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Is It Time to Change the Channel?

  • edchuy
  • 06/01/2010 01:16 AM
  • 1937 views
Summary:

A Chrono-Trigger Inspired RPG, Erave’s Channel Changer Episodes 1-3 has quirky characters, some which have unusual expressions, sidequests, challenging mini-games and generally original music. In terms of storyline and gameplay, it left enough to be desired for me not to feel sorry it had been cancelled.

Overall Score: 3/5


Background to Review:

When kentona announced that the Send Me in Coach! Review event organized by him would be have its deadline extended I jumped at the opportunity of selecting a game from the 10 that appeared to me. While there were 2 complete games that appeared those already had reviews. Thus, I opted for the only cancelled game that appeared. I haven’t played the original Chrono Trigger games or any of its successors. I have probably played a few RM games influenced by it, but the only one that I know for sure was Lance VII’s Chrono Chronicles (http://rpgmaker.net/games/299/ ). Thus, I don’t have a really good idea of what a Chrono Trigger influenced game ought to have. Regardless of this, did Channel Changer Episodes 1-3 capture enough of my attention on its own merits?


Story/Plot/Dialogue:

The first chapter starts with a typical teenager, being woken up by his mom at their home. She tells him that his geeky friend wants him to come over to his house to see his new invention. Upon arriving there he finds the invention isn’t ready yet and heads to the nearby city to give his friend some extra time. Soon, he is bumped into by a female admirer of his, who won’t take no for an answer about coming along for the ride. Eventually, they both return to the friend’s house to see the invention, which is called television. Due to the recklessness of one of them, a portal appears and the party disappears from the room to end the chapter.

The second chapter starts in the room at the end of the first chapter with the people who got swapped (I guess this was to conserve mass in the time continuum) with the party members meeting the inventor’s parents. The party, after being rescued by one of the locals, is shown in another place and time. They wander around town until the leader of the band that’s terrorizing it appears and kidnaps the girl. The remaining party members go to look for him at a nearby cave to save her. After finally saving her, they find that the train they’re in won’t stop. Unexpectedly, the train final stops in an abandoned station. The chapter ends with an unknown character entering the train.

The third chapter starts with the party members leaving the train and meeting a NPC who directs them to the nearest city. Without knowing it, they end up following the unknown character from the end of the last chapter, who ends up joining them when they face a guardian of the city. The party meets the city council in the hope of finding help to get home and gets an undesired response. The chapter and game end with the party reaching the entrance of the next city.

The game’s dialogue between the characters is decently written, light-hearted and works well for a game in which most of the party members are teenagers involved in a somewhat disjointed plot. Dialogue with NPCs also plays an important part in quests. In some cases, you get a couple of dialogue options which can affect the outcome of what happens next.

Score: 3.5/5


Gameplay:

The battles are traditional, front-view, turn-based battles, which are all non-random encounters with animations of the attacking party member when their turn comes. Most of the non-bosses battles are touch encounters, while others are either event-based or supposedly surprise encounters that can’t be avoided. I found most of the battles, except for two of the boss battles to be relatively easy. I probably had to revive one of my party members once in my whole playthrough.

In the first chapter and early in the second one, the attacks done by the party are done with bare fists. After a certain event occurs, at least a couple of the party members obtain their weapons, each which can be imbued with an elemental attribute from a rock at a blacksmith. The latter makes the weapons be more or less effective in dealing damage against certain types of enemies (depending on their elemental attribute) as well as possibly causing status effects when used in melee attack. One surprising thing is that after enhancing the weapon you actually get a copy of the original weapon. I think this is intended so that the player can change weapons when fighting an enemy with the same elemental attribute as one carried by a party member.

The game features a very unusual system in which party members have fixed levels. The only way they can increase some of the stats is either by consuming certain items (each item type increases an attribute by a certain amount) or by beating a boss. In the latter case, all the attributes except for HP and MP increase by a given amount and for each party member you can choose among those attributes one to increase further. After winning each battle, the party members earn TP. Once one of them reaches a certain amount, a new Tech Skill becomes available for that character’s use in battle. Tech Skills vary from attacks that might have an elemental attribute, targeting an enemy or causing an ailment, to HP healing as well as buffing or debuffing skills. Since the game provides no way to keep track of how many TPs each character has accumulated so far and what level is required to gain the next skill, I didn’t bother to grind through the respawning enemies in the hopes of gaining the next skill, but let them appear spontaneously. For most of my party members, I ended up with 2 skills, while for the other one I got an additional one.

There are some items available that are supposed to cure certain ailments in your party members. The only one I faced during my playthrough was blindness and I found that the item that was supposed to cure it was useless. I figured the best way to deal with it was just to let it disappear after a few turns. There was one battle where one of my party members refused to participate, so I tried to use the item to counteract his presumed ailment. Whether the item didn’t work as advertisement or the battle was supposed to work that way was not clear. Thankfully, the battle turned out to be easier than I initially thought even without that party member participating.

The game has 3 different minigames which are relatively difficult. You can revisit all of them in a simulator in the city in the third chapter of the game if you are inclined to do so. The first two you first appear in the first chapter’s city arcade with a high scoreboard and corresponding taunting fellow game players: Pac Man Extreme is a version of Pac Man on steroids, where your main character has to collect hearts while avoiding being caught by the fast moving and somewhat intelligent monsters, with the help of items to slow down the monsters or grant invincibility temporarily (no ghost eating nor fruits to eat for bonuses) and hindered by columns that can block your path temporarily, all of this against time; and, Airship Failin’, which is basically a side-scroller where you guide a zeppelin to collect treasure chests while avoiding obstacles, to gain or avoid losing points, respectively. I actually did eventually manage to place in the scoreboard as the third highest score for both minigames. The highest scores for both of them, I don’t think are humanly possible, but if somehow they were, I wonder if there would any type of reward other than bragging rights.

