers he had were given to him from his colourful jacket, and without them he has no combat experience. The King wins father of the year award for sending his only son, and heir to the throne out on dangerous missions. If simply anyone could wear it, surely there is someone more qualified! Especially since Reiji almost died at the end of the last mission he took.

I found it very strange how Reiji acted during the opening war zone to how he acted afterwards. During the invasion he was very proper and seemed to have a goal he was after, you don‘t get a major feel for his personality because he uses “Hmph” a lot, and of course ellipsis. I liked that we got our attention on the invasion and it wasn’t broken up by lengthy flashbacks of Reiji resenting his father for being a homo or something stupid, but, after that scene I had a certain expectation of how Reiji’s character would be later on. We find out he’s a battle useless prince who likes to help people out for money or something. I think it was an intentional mini twist, he just didn’t act like much of a prince to me. Now I’m not saying he should walk around on his high horse “Don’t touch me dirty peasant” snooty snoot, but he shouldn’t walk around town in bland clothes doing favours for money, isn’t he rich? I’m not talking about a side quest there either, that is a forced story event and he does it solely for cash. Also, all the people in town know he is a careless prince but don’t try to kidnap him, or touch his face. In fact some of the soldiers, who he helped to save are downright rude to him. Reiji is the only character we get to spend time with in the demo, other characters are all introduced rather briefly and don‘t stick around, so it is critical we like and learn things about Reiji. We do, but not to the degree I would like. The main storyline doesn’t rear it’s head much, we are teased with some inklings of plot at parts, but it’s mostly all about Reiji and his foreshadowing flashbacks about Super Saiyan Goku four killing someone he knew (seriously) and they aren‘t really brought up. The dialogue has minor spelling errors from time to time, nothing that takes the experience away from you at least. Disappointingly the demo doesn’t not end on any sort of cliff-hanger whatsoever, so be prepared to be abruptly shown a black screen with white text, while taking a wander in the forest. Thanks for that, by the way.

Also, I will add that I do think it’s quite hilarious that many people who make RPG maker games seem to think that members of a royal family sit in the audience chamber all day, every day, just waiting for people to just burst in. If Reiji wants to talk to his father he has to go into the audience chamber, where his father has been super-glued to the throne. When the king wants to give Reiji some items before he leaves, he has his assistant walk over to give them to him. He literally doesn’t move ever!


King Rhue does not shoot blanks!


As I briefly mentioned above, the game has a custom made battle system, but don’t instantly assume that it is well made or effective. The battle system has three major flaws. Firstly, from a functionality stand point, it does not do anything new or better than the default battle system. There are only four available commands in the demo: Attack, Skills, Defend, and Items; well, doesn’t that sound familiar? There is literally nothing else do to, you can’t even run away from battles! You are given a forced battle tutorial to explain these four commands, but anyone whose ever played an RPG before, already knows their purpose quite well. It’s cool that there is one available, just incase there’s someone new to all this playing the game, but it should definitely be skippable. It does seem like there could be some sort of limit break system in place, as there is a blue rectangle next to the names of party members, but it is never once mentioned or made use of, not even in the battle tutorial. It is quite funny, as any other tutorials, those that don’t involve battles, are so half assed and fail to actually explain anything probably, such as the day and night, or skill point systems. Someone please tell me, What is the mentality behind making a completely custom system that isn’t inventive in anyway? All that hard work and effort only to achieve what has already been done for you. I can only think of one positive thing this custom system does, any bugs or annoying things in the default battle system, such as: the broken agility stat are obviously not present in this. Since he’s already created the system, I would say he should go on using it, but to anyone else considering making a custom battle system just to avoid the broken agility stat, please don’t bother or VX lolcraze.

The second major problem, and this is potentially worse than the first problem, is how ridiculously slow paced the battles are. I just couldn’t believe anyone in their right mind would have the ATB bar crawl along like a snail. I counted that it takes nearly fifteen seconds for the ATB bar to fill from zero to full, and that is not including that it stops when enemies take their turn. At the start of every single battle, the ATB bar is always set to zero too, even in the default battle system it is set to half way and only set to zero during a surprise encounter. But guess what? This game does not make use of pre-emptive strikes or surprise encounters. Even in the battle tutorials, it’s set you zero and you sit there waiting and waiting, just to do one simple thing to end it. Why is it so slow though? I just don’t understand, and it drove me nuts. The speed of the ATB should be at the very least doubled! You aren’t rewarded for slogging through these battles either, as the game level caps you constantly, you will only ever level up after a boss battle. Apparently you obtain skill points for fighting regular battles, but I didn’t see any evidence of them.

Finally, I had one other complaint with the battle system (and the game in general actually), it is painfully shy and doesn’t want to show us what it can do. Did you ever play Final Fantasy Thirteen? Where in the first two chapters of the game you don’t even have the real battle system available, and the only thing the characters can do is either, do a standard attack or use a potion? It’s exactly the same here, throughout the first dungeon, including the boss and any battles before hand, all you can do is either attack or heal yourself. Enemies are quite weak too, and never got critical hits, or used special abilities on me; so I actually never once healed inside of battle. The only thing I did in every battle was hit the attack button, it feels like there is no strategy whatsoever in this early portion of the game. I don’t know what it was exactly, but enemies were not particularly impressive and just used basic attacks all the time, if I ever encountered three enemies my thoughts were not “Who should I attack first? How will I win this?” it was “Great this will take ages to finish”. There is only one real boss battle in the entire demo and it is the worst I have ever witnessed. A man named ???? Bursts in, we’ve killed all his minions and he’s ready for a fight, some badass music plays and here we go! I can‘t wait for the first boss…oh wait, he doesn’t do anything. He does absolutely nothing in the battle. You just wait for fifteen seconds, press enter twice and then wait another fifteen seconds, and repeat until the battle is over. It’s the most lacklustre boss battle in existence. I’m just going to assume the creator somehow forget to code him, and then assume somehow didn’t notice during any of his play tests. Demo stands for demonstration, so show us what you can do, don’t hide things away from us. When you finally do get your first ability, a whooping hour and twenty minutes in the demo, it pretty much ends before you ever get a chance to use it. I’m not a man that usually face palms, but the occasion calls for it. Everything mentioned above shouldn’t be terribly difficult to fix and there are some redeemable features to the system. The coding of the custom battle system was simply fantastic, I did not encounter a single bug, everything performed well and my computer was not hindered by all the pictures knocking about. It was also very aesthetically pleasing in every aspect. Everything was placed where it should be and the command menus that pop up, disappear and don’t take up much room. Battle animations were well done, some a little lengthy and over done in my opinion, but they were sprited well and quite fluid.


