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They Weren't Kidding About the Maze

  • Sviel
  • 08/31/2014 02:02 AM
  • 1740 views
Part I

tl;dr - This is a polished, truly completed game. It's crowning jewel is its combat system and a true gem that is. It's a great play for anyone who loves dungeon crawlers and pretty good in general as well. Just, the Hard difficulty is rather overdone...it ruins the game much like the hard mode in Advance Wars, so stick to one of the other two.

This review will be in two parts; the first will be spoiler free and gives an overview of the game while the second consists of notes taken during my playthrough and is thus as spoilered as anything can get. Since it is a complete game, I'll be scoring it on Gameplay, Plot and Presentation.


Gameplay: As a dungeon crawler, this is probably the most important part. Eremidia manages to avoid most pitfalls here.

In terms of exploration, the early maps are well done. Later on, things get REALLY confusing. There's a hint in the confusing area, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Not to mention that it was on an object that had been appearing for a while but that had no interaction prior to giving that hint. Thus, it is both difficult to find and to decipher.

The map itself bucks physics, Alice in Wonderland style. Doorways are not transitive; stepping through one way and stepping back will not always get you where you started. It's not random, but you'll have to pay attention if you want to get through in good time. The game did promise a maze, though.

The later maps, after the confusing part, feel more like filler. There's no trick to getting through them. One just has to hit certain points on the map in order to remove an obstacle. It's not a very exciting design and not conducive to true exploration. By that point, however, combat will probably be providing all of the excitement you can handle.

I played through on Hard (which was a mistake) and was thus subjected to getting blown up every now and then with no chance at returning fire. Enemies in the later stages use AoE almost exclusively and often with status effects, so battles could quickly turn sour. Even so, I could see some rather positive things about combat that were unfortunately buried by having to deal with all of that AoE spam. When I did get a chance to put my skill chaining abilities to the test, it felt awesome...but such opportunities were few and far between outside of boss fights.

From what I've played of normal, it is far more agreeable in that sense.
(40/60)


Plot: Nothing gargantuan was attempted here; not unusual for a dungeon crawler. There are only three characters, an ending and an optional intro. What plot there is does an excellent job of not getting in the way of the dungeoneering.

The characters are distinguishable and have unique, albeit cliche, personalities. They are serviceable, though there are too many tired gags run out to say that everything is perfect. They would have been better off being less talkative or more substantiated, but even so, their net value remains positive.
(10/15)


Presentation: Suffice to say that everything is beautiful. Most things are RTP, but used well and varied enough to boot. The character art is hand-drawn and drawn well, with several facial expressions for each. There are no mapping errors that I found (or any errors for that matter) and no serious spelling issues.
(25/25)

Part II

-Well, in the middle of this review, my laptop DIED, and thus I am starting over. For that reason, this section won't be quite as long as usual, possibly. At least, the first bullet points will be what I remember rather than what is currently happening.

-Might as well sum this all up at once...There are a plethora of logos when the game starts out, leading me to believe that many people worked on this project. Near the beginning, it asks if I want to do CASUAL or IRONWILL mode, which I mistake for a difficulty setting, but in reality it is only asking if I want to be able to save my game. I choose CASUAL along with the HARD difficulty.

Combat is fully animated side-view and curiously has 3 orbs in the corner as if I had Actions to divy up as per YANFLY's script. It seems decently balanced. Later on, though, I often run into enemies that can blow up most of the party before I have a single turn, making the fight just about impossible to win. Namely, the SHAMANS and PRIESTS with their fireballs and such.

Also, the characters are named SUN, MOON and STAR.

Speaking of the characters, they seem to hit that unhappy medium where they speak enough that I want to care about them, but are not crafted to the point that I do. Usually in Dungeon Crawlers, the characters are either totally blank or very riveting in a short story sense. Here, they are not blank and not riveting. Perhaps it would be best, then, if they did not talk so much.

The issue is that, when speaking, they rely on a stream of well-used gags. The player will be quite familiar and quite tired of such fare so that it is not possible to build characters on it, though it is ok to dip into it with otherwise established characters.

The game page states that no grand story is being attempted, which is fine, though I do wish that these characters were given a bit more love. Even if they were not deep, they do have the potential to be quite amusing.

If I recall, I gave them the monikers IDIOT WARRIOR, GENIUS MAGE and PRICKLY WOMAN in the notes that were lost.

The GLOWING STONE in the dungeon is a bit strange. The characters react in their fourth wall bruising way and the end result is it feels tactless rather than funny. It may work for some, but it seems unnecessarily jarring to me. It would not have been difficult to make a shop NPC instead.

It should be noted that, when I lose a fight, it usually feels like there was nothing that I could have done to win it. Either I lost a member at the start and never recovered, or I was simply overwhelmed by the brute strength of the enemies. It is by no means a bad system, per se, but it does lack a full feeling of agency; that is, the player does not feel they have the tools to meet the challenges set in front of them at all times.

On the other hand, the item system in this game is MARVELOUS. Each character has only two Accessory slots. The accessories are hidden in some nook or under a mini-boss and each is very impactful. For instance, one gives a +35% Evade rate. In this way, every EQ choice is made meaningful and exploration is rewarded, allowing the player to focus on the meat of the dungeon crawl.

