ESSENCE ENFORCER REVIEW (70/100)
An Extremely Clever And Unique Battle System

I haven't submitted a review in nearly 3 years. It's been too long. I have missed you, 'SUBMIT REVIEW' form! Here goes!

Essence Enforcer is a 'Visual Novel RPG' Hybrid created by ChaosProductions LouisCyphre of Ill Will fame and released for the Halloween 2014 Revive The Dead competition. I don't know much about the old, abandoned game project that it is a necromantic recreation of, and color me curious.

Story

Essence Enforcer does not waste any time getting to the action, which is commendable. Gameplay begins immediately, indeed before I knew anything about the setting. And everything I learned about the setting, I learned through the course of the action. The game takes place in a walled city called Polis that is divided into three districts, one for commonfolk, one for nobles, and one controlled by the Bishopry. The Bishopry and the (unnamed?) religion of the Polis is responsible for appealing to The Gods (none of these Gods were mentioned by name that I could see) to keep the city free of Outsider. But I didn't know any of this until Outsiders appeared in the city ... at which point it became clear that neither the Gods nor the walls were working as advertised to keep them out. I am not spoiler tagging this or anything because these are all developments very, very early into what has the makings of being a substantial, perhaps even epic, storyline.

The player controls Rita and Patrick, two Enforcers of the Polis, who are soon "joined" (although not really, but more on that under Gameplay) by Ethan, a representative of the Bishopry with a very, very silly hat that no doubt confers great religious authority, because no one in the game comments on how ridiculous it is, which I thought was odd. Enforcers seem to be police officers of a sort, distinct from Myrmidons which are more like the army. Together, they investigate a mystery that starts with the death of a simple scribe in the commonfolk quarter, but quickly leads to the involvement of a dangerous cult, a 'terrorist cell' of commonfolk activists, and religious intrigue between the church and the nobility.

All in all, I found the writing serviceable and I enjoyed the mystery angle. It made me want to keep playing to find out what would happen next. I found the character development to be slightly scant (although again, it was only a demo), and I might have preferred the game if it had slowed down just a little bit in the beginning to establish the setting and the stakes before diving into the action, but I freely admit that is a matter of personal taste.

SCORE: 60/100

There were some issues of ludonarrative dissonance, not crippling to my enjoyment, but notable, that I will actually mention during the Gameplay section below.

Gameplay

Essence Enforcer is first and foremost a mechanics game. It is not about the narrative, it is not about the atmosphere, it is about the mechanics. There are a large number of hints to this in the game's general presentation and in the game itself. And there is nothing wrong with this because the mechanics are very, very solid.

There's a lot to be said about the gameplay of this game, because it departs from the default JRPG norms offered by RPG Maker games in many substantial ways that I feel prospective players should be aware of even without me offering critical insight, like I should just list the differences without comment so you know. But since I don't want to spend all day writing this review, let me try and make this brief.

Essence Enforcer is a visual novel RPG hybrid. There are no maps. At no point do you directly control and move your character or explore any areas, or find any loot or treasure from a chest. Actually, come to think of it, the game had no items at all! Weird.

Instead, the game is effectively a series of dialogue heavy cutscenes where you alternate between characters talking (represented by busts on a static background), and battles, the game's obvious focus. Things do 'open up' a bit at points, but only to the point where there is a menu from which you can choose to visit three to five locations, one representing your main menu where you can set up your characters, one representing the next 'story mission' (EE is also a mission based game, which is interesting) and several representing optional chats with minor NPCs. In other words, the game is very linear, all battles are non-random and unavoidable, and there is nothing wrong with any of that, if it is what you are looking for. Actually, come to think of it, all in all the structure of the game reminds me of nothing as much as the Front Mission series of games, which have the same gameplay flow. I wonder if those were an influence.

Now, onto the battles themselves. They are really, really fascinating. You control two party members. Each is equipped with a set of Precepts (skills). Precepts are fueled by five different Essences--physical, fire, water, earth, and air. Precepts are your only option in combat. You cannot guard or use items and there is no 'attack' command.

You start with all five Essences. Once you use a corresponding Precept, you lose that Essence. So use Glaciate, a Water Precept, and you lose your Water Essence. In other words, this means the further you get into a battle, the more your available actions dwindle, although the game offers all kinds of neat ways of playing with your available resources. If you manage to lose all of your Essences, you get to 'Surge', meaning you do 300% damage for one turn and you get all of your Essences back.

But it gets deeper. Enemies use the same general pool of 'Precepts' that you do, and also need Essences to fuel them. Enemies, generally speaking, start the battle with only one or maybe even zero Essences. That means that they might Surge very soon if you don't *hit* them. See, every time you hit an enemy with a Precept corresponding to a specific Essence, they get that Essence. So if you hit the enemies with Tempest, they all get an Air Essence. This will keep them from Surging for a little while, but it will also allow them to use any Air Precepts they have, because now they have an Air Essence. Likewise, when enemies hit you with their Precepts, it restores a corresponding Essence to YOU, pushing you further from surging but allowing you to use Precepts of Essences you'd already expended.