The last one, you find in a barn in the second town and requires you to obtain a certain item to access it. In Feed the Horses, you have to shoot a certain amount of apples in a given time limit into a basket that appears at a random position for a short time before changing position. I actually mastered this minigame relatively quickly and was able to eventually finish with one third of the allotted time remaining.

The game also has some sidequests. To be able to access them, it is necessary to talk to NPCs all over the different towns to find out what they might need or be interested. In one case, the sidequest was a chain fetch quest which yielded nothing significant, unless you consider graphical aesthetics important. In a couple of others you got a useful item: one required you to make the right dialogue choice to obtain an item that you can trade for another; and, another allows you to access the last mini-game mentioned earlier.

The game also had two relatively easy puzzles: in a beginner’s dungeon there’s a rock pushing to clear the path puzzle, and to end the game, there’s a numerical puzzle to open a door, which has its clues earlier in the dungeon. I had one issue with one the clues of the latter, since the wrong answer actually opens the door, which might frustrate many players. Thankfully, I had seen the issue discussed in the forum and when the actual answer didn’t work, I was able to figure out what the actual answer the puzzle was looking for.

Finally, while you can pretty much save anywhere using the main menu, there’s this little saving one-use healing head that’s conveniently located near the bosses in dungeons.

Score: 2/5


Graphics:



OMG!


The graphics are somewhat limited due to the game being made in RM2k. Erave made some nice, simple yet original sprites and facesets of the party members. One of them was even wielding what appeared to me to be a light saber. Some of the sprites of the NPCs were original as well. Others thing I liked were the expression of surprise that party members showed (see above) due to some unexpected events and their battle animations which where followed by a Batmanesque (the old TV series) hit animation except with the Pow! or Boom! written in it, which I found consistent with the light-hearted nature of the game. The only other graphical thing that deserves some mention are the exterior of buildings in the town in Chapter 2, which were highly reminiscent of those of another cancelled game, 1873 (http://rpgmaker.net/games/723/ ).

Score: 3.5/5


Sound:

According to the author’s note in the title of the screen, the music was composed by Erave himself, with some remixes thrown in. The only bars I recognized were the theme song of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”. I found that most of the music used fit the game well. Sound effects seemed to be standard RTP.

Score: 3.5/5


Characters:

The lead character of the game is the least interesting one of the party members since he’s a typical teenager. His best friend, an inventor, is definitely the most interesting one. I understood that he’s supposed an Afro-American, but given that he wears this facemask, it is hard to tell for sure. Obviously, he’s a geek, who appears to phobia towards girls, but it turns out it’s his passive-aggressive way to deal with the girl he actually likes. The last party member, that unknown character is somewhat interesting as well, since he’s actually a lying robot. Finally, there’s the girl who first joins the lead character. She’s overly enthusiastic bordering and somewhat immature bordering on being annoying. Being the only girl she gets a bit too much attention for my taste. NPCs are not quite as memorable, except for Captain Brain who appears sporadically and in different forms throughout the game to provide some helpful information. Many of them are characterized by being called “______ the _____”, which was probably cute at the beginning but became tiresome after a while. It was predictable that a well-known Billy was one of those NPCs.

Score: 3.5/5


Other:

I found that amount of spelling mistakes or typos and grammar to be roughly average when compared to most RMN games. Thankfully, I didn’t encounter any game-breaking bugs in my playthrough. I did find some minor graphical issues: when going down stairs in a cutscene, a couple of the NPCs seemed to be sliding down the hand rail; in the second chapter, there a few spots where the part of the lead character’s sprite was partially cut off by some trees and during a cutscene, some of the NPCs seemed to be running into closed doors like ghosts, which I find somewhat disturbing.

In between episodes, you get to a club house where you get to meet Erave and some of his collaborators. Sadly, by the time you see the club house between Chapters 2 and 3, many of his collaborators are nowhere to be seen. In retrospect, this could have been seen as foreshadowing the eventual cancellation of the game. To continue playing, you have to do action on a TV set there. Personally, had it been radio instead, it wouldn’t have that much of a difference. TV was the sexier choice, I guess, although the internet would have been even better.

Score: 2.5/5

Posts

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Thanks for this review! I recently replayed it myself. It's a decent game for the time and age I was. I wish I had the motivation to take this idea to completion and remake most of the game. It's very slow at the beginning. I had some great characters planned and going to different channels would have been interesting and could have wielded lots of scenarios.
edchuy
You the practice of self-promotion
1624
Wow, Erave you finally commented after all this time! This was among my early streak of reviews during a stretch when I was unemployed and I'd like to think was a pretty decent one. I see you still have that "Last Legend" game in perm development. Although it is a useful exercise to reminisce what could have been, perhaps you could focus your efforts and finish that one.
Hey edchuy,

I doubt I will finish Last Legend either. I lost the latest version on a portable hard drive and I have no desire to go down that road again. All these demos are just statements of the time they were made and Last Legend is a pretty decent game. But who knows, maybe I will see it to the end some day!

Again, thanks for the review. And sorry for dropping off the face off the earth for 3 years!
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