It is odd that the broken STONE PLAQUES on the walls have no interaction at first, but that later on, one of them contains what I assume is a vital clue to making it through an area. Even the fully fixed STONE PLAQUES have no message.

RNG is cruel, here. One's prospects in a fight are largely governed by whether you start with enough AP to use special abilities right off. If not, you may find yourself beaten into the ground rather quickly.

The four Shaman/Priest group can literally blast the party from full to dead in a single round.

-I'm back to floor 3-1, with the STONE PLAQUE that actually has a message. Last time, I attempted to heed said message, but only ended up more elegantly lost than before.

-The issue, more than anything else, is that the floor seems to wrap around, somehow. Such IMPOSSIBLE PHYSICS makes it very difficult to map the thing out in my head. There are also so many passages that the sheer number would be tough, even without the trick.

-Worse yet, going to the next map then immediately going back does not always place you where you started. Everything looks quite similar, though, which makes it tough to realize what's going on. I don't mind PUZZLES in dungeons, but, this one is not doing a good job of getting information across...from the clue that is hidden in an object that the player has been taught holds no message to the Alice in Wonderland style trick passages, I just want this to end.

-Yep...just wandering aimlessly, fighting battle after battle. I'm no closer to getting out of here now than I ever was.

-After about an hour and a half of wandering about, I stumble onto some stairs that take me to 3-2.

-A few of these enemies are really annoying...especially those that are resistant to most attacks and that have a Drain and a Silence. Not to mention, they still hurt just as much as the rest.

-It's not like they even give all that much exp q_q

-Seems like I'm just lost in a new area now. I still have no idea what the trick to this place is, other than it is mercilessly confusing.

-Also, FIREBALL is way too weak to be worth the cost.

-Another half hour or so and I find the way to move on to 4-1.

-Apparently, the whole Must Interact with a Previously Uninteractable Object bit is reprised here. After realized the whole floor is dead ends, I spam CONFIRM until I find that the dragon's eyes light up.

-At least, I assume that did something...other than a flash, I got no indication. Thus, I'm certain that something happened, but...I have no idea what that something is.

-On the third or fourth dragon, I notice that the eyes are sparkling. This helps, though should be made more obvious.

-I light all the eyes up and head to the center of the TELEPORTING area where, sure enough, a new TELEPORT GLYPH has appeared. Unfortunately, walking over it does nothing. I try pressing CONFIRM in case the event was set to activate incorrectly and it works.

-I must object to an enemy that has AoE Nuke/Debuffs that attacks twice in a round.

-I've lit all the DRAGON EYES, but my path is blocked by spikes...? Was there some event that I needed to see at the spikes before lighting the EYES?
UPDATE: Nope, I just missed a DRAGON.

-It would be nice if I could know what type of damage everything did up front.

-Floor five is just a bunch of super long hallways. At their heart, most dungeons are just delays during which the player must engage in combat, but this particular design is rather flagrant in doing so. It feels like filler.

-It doesn't help that every enemy spams AoE with status effects.

-I suppose the game is called skyward MAZE, though. Maybe I should have taken that into account...

-Found the BOSS! Finally!

-The boss uses the same attacks as other mobs and summons them now and again to fight for him. It basically feels like a more annoying normal battle.

-The boss fight reminds me of when my GRANDMA sent me to go grocery shopping and then drilled me on the ITEMS upon my return. There isn't a whole lot of tension...so long as you've stocked up. I suppose it's about standard for a boss fight, just not too exciting.

-There is an ENDING where SUDDENLY STORY.

-Seems the main point here was to test out the battle system. To that end, while I maintain that the actual skills and battle design needs work, the battle system itself was WONDERFUL. I would love to see it in a game that I could more easily enjoy.

-That took 6 hours, plus w/e I lost from the times that I died. I know I've been sitting here over 7 hours, and since I had to restart, that means I spent like 13+ hours on this review. I also forgot to eat dinner. Q_Q

-Oh, and the enemies use an attack called poison NEDDLE rather than poison NEEDLE.

Posts

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Hey, thank you for review!.
Well, I wonder how could you played it in up to 13 hours lol. And so far, it seems my game is pretty cruel in player perspective. Ok, I shouldn't torture the player by this kind of design next time.

Btw, sorry for the plot. Really, I'm suck on making them.
I should have join some team project so I can write the story better.

And side note :
Fireball isn't weak. It's about to use in the right timing. e.g, when the 'Terragon' uses Diamond Skin and the fire ball will handle it. Well, yeah you can't spam the same skill in different enemy.

author=Sviel
-It would be nice if I could know what type of damage everything did up front.

Actually, the damage type and such kind of information are provided in skill menu. Or do you want me to display it in battle instead?

Again thank you very much for review =D
The skill description would be a good place for damage type info, since it's so important to combat.

@Fireball - On some enemies it was ok, but when it wasn't super effective it was super disappointing. At 20 MP and a missed opp to heal, it felt like it should really pack more of a punch.
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