Hired Sword

This game was created by kory_toombs on RMN and offers up some good gameplay with some disjointed humor. I’ll say this now, the story/humor is not for everybody. There is a blatant use of profanity throughout the game and lots of “bad” jokes. Still though, I had fun and enjoyed the playing the game. For the record I played through the game once and beat it in 2 hours and 9 minutes according to the internal game clock.

-BACKGROUND/STORY-

Zeith is an mercenary who hasn’t seen action in a while and has been reduced to being a belligerent drunk. After a bargain with his friend Bridane, Zeith reluctantly takes on a new job to defeat evil in the swamp in exchange for touching Bridane’s breasts. Follow Zeith on his adventure and watch as this crazy story unfolds.

-INITIAL THOUGHTS-

I usually enjoy games with their own sense of humor but this game just takes it too far over the top inn my opinion. There is nothing wrong with throwing in some profanity here or there but to have every other sentence contain profanity just ruins the quality of the game. Thankfully this game doesn’t rely on its story to entice the player. Hired Sword uses a great tactics based battle system that is similar to the Fire Emblem series. As much as I dislike the writing, would equate into how much I love the story.

-PRESENTATION-




The presentation of Hired Sword isn’t bad, but it is nothing glorious either. I’ve already explained my feelings on the story so I won’t go into that any further but the writing really could have been done better. Visually speaking, I like the chosen graphics for all of the characters except Zeith. He is described as an old mercenary who has lived past his glory days yet his picture depicts him as a teenager. Unless he was slaying dragons and sleeping with twins at the age of 8, I highly doubt he would look so young. The mapping is done fairly well for the most part. I few parts of the map can cause a player to get stuck if they super-jump (a skill acquired later in the game) into a location in which they can no longer move. As for the music, I highly disliked the main title theme and the non-battle music. This is mostly because they both sound like battle music. Even if the game does only use a few pieces of music, they all shouldn’t be battle music, otherwise the setting and theme of the game gets lost. Having more music can help display tone, feelings, and emotions that can’t otherwise be retained from the text. Not only does this game fail to do that, but it there is no transitional pieces between towns and dungeons. I will say though, that I did enjoy the battle music. It flowed really well with the setup and helped the player understand that they were in battle.

-ENGAGEMENT/GAMEPLAY-



It saddens me to say this, but the primary source of engagement is the story. If for any reason, just to see how far things go and how crazy things get. The battles are also engaging but the story will make you want to play until the end. As for the battles, I absolutely love the battle system. The enemies actually seem smart and their calculations for the battles don’t seem to take that long in comparison to other tactical RPG’s I’ve played. There aren’t too many RPG Maker games that us a tactics based battle system. It requires at least some scripting knowledge and that shows that the developer was dedicated to making this game how they wanted it. Though, there are a few flaws that I want to point out. The character’s portrait in battle clashes with the moves, which will sometimes block the text that explains the move. I also found it somewhat annoying that there was an escape button that the player never seemed to be able to use. If escape is not an option it’s best to remove the option all together. On a bigger note, I question the use of having random enemies running through the areas. Tactical battles can take up a lot of time for one battle depending on how the player fights. That’s why most tactics based games like Fire Emblem have a set number of encounters that the layer has to go through with a few optional battles thrown in. Thankfully the game doesn’t use random encounters but having a set number of specific battles would have suited the battle system more in my opinion. Despite my feelings about the encounters, I still like the choice of using a tactics based battle system and I wish more developers would implement them as well.



-OVERALL-

PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK. The actual gameplay and battle setup is really nice but the story and writing hinders the overall quality of the game. If you enjoy crude humor and don’t mind reading nothing but crude jokes for the duration of gameplay, then this game is for you. If you don’t, but you like Tactical RPG’s then I’d say at least give this game a try.


Thanks for reading and happy game making!

http://rpgmaker.net/games/8483/