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Execution is lacking, beheading is there

  • Kylaila
  • 12/10/2014 06:47 PM
  • 765 views
"Trust or Betrayel" is a few minutes long game about ninjas assassinating or not assassinating the shogun.
It focuses on the main character's relationship between the ninja and these samurai, and it suffers from poor writing, plot and logic holes as well as uninteresting gameplay.

You wake up without any memories and are told that you are to assassinate the shogun. So off to assassinate him you go. You can sneak your way in or go brute force (it will not change a thing, nor will it make sense sight-wise, but whatever), camouflage and go.


.. if only that was not the way you were told that...


The plot is building on a relationship you simply do not have. You do not know this ninja, you do not know anyone.
What in the world are you building trust on? You simply go along with the flow. No trust. No friendship. Nothing. You do not have a single line of dialogue between the two of you aside from asking whether you are ready to go or not.

Thus all endings, even if potentially interesting, lose their value as they build on non-existing character bonds. If those were established earlier during a hideout, trying to survive a bit before you infiltrate the enemy camp, it would have a much much stronger impact.
This little game would benefit from more backstory. You know nothing about character traits or the like, all characters seem about the same and they all hold no meaning to you whatsoever. Flesh them out a little bit, let them have goals and a personality - a few lines of dialogue will do, but nothing cannot do.

It is obvious that this is an early game attempt, it lacks polish on all ends.
The music is RTP (+ samurai pack, yay) mixed with epic music and has different volumes as well. The general background music is much lower volume than sound effects or the boss battle music which makes it fairly irritating to adjust during a 3-minute game.

Gameplay seems interesting at first glance, but is not. You have the option to either fight or climb over walls twice - in both cases you jump back onto the ground right behind the guard. It would be impossible not to notice.
And it does not matter, either way. Guards will not ring alarm and you can two-shot them, too. Battles are not hard and they are not meant to be - it is all about the story.

Yet the infiltration is fairly awkward. You murder multiple samurai, can only acquire armor from one specific samurai (and render an ultimate game over if you decline), and then you sleep in the enemy camp for fuck's sake. You can do that without camouflage and they will stay friendly to you as well.

A door suddenly appears out of nowhere as well in which you can hide without any need and can walk over to the walls. Good. That is how you do it.


I still wonder why I call myself Hitsuna when the character screen says Hitsuga ..


Given all that, the main problem is the writing.
The gameplay has nothing to show for, the battles are easy to enable a smooth progression, so the multiple endings make the core of this game.

I realize the creator mentioned to ignore his mistake, but it is more than orthography that is lacking. Proper line breaks are missing, everything that is told storywise feels rushed and without thought - a deep long friendship is hinted at which cannot exist if not for some stupid soddy backgroundstory that is not mentioned. And even that possiblity is rendered useless by an ending.

For the love of god, you cannot even know how your main character's name. Is it Hitsuga or Hitsuna?
Battle- and characterscreen all say Hitsuga, dialogue says otherwise.
There are also samurai-related words that are simply wrong. Ritual suicide is called seppuku, not seppukutu. And this "Tantoo" which is made out as a ritual weapon I can only recognize as a special form of tan on your skin. I assume it was made up.

The endings themselves have little impact .. and end in void, at least you can go back to title.
There is only one narrated, and that is the one which is by far the worst for that very reason.
The continuation seemed rushed, out of character (we are talking about a trained warrior here, he would not whine or comment a proper punishment with "WHAT THE HELL" and lastly .. random.
The turnaround to get our friend into the picture made no sense and seemed forced.


This game had a nice core idea - but if your focus is story, you need to put more effort into that field. Especially if it is not your forte.
It does not work out as it is.

Posts

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I'm guessing they meant to write "tanto" or "tantō" which is type of Japanese dagger/sword.
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