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Good ideas, lacking execution

  • Kylaila
  • 07/09/2014 07:02 AM
  • 1037 views
GT Mythra: The Beginning of the Sword is a prequel to the GT Mythra series I've not yet seen. It combines the search of a lost heirloom with mining.
It takes a little bit more than an hour to beat, like most entries in the Indie Maker Game Contest.

It is most likely a first or early project, so it is notable that the game in itself runs without any major issues. The only one I've encountered was a delay when you get your first pickaxe (it seems to freeze, but clears up afterwards). Mapping is basic at best, so is the music.

The good:
There is a little bit of character creation here, you can choose between boy/girl , female/male partner and are also able to name them. You can choose a class (warrior, mage/cleric, gunner/archer) which changes your outfit appropriately (the usual battle bikini included). Your partner has only one path (gunner/archer for male, cleric for female).

The bad:
.. the rest, unfortunately

Introduced to you is thus a bard .. in search of a "kind of a heirloom"-thingie.

Note: it's magical and absolutely vital!

There is a focus on story, and a focus on party creation - unfortunately, neither works well.
The creation part of your main character works well enough, the problem lies in A: the battle system and B: three fixed party members. Granted that you have only 1 random member, the different kinds of allies do not add much to your battle strategy, or different playthroughs.

The battles themselves are a tad to easy, you can easily exploit the buffs granted by your bard. Spells are 95% useless. You have many different elements, and enemies do have weaknesses, but aside from one bossfight (which was ridiculously easy with holy damage), there was not one incident where I needed to use any of the spells.
Because you don't need them. You deal more damage with normal attacks and normal attacks are a hell of a lot faster as well. You get a huge roster of attacks you'll never use, and way too much mana for those who have decent ones (read: your bard).
Regenerative items are too powerful as well, as your mana-pool is huge. Not to mention that an endboss is not very hard when you can buy a full set off 100% hp/mp teamregenerative items.
The dungeon is not randomly created, mining points are randomly created. Mining is a nice gimmick in the game, it gives you a little bit of gold and ores. Ores can made into better pickaxes and into unlocking new shop-types (there is only one weapon to buy per ore-type.. not much variation). But it doesn't add anything to your actual gameplay.

You run into the dungeons, fight to the next level, stock up items/equipment. Rinse and repeat.

The intent behind the character classes and differnt joining characters was to create replay value, but unfortunately it doesn't succeed in doing so. It would be better to concentrate on making unique characters with an interesting, small skill-setup rather than having many choices that all do not amount to much.

The music is okay, it suits the mining atmosphere rather well, even if that aspect fell a little bit short. But it also made for a less serious, happy atmosphere, which made people talking about death and monsters quite ironic.

The worst and most haunting part is the story, more specifically: the writing.
Perhaps due to the creator not being a native English speaker, but I do not know.


Slow down ..

There is no pause between dialogue boxes (neither between different characters nor different parts of the speech), which, combined with the lack of any character icons makes it very hard to even differentiate between who is talking.
The textboxes are simply too full, lack punctuations, pauses, orthography and generally style.

You don't deal with three different topics in one breath. It's unnatural.
In fact, it made even keeping up with what little story there was very hard.
Not to mention that it tried to evoke different emotions .. without any real substance in any direction.

There is an introduction to what you're supposed to do, yes. You get a brief mentioning of your precious heirloom after bossfights, but that's it.
No information about the world you're in. Or why you are doing anything.
Yes, there are many people dying in the mines, but you only see that as a passing thing. How is it connected to you? What are your motivations to go there despite that? How much of a problem is it? And why are you accepting any person who wants to join your team?
None of that is mentioned.

When you actually find the "kind of a heirloom" after beating fearful puppies and man-eating monsters, there comes a plot-twist out of practically nowhere. I really mean, nowhere. Not that it kept your interest. It's a mixture of typical tropes which reduces the little interest you might have had.

So, all in all, it had some nice ideas. It's playable. Fighting is probably the best part, although there really isn't anything to make it hard, special or balanced. The real fight is to get through anything else, unfortunately.
Improving writing is difficult when you need to change your default style (as the creator's comments are written similarily), but it is definitely needed in future games.

Nice ideas, but no fun to be had.

Posts

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Just wanted to thank you for your review I have addressed your review in my newest blog post here. Thank you again for your review. http://lwentworth8567.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/the-future-of-mythra/
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