So battle is about, overlaid over the usual JRPG mechanics of dealing damage, healing, buffing and debuffing, trying to make sure that your enemies don't surge, trying to exhaust all of your essences so that you can surge, and trying to deny enemies Essences corresponding to Precepts you don't want them to use, while trying to get enemies to use Precepts you want to restore the Essences you need. All of this works, and it's all very fascinating, and it's all very engaging, and it's all very laudable. It is also very, very difficult to get a handle on, and the learning curve starts gentle but steepens very quickly after the first few missions. Eventually, I stalled out on the boss of Mission 6 Prayer By Blade and could not proceed any further.

Additionally, in the build I played, when you died during a mission you had to retry that mission from the beginning (missions consisting of generally 3-6 fixed battles), but a 'Retry Battle' option has been added in a subsequent build.

In a sense, Essence Enforcer feels almost like a puzzle game masquerading as an RPG. Or an RPG that wants to be a puzzle game? I'm not sure how to feel about this, but I will say that historically, I love RPGs and I hate puzzle games. And I liked Essence Enforcer.

It is important to note that this game is still in development and what I played was an early build. The learning curve is apt to be much more smooth and the battles much better balanced not just in the final game, but in every build leading up to it. This review reflects the build I initially played, but when the game is complete I plan to update this review to reflect the complete game.

Now, on to the fancy mcbigwords issues of ludonarrative dissonance I mentioned. The way that in-game skills ("Precepts") represent in-universe abilities is a bit abstract for my tastes. I understand the game-mechanical conceit of enemies using the same pool of skills as PCs because it helps teach the player those skills. But in-universe "Precepts" are clearly meant to represent magical spells of a sort, and it made no sense that the ordinary verminous insects and bugs you fight in the first couple of chapters would have access to them. Relatedly, at one point Ethan wistfully references how he would like to put a condemned building full of said insects 'on the pyre'. Before and after this statement he is using fire elemental magic ('Purify') to burn those insects en masse, and I found myself wondering why his actions aren't having the exact effect of putting the building 'on the pyre'.

But possibly my biggest issue of story-gameplay conflict is the fact that the game is clearly balanced to have two playable party members and a third character acting as a guest. This means that whenever 'Ethan' enters the party, 'Patrick' leaves and vice versa (the two characters share the same Precepts). Well the problem with this is, the excuses the story uses to not have Rita, Patrick, and Ethan all in one party as full party members seem to become more and more paper thin, as the in-story situation becomes more and more one where safety in numbers is obviously advisable. In a way, it kind of reminds me of a horror movie where characters keep stupidly splitting up for nonsense reasons to get picked off one by one, although in this case it was in service of the gameplay, rather than in service of the body count.

SCORE: 80/100

Visuals

As mentioned, Essence Enforcer eschews traditional mapping ('lol maps') in favor of cutscenes showing busts against a static background. For the most part, this worked well and the busts and backgrounds (from the Pioneer Valley Games High Fantasy Pack) were aesthetically pleasing, although I often like I wished I had a better, less abstract idea where characters physically were in a scene at times. Enemy graphics were for the most part stylistically consistent with the busts used, although at one point, I found my immersion lessened during a serious scene by the sudden appearance of sparkly lolicon anime faeries as the backup of a cult fanatic, and said Acolytes are posed in such a way that they look way too much like they are DISCO DANCING at all times.



I'm open to the possibility that further exploration of what 'Outsiders' are in the story will make the appearance of these faeries, if not their portrayal, feel somewhat less incongruous.

Additionally, at times there was a bit of clashing between the 2D Anime style of the foreground busts (which featured an impressive array of emotions) and the 3D prerendered style of the PVGames backdrops.

I found the heavily customized battle scene layout to be both aesthetically pleasing and very functional. I even enjoyed the neat transition effect to the gameover screen--I saw it a lot. That said, I was disappointed that it did not seem like any effort had been made to customize any of the battle animations themselves (to be clear, I'm not even talking about importing new graphics, I just mean messing around in the animations tab to achieve some different looking effects with the RTP animation files). Most or all of the ones I saw seemed to be unaltered default RMVX(A), although I may be mistaken.

SCORE: 70/100

Audio

I found the music and sound design to be adequate if unremarkable. There was an effort made to use sounds during the cutscenes, which was appreciated and added gravity to the graphical representation of the action on screen, but sometimes I found the sound choices themselves a little underwhelming. For instance, what on-screen text described as a "hideous buzzing sound" played with a sound effect that was little more than the faint droning of a cricket.

SCORE: 60/100

FINAL SCORE: 70/100 (Not An Average)
BOTTOM LINE
I would strongly recommend Essence Enforcer to anyone who is a fan of puzzle games, challenging and/or mechanics-focused RPG, unique RPG mechanics in general, fantasy/mystery stories involving political and religious intrigue, or any combination of the above.

Additionally, based on the dedication I've seen of the creator in responding to early feedback for the demo build, I don't doubt that subsequent and final releases will present a substantially more polished and robust gameplay experience.