Reiji does an impression of Fayt Leingod


I was rather pleased with the overall look of the game. It wasn’t why I initially downloaded it, I actually think some of the images don’t do the game justice. The graphics are consistent (except for face sets) and maps are well made for the most part. I read a comment on one of the uploaded images, saying that the font on the menu is too small to read, but I didn’t find this at all and I played it in windowed mode. I think you’ve done well in this department, and will continue to do so.

I’m not someone who normally mentions music, I think it takes someone really quite special to mess up music choice and ruin atmosphere. If it fits I’m happy, if it’s from all the popular games, I don’t care. But in this game, for some reason, I really noticed the more popular music, and disagreed with some of the choices he made. I think, certain music invokes an feeling in you, that any game which borrows it’s music, cannot hope to recreate. Music isn’t just music, and if it’s from a previous source, then it holds emotions, expectations and memories. When I left the castle and music from Final Fantasy Six played, I just shook my head.

I think my real complaint is, there’s nothing to find and many places lead to dead ends. You spend four seconds waiting for a door to open, only to have it lead to a tiny empty room, which it does on many occasions. The mine dungeon later is the only place that has any form of treasure chests that I could find, but neither of which even can be opened. Not because they’re locked, just because he forget to do anything with them. During the mountain pass, you have to jump across some platforms to continue, but it isn’t pointed out you need to, or can jump so I couldn’t find my way for a few minutes, especially because only one tile actually activated the jumping when the platforms were a four tile square. Early on, you spend a lot of time in the castle and navigation is difficult at times, not just because of it’s huge size, but also because of it’s nonsensical structure. Typically if you enter a door on the right side of the room, you would expect to enter the new room on the left side, right? Not in this game, who knows where you’ll end up! Enter a door from the right and you could end up at the top of a new map with the door visible. It’s just jarring and noticeable. Very noticeable.

Conclusion:

The game intentionally holds itself back and I don’t know why. Imagine, your son is capable of obtaining A grades, but he actually decides he wants to get C grades instead. I feel like many poor decisions have been made through-out, and it hurts the game significantly. It doesn’t change the fact that the coding is genius and effortless, the animations are great and the mapping has a high standard. It’s hard to see at times, but deep down, clouded in the dark depths of slow ATB bars; a great game lies waiting to be discovered.

SCORE NOT AVAILABLE, AS IT IS ONLY A DEMO.

Posts

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InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
Great review, I remember playing this awhile ago.
And yesss, the ATB was horrid. :[

I think the facesets always really bothered me, just not well done considering the guy coded the battle system and whatnot.

a great game lies waiting to be discovered.
WHITE POWER

Surprised to see you doing quite a few reviews. Seems like you're the only one who does a brisk pace of writing them lately, sadly enough, but it's something!
Thanks (I think)! Yeah, it’s really rewarding to think you might have helped someone’s game improve and take shape. Especially if the game flew right under the radar and the creator might need a confidence boost…*giggle*

…Sorry, I couldn’t keep a straight face. Don’t believe that bollocks, then it’s all about the Makerscore baby!
Wow, thanks for the review. I honestly thought that anybody that cared slightly for this game stopped caring back in January so thanks again. You're pretty much spot on about everything and I'll spend some time fixing it. I'll just list some comments below as well.

Anyway, I'm terrible at story writing if you haven't noticed, though I like to think I had some great ideas. I does build a whole lot later on but its probably to slow to keep people interested at first.

I've had lots of complaints about the ATB before but ionno, I guess I'm stupid or stubborn or just lazy. (tiem 2 fix et)

Boss isn't supposed to just stand there so I fucked up in the coding somewhere.

I'll admit I spent more time on the CMS' and CBS' looks rather than their implementation in the game but since then I've added a ton of new features that I'm looking forward to releasing soon.

Hate to admit this but I got lazy towards the end of the demo (the demo was actually supposed to go on for another hour but I didn't feel like coding any new battles! >_<) and didn't bother to add any chests or anything to really do on the maps. Fixed that for teh next demo :D

Believe it or not, things like this do make me want to go back, fix the things people found wrong, and come back with an even better game. Would have responded earlier but I hadn't logged on to this site since maybe Feburary.

Thanks Again.
Just saw this review after play testing the demo. Your review reflects everything I felt about this game myself. I thought the CMS was interesting, but I agree about the slow ATB.

For me, for whatever reason, I got a black screen after the battle tutorial, and since I had not saved in awhile, this is where I decided to quit. After reading the review, I realize there was not a whole lot more to expect as of yet.

I also agree about the clash in personality. He's a prince, yet several people are rude to him or walk over him. Yet in battle, he took charge and even seemed annoyed by several guards. You'd think these guards would be a bit more in fear of their prince and treat him with more respect while walking around in the castle.

In any case, hopefully the developer will take your suggestions to heart and continue working on this game.
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