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So Apparently Donavin Doesn’t Like Stairs

  • Addit
  • 08/25/2013 01:17 PM
  • 2826 views


A Game Made By: Nakazu
Created Using: RPG Maker XP
It's A: ACTION ADVENTURE Game
That Roughly Takes Around: 3 - 5 Hours To Complete
And It's A... COMPLETED GAME!!!


It’s quite unusual for me to do requests (well, actually this is the first time I’ve ever gotten any)… But whenever I do, or when there are chocolate chip cookies to be found – I’m usually on the case! And what I have here is a very strange case, indeed. For you see, when it comes to playing such creepy atmospheric games like this, I usually tend to stay away or not bother to play them at all because I’m not much of a big fan of these types of things. Besides, I’m more of a comedic, wanna laugh at something out loud sort of guy. But I suppose that you have to try somethings at least once. And judging by unbelievably sweet this game page is (I mean – JUST LOOK AT IT; LOOK HOW AWESOME IT LOOKS) then the rest of the game HAS to be good.

I think that the biggest crime here is the lack of attention that this game is getting.

(Stupid dog…)


The Story


Nobody better jack my boat while I’m gone.


There once was a legend about a place, a magical place, simply known as the Citadel Of Lore, where tales have been passed down throughout the years that this mysterious location that’s far from beyond the sea has the power to bring back the departed souls that have once left this land. You play as Donavin, a bad-ass, black cloak looking individual that bares no face as he intends to see his beloved Nadia once more. Traveling with only but a small wooden boat, it would appear that Donavin might have come across the whereabouts of the sacred temple – almost as if fate has played a part in doing so. As he ponders to himself on what might be, he soon departs from his ship and enters the temple inside, where he hopes to find the answers to what he seeks.

From the opening cinematics to the final showdown itself, you can definitely feel the pain and torment that our main character, Donavin, is going through on his journey to find his long lost beloved. With every single cutscene that occurs throughout, you’ll just slowly lose yourself into the narrative that you just wanna find out what happens next to him. I think one of the greatest things that this game’s plot does right is that, actually, very little dialogue is spoken from one scene to another; each cutscene usually relies on raw, unfaltering character emotion or one word sentences to explain what’s going on, and I felt that worked rather quite well. The story just works. There isn’t a lot of character elaboration or even anybody remotely in this game, except for a creepy old man named Esmond (who I swear I got deju-vu that he reminded me SO much of the creepy old man in the cave in the original Legend Of Zelda) who is an archaeologist that helps Donavin help to decipher some of the ancient scrolls he finds from within the citadel. Seriously, even though there isn’t a lot of supporting cast and very little dialogue is spoken, the overall plot is explained very well with a lot of heart, touching scenes and I enjoyed it quite immensely. Although it doesn’t do anything new with the true and tired story of one man’s desire to save his love from her own untimely demise (I mean, just look at Shadows Of The Colossus), it doesn’t do anything to screw up that, either.

The Gameplay


Hey – the b**tard’s got my box!!!


Vorlorn is a hybrid of an action, adventure / puzzle game that has you exploring the entire citadel while solving mind bending puzzle while fighting off the occasional enemy / boss once you acquire a particular item somewhere in the game. You can use the Shift key to get a major, unlimited boost to power your way through areas (which is QUITE useful when dealing with those awful, dreadful dark creatures that you meet); and you can also stealth walk using the Alt key (but there really isn’t any use for it other than avoiding being detected by enemies, but since it’s so painfully SLOWWWWWWW just use the Shift key instead). You can also attack enemies once you’ve acquired a weapon by going up to them and pressing the space bar to do some damage. That’s really all you need to know about the controls. And, luckily, this game gives you some tutorials about how most of the controls work (like jumping over gaps and such).

Now let’s talk about the mind bending puzzles, shall we. You will need to solve a wide array of puzzles in order to complete the game. Some of these puzzles, at first, are quite easy and are mostly centered on pushing a block on a switch to make certain things work, or using a bunch of crates to climb on to get to the next level. But as you further progress into the dungeon, you’ll come across a couple of noodle scratchers that might get your knickers in a knot. But the greatest thing is that, although, some of these puzzles may appear and seem to be hard on the surface with some practice and patience – and having a notepad to help you out (especially on the sound puzzle) – you should be able to solve them without a guide or consulting the creator for help. I found this to be quite indulging. As I’ve played a lot of these types of games, like a similar game to this that I reviewed a while back, Wraith, where the puzzles just get so overwhelming and so cryptic that it makes me wanna scream out loud and kick a football over eighty yards. But luckily, with Vorlorn, the puzzle solving had the right mix of challenge and cleverness with it came to its overall design. It’s almost like it’s on the same level of The Legend Of Zelda games where the puzzles can be hard but are solvable if you just step back and think about it for a moment. As long as it’s not like Lufia 2 or Wild Arms level, I’m fine with that.

