Aesparia: The Fallen is one of the entries for the IGMC (Indie Game Making Contest) for 2014. As one of the judges for the RPG portion of the competition it is my pleasure to share my thoughts on the game. This review will basically just be the notes I took cleaned up. It will be based on the competition version of the game, so certain aspects of the game may have been changed.

Presentation:

Graphically, Aesparia seems to be highly polished, with maps that are darkly elegant and interesting to wander through. Sadly, that is not the case - there are a lot of small errors through-out the maps, including mismatched wall-heights, missing side-entrance walls and tiles that are used in odd ways. That said, the game is good at distracting you from seeing these errors by using atmosphere, lighting and graphical coherency to make them hard to spot - not because it's too dark to see them, no, but because it makes them not worth noticing, making you feel that they're forgivable. The mapping components just tie together so well that it's easy to ignore the errors completely unless you are looking for them.

The atmosphere was very well done in that aspect and the inclusion of music and sound effects that fit very well in the game really help with that. It's really well done and certainly helped immerse you into the game.

Writing is also quite good. There were only a few tiny bits (a minor spelling mistake here, a misplaced comma there) that almost flew past notice but for the most part the story is compelling and while characters don't say much, when they do what they say means a lot.

Menus and message boxes were also very nicely designed, with windows that look sleek and pretty, but not over-designed or decorated. The visual experience, coupled with sound and good, solid writing shows a lot of polish went into the presentation of the game.


Gameplay:

Battles are interesting and balanced towards the easy side. You won't find much of a challenge but at least you can continue on with the plot without being stonewalled. Even the boss battle, though it was the hardest, was not much of a challenge, but that's okay because the battles were engaging and fun.

The only thing that could have made them better would have been additional kinds of enemies (for example, more of those dea would have been neat, or soldiers that weren't weak to fire all the time).

Skills are interesting, as is skill learning. You equip a Rune stone which gives you four skills (one or two with no cost, depending on the Rune). You can add additional skills by equipping Scrolls, which you can create by spending money and having the required Rune. Scrolls will have one of the skills you can learn from the Rune Stones, so you can give your party some cross-over with skills. It would have been nice to see more variety in skill types - more elements than fire and water, for example.

Armour and weapons were crafted by gaining items from slaying enemies. At the end of each battle a chest was dropped with a host of items and money inside. These items could be used to craft a higher tier of armour than what you started with. Unfortunately, if you complete the whole first floor and get the supplemental chest, you'll already have most of the armour and weapons crafted that you can in the game, with a whole other floor to go. This put a bit of a downer on the crafting.

Finding new recipes or requiring another item or two to craft with or making the statistical gains significant and having to pick and choose which armour to craft instead - could have made it a bit more interesting.

Battles were on-map affairs. You could skip some but honestly, they weren't hard so why bother? It was nice to not have to worry about battles interrupting exploration - always a nice touch. Sadly, aside from gaining items and gold, battles didn't really do anything for you. You could level up, yes, but the gains from doing so were minimal and thus it wasn't worth battling after you already had all your armour and runes.

You could find some items laying around if you explored enough, but I never used them in battle. The same with the Revive command, which, I assume, allows for reviving an ally. None of mine died so I never used it. As I already mentioned, battles were quite easy.


Fun factor:

For me part of the fun was lost by having battles that were very similar. I could use the same set-up in each battle and come out on top - in fact, I did so quite a bit. Monsters were weak to certain elements, I used them to effect and had them finished within a few turns. I never had to use items and not once did any of my characters die. Battles were, unfortunately, too much of a breeze, which is a pity considering that the system itself was pretty interesting. I would have liked to have seen more done with it.

The lack of variables when it came to crafting was a big let down, especially since a neat crafting element was added but had limited uses. I would have liked to have had to choose between certain equips, perhaps based on changing the builds of the characters a little more. As it stood, equips were basic stat upgrades with maybe an extra feature added on. It's a shame, as a lot could have been done with the system.

The amount of money you gained through the game made crafting scrolls no big deal. I would have liked to have seen you having to be more choosy as to which scrolls you made.

Those points aside, the game was fun and engaging. I got caught up in the ending and I'm really looking forward to checking out what other games the creator has made.

Summary

A decent game with great visuals and atmosphere that was let down by not utilising the systems in use to their full potential. Some mapping errors needed looking at, but overall the game was well done. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Good job!