We the People

Disclaimer: This is a review for the first two chapters of We the People. By the time you read this, things may be further along, and old things improved upon.

We the People, by reading the game description, was a game where the main characters are actually the developer's friends, which is why we have names like Matt and Kaleb instead of the nonsensical Edge or Blade.

It's also why every party member playable thus far has been a dude, dude's everywhere, bro. All the major enemies so far are guys as well, which are also either friends of the developer, or someone he and his friends are acquainted with. I've done the same thing before by making an adventure with my friends as characters; this was because they were only shared among us.

Let's see how this game fares to a member of the general public.


Story
The story begins innocently enough, with the main character being late to his magic class for the first time. Asking his best friend to distract the teacher for him, our hero Bobby gets more than he bargained for when the screen starts shaking.

It's then he finds out he is from a bloodline of summoners, and where the tale truly starts, throwing us into the thick of danger. What follows through the game is a loose string of events that just keep bringing Bobby closer and closer into dangerous territory, where he'll meet a most likely nefarious cult. Stopping this cult and solving the mysteries brought on by their cryptic words is (so far) the focal point of the plot.

Scattered through-out is plenty of humor, usually hitting the mark where a cleric named Matt is concerned. I pretty much liked all of the banter between him and Bobby. I guess it pays to have a verbal punching bag on the team.

Besides the dialogue, the enemy names and some equipment names/descriptions are full of punny words. For example, we have enemies that go by the name of "Dairy Air", "Bee Polite", and "Sanda Bear". The large amount of puns are relegated to the non story related things though, so those turned off by puns need only block out enemy names from the screen.


Gameplay
This game plays like a standard RPG, in which you walk around linear paths while entering towns and dungeons, fighting monsters and solving a simple puzzle or two along the way. There are no random battles, all enemies are visible on the screen.

One thing that really got on my nerves though was constantly having to press the shift key when I wanted to move at normal RM2K3 speed which only lasted for a second or two. Otherwise I was stuck with a slow walk speed. This, luckily, only happened in dungeons.

Like JRPGs of old, loot can be found in boxes, barrels, and pots. Every town and dungeon has a few hidden items, so finding them is never boring or pointless. There's even a hidden shop that sells the best armors I could buy run by an eccentric named Noah.

As for the battles themselves, skill choice is the lowest I've seen in a while, with only about two or three skills per character. This includes a special abilty that costs no mp, so two of the members ended up only having one MP based skill. Bobby's scan command was really well done and showed me enemy HP, drops, and skills, and Matt's pray command helped deal adequate damage while saving on MP for much needed heals. I never used Jacob's x2 Strength ability for fear of losing HP, while I never had the need (One boss you might need it, but he dies quickly) to use Kaleb's ability which gets rid of enemy buffs.

This is somewhat mitigated though by having an attack key that actually does damage, and being one of the most balanced RM2K3 games I've ever played. It was never too hard or too easy, and instead of getting one shot, enemies were there to whittle your characters down. Things moved fast enough in battle as well, so it rarely felt like a chore. Status effects also completely healed themselves after every battle. I'd be annoyed otherwise since poison happens often in one of the dungeons.

Lastly, there's a pretty nifty ring customization system that works as the accessories in the game. I didn't really use it until near the end however, as item requirements were usually pretty huge or better off using the items needed to create new rings. At least the accessories proved really useful.

Graphics
I'll say what I liked first; the custom characters and battlers both conveyed humor and I really enjoyed looking at them. This was also the same with Bobby's summon skills, Ogi's animation in particular looked really neat. The atb bar and windowskin looked really solid as well.

These things set themselves apart from the rest of the game's visuals, which ranged from average to plain awful.

This is mostly conveyed through the mapping. The RTP is used in a way where maps either look average (this is actually the best map in the game imo):


To the...well:

At least it gets points for having a carpet and some chairs.

The mapping usually falls into the second category, but at the very least it's never hard to figure out where to go. There are a lot of forested pathways, where walking under the tops of trees nets cool items.


Sound
The Final Fantasy cursor, decision, and cancel sounds were instantly noticeable, as was the music used for the game. I really with I didn't know that the Black Habit's lair was a midi of an actual band's song, but I do.

The music and sounds fit the game really well though, and other than the completely out of place Basshunter title screen theme, the music fit together as one cohesive soundtrack.

Only a couple songs don't loop (including the battle theme), but most songs do.


Bugs for the Dev
♦ Transitions from map to map often only had one tile that would take me to the next map. What I mean is in a two corridor hallway, only one tile would get me to the connected map, instead of both rows. This also happened when the pathways were three tiles high/wide.
♦ Mysterious figure in the beginning says pleasent instead of pleasant.
♦ When spotting Trevor for the first time, you have it where only the middle event out of the three continues the story. Having the top and bottom events move you to this middle event doesn't actually activate it. I'd suggest just copy-pasting the story event and just change the move route to include whether moving up or down.


Stray Observations
♠ The mysterious figure transmogrifying into a treasure chest with the starting weapon looked really cool.
♠ The battle music was particularly awesome.
♠ You were successfully creeped out by Noah!
♠ Not heeding the priest's advice, I begin to take stuff from people's houses, including his.
♠ Smashed the enemies to bits!
♠ Enemies defending? Who the heck taught them that?


In the end, although enemies started getting a lot of HP, battles still moved along quickly and kept their original balance. Character dialogue when speaking to each other were also highly enjoyable to read most of the time. These two things helped mitigate the poor mapping, often nonsensical main plot (where kings are involved), and slow walk speed in dungeons.

I had fun, but I don't know if I'd want to keep it up for 13 more chapters. However, once the developer does get much farther in created the game and/or revamping what I feel needs fixing, I'd be happy to give it another go and update my review as needed.