Also, by the time that you get halfway through the game you’ll now be able to fight back against the creatures of darkness, which caught me a little off guard because of the puzzle solving, exploration type of adventure platform that this game had already established itself by this point; I didn’t even know you could attack enemies until I tried it out for myself (apparently the game forgot to give me a tutorial that I could use the weapon to attack once acquiring it). You will also come across a few boss fights, which can range in difficulty. The only one I had some trouble with was the last boss, simply because the enemies were too dark to see and the screen paned a lot while I was running away so I often messed up. But after about two tries, I was able to beat it. The boss fights were a nice touch, completely coming out of left field but provided a nice distraction from all that puzzle solving.

There were a few things I didn’t like about the gameplay that just slightly irked me a little. For starters, this game really could have benefited with a Quest Subscreen that displayed an entire map of the citadel, the items you’ve collected, and maybe a quit option as well (or a hint guide). I was originally going to complain about the health system and having an indicator for it somewhere on the screen, but I didn’t mind the breathing mechanic and just using the sound of the heartbeat to tell if I was going to die or not. But a separate screen to indicate all those other things could have helped. Also, the game over sequence. I know that you can just press F12 to skip it and go back to the sexy title screen – but what if you didn’t know that!? Apparently, once you die – and you WILL – the game will take around 30 seconds for it to go back to the title screen with nothing but a blank image being displayed while the game over music is playing in the background. Why not just have a Game Over or “YOU DEAD” displayed afterwards with the options of skipping it once it’s viewed? Whatever, I guess. And, lemme just talk about the stairs, for a moment. Oh my, sweet jebus – THE STAIRS!!! There are some things in this world that I can endure in this game with a passion, but simply not the stairs. Oh, you guys remember that long ever-winding staircase in Super Mario 64? Well, the ones here (yep, there’s more than just one) will have you pulling out your hair in a matter of moments after climbing these suckers. The thing is, Donavin walks WAYYYYYYYY too slow to get any real enjoyment out of this. These staircases will take you forever to climb – and that’s not just it; there’s also some cutscenes where you have to press forward as Donavin walks EVEN slower to get to his prime location. I know a lot of these instances are used for dramatic effect, but some of these instances are just plain ridiculous and kind of hindered my experience a little. (I also didn’t really enjoy climbing those stairs again to backtrack or fight a boss that I previously lost on again.)

But the stairs are forgivable in exchange to this next part which I thought was the worst part of this entire game: The 30 Harvested Soul Search (oh man)…!!! Okay, get this, guys, after you acquire the 5th scroll you’ll find that you can’t proceed further without backtracking back – through more stairs – as you need Esmond to decipher the scroll that you can’t read because it’s written in an ancient language. What he “hints” for you to do is that there are 30 Souls that need to be harvested in order to solve the riddle behind this mystery. Okay, fine. I originally first thought you needed to collect 30 somewhat objects, like the scrolls, in order to complete this objective – which is fine. But after killing some ghoulies for a while, I came back surprised to find that the number had dropped. So…in other words, you need to kill some the creatures to pass, right? Okay, that doesn’t sound so bad…or does it?

The thing is, I HATED this part because the enemies already move in such a sporadic way when you encounter them that targeting them can often be quite difficult (even if you pin them against a wall, they’re still annoying as all hell)! But it’s even more difficult if you happen to fight one with its buddies around. The thing is that Donavin can’t take a lot of hits and the attack damage varies with each swing you make. By the time you may kill one of these creatures off, you may have already wounded up dead yourself. And if you didn’t save your game after each kill or so, you’ll have to do this again. And even more stupid, since you need to wait for Donavin’s health to recharge after a battle (you can hear his heartbeat getting louder if he’s about to die) you can’t just go rushing in to finish a few more off. I basically had to kill one or two enemies at a time, save, then fight again, save, and then rinse and repeat before I could proceed. This part took almost 45 minutes of my sweet time before I was able to move on from this nightmare. You know, this is where a health indicator would probably help, or even if the weapon could slay these things in one hit – then this part wouldn’t be so bad! But because of all this, I hated this part and never wanna go through all that crap again. It’s like similar to the original Breath Of Fire in trying to get all that gold to purchase a gold bar in the store and spending days on end to acquire the sucker. It was just…so tedious. (And then I flipped out later on that you DIDN’T need to fight all those battles to get the gold bar, afterall. If only this game had something like that…)

Ranting aside, I enjoyed the gameplay a lot, beside a few hick ups here or there. For me, it was kinda playing Demon Souls and the old classic Ultima games again. And although the slow pace of climbing the stairs and fighting all those enemies may have seemed all bad, it was almost like it was good thing, you know. It’s really weird to explain. But it’s almost like it made me irritated to play through some of the parts but, in another sensible way it didn’t. That’s a really nice thing. Most of the time, some of these annoying game mechanics, like this, would have probably angered people to the point where they’d just quit playing the game. It seems as if Vorlorn did this right enough not to offend too many people, by making it all just feel right.

*phew* That was a lot. Moving on…


The Soundtrack


You don’t say?


Out of all Vorlorn’s wonderus charms “this” pretty much nailed it on the head. The music and sound department for this game was just simply fantastic. I’ve played a lot of RPG Maker games before that do a good job in the musical department that gets the job done but never before have I played something that not only captures the mood and the emotions right but the very essence of it itself. If you want a good example of how to do a musical score right – PLAY THIS GAME! One of the greatest features this game has with its soundtrack is setting up the emotion. For example, when you grab the weapon from the alter underneath the basement, you will slowly walk up as this chorus starts to sing and it matches in perfect synch of how you’re walking. The chorus gets louder, more intense as you begin to grab the weapon off the shelf and leave the room. This is the type of stuff that makes heroes out of legends, and no game has done this incredibly well compared to this game. Hell, even the title screen and introduction songs sound bloody fantastic! I originally thought that most of the music here was mostly custom, but was surprised to find that the lot of the tunes came from games like Chrono Cross, ICO, Shadow Of The Colossus, and Final Fantasy X-2 – FREAKIN’ FFX-2!!! I know I’ve heard some of the Chrono Cross music before, but the rest I haven’t. I guess finding out that most of these came from such games disappointed me a little, but I really don’t think that matters that much.

And the sound effects in creating an ambiance and a vibe for this game worked fantastic too. I have to say, that out of all the games I’ve played and reviewed thus far this is probably the best OST of them all. Even though that the songs were mostly ripped from such commercial games, I found that all of them worked incredibly well and did a fantastic job. I’ll probably mostly remember Vorlorn more for its musical prowess than more its overwhelming atmosphere (well, second).

The Aesthetics


*huff* *puff* …Aw, geez.


Dark, gloomy – and plenty of lighting and shadow fixtures – the aesthetics for this game worked great and I simply didn’t have any problem with it. Some people might find the maps to be a bit empty – but, in the case of something like this, I think it’s good thing, more room to run away from all the darkness coming straight at me. Sprites were pretty decent and worked very well and the animations were all a nice touch. Overall, this game is pretty to look at but hauntingly beautiful to get lost into. The only sprite related issue that I thought was kinda weird to me was the final boss’ shadow (seriously – what the hell IS that thing, a Dragonite’s shadow???)

I guess another good point is that the lightning and tinting isn’t too dark on the eyes or makes me have trouble trying to see what I’m doing (which is a good thing). Most games like this usually like to go pretty bleak, but this game did it quite well in making it dark but not too dark to see what's up ahead.

The End Result


Neither can I.


Despite some of my gameplay complaints, I felt that as I played Vorlorn throughout the night that I found myself quite enjoyed by it and that I was incredibly engrossed into it. You know the feeling where you play a game and it starts to captivate you and you just can’t stop putting it down? Well, I like to think that Vorlorn did a rather impressive job in keeping my interest going for the last couple of hours. It’s a game that succeeds on many fine levels with its unnerving tone and atmosphere – and not to mention the incredible music to go along with it – that I like to think of it as the game with the chilling, loneliness sense that did it right. If I could play more games like this one on a nightly basis, I just might become a fan of the genre.

Nakazu did a fine job on this one. If he could only go back and fix some of the annoyances with the slow staircase climbing / cutscenes, a quest / health indicator, enemies taking less hits to kill, and the annoying quit game / game over loading times, than Vorlorn could definitely be a worthwhile entry into the genre that would definitely hold it into high regards. Hell, even without those things this game does a fabulous job on its own. I’m not sure if it’s the hooch or the deprived lack of sleep that’s processing through my brain, but this is one game you guys SHOULDN’T miss out on (in fact, it just might be one of new favs).

Also, apparently, upon finishing the game, there is a New Game + option. I was slightly intrigued, but didn’t really find anything new or noteworthy that was added upon a second playthrough. Hmmm… (Maybe for a future release?)



(Sorry, I just had to. ^^)


OVERALL GRADE:
4.5 / 5 - B+ ~ Oustanding. Truly Outstanding.

Posts

Pages: 1
Nakazu
839
08/26/2013 12:00 AM
Thank you for the review! I am glad that through your patience and effort that you still managed to see this as a gem in the rough. I agree with pretty much everything you said and I actually fixed quite a few of your complaints before you even posted this review. Therefore, I am a little saddened that you didn't experience the more convenient, newer version. You did a great job explaining the game though and I am very grateful for your feedback.
Addit
6394
08/27/2013 06:42 AM
You’re welcome, bud. 

Now I guess there’s nothing to do but to go back into that awful citadel – running away from ALLLLLLL those angry shadow people while I play the more “updated version” that I should have downloaded first before reviewing this game.

Oh well, ‘tis was still buckets full of fun. ^^
The_Harder_Moon
0
09/04/2013 04:06 PM
I play it tonight ;)
Addit
6394
09/07/2013 08:34 AM
You shall not be disappointed.
Pages: 1