HALIBABICA'S FULL GAME REVIEW ~ DEAD THREAD

author=halibabica link=topic=3639.msg74958#msg74958 date=1242251727
o.O That was fast, LWG!

I had already completed the demo recently so there was no need to replay it except to get those screenshots. Incase you missed what I said, I had already wrote some of the review out, just to lazy to finish it until now =P

I don't want to over take your topic, but do you mind if I do some more? There's nothing stopping us from reviewing the same game anyway.

author=Dark Gaia link=topic=3639.msg73147#msg73147 date=1241234356
Will you spare one night to play One Night? I love as many people as possibly to play it.

You know what? Cancel this, and play the sequel, The Beyond instead. It's yet to be reviewed. Access it from my sig.

Hehehe. Thanks.

Little Wing Guy plays World Tower a VX game made by Yoshio. Demo Version 1.6 (Warning! This review contains spoilers)

Inside a massive tower lives a whole civilization of people. Outside seems to be lush empty green fields and an ocean spanning as far as the eye can see, but no other towers and no other people. No one can leave this world tower either, not ever. Luckily for the people inside the tower, there's everything you could ever want and need. There's a agricultural floor simulating a farm filled with cows, chickens and crops. Shopping centers, Kitchens, Residential areas and even cemeteries! Despite being idyllic something isn't right at all. Children, once reaching a certain age are separated from their families and forced to live with other children their own age on specially designed floors below. A corrupted government and a rebel group inside the tower seems to be at work too. Amidst the events of the World Tower, there's a young 8 year old boy named Jayson who escaped from the children's floor in an attempt to be re-united with his mother. We follow the journey of him and his family members as they simply try to find each other. The history of the tower and the general story is revealed only through character soliloquies and NPC dialogue, there is a good amount of cut scenes in the game but they aren't too brilliant for the most part (some characters walk right up to each other faces and move too slowly, the final cut scene in this game is draft simply because how long it takes for all the soldiers to move). The amount of information you find out about this games depends on who you talk to and examine. Through the two hour demo you'll meet a handful of enjoyable, interesting and quirky characters with clear defined personalities from the start.


Despite the sound of the plot the story is very light hearted and always comedic. The game never takes itself seriously and every cut scene will put a smile on your face, whether it's the characters joking with one another (and in turn joking with you, the player) or another useless soldier you'll enjoy every character interaction despite the appalling grammar, spelling mistakes and sometimes random character motives. I won't go as far to say all characters are lovable, but most are definitely likeable in their own ways.

The game does not waste anytime, we are in instance control of our first character Jayson from the title screen, with no back-story or direction you walk forward and discover you're on the run. The first dungeon is a few text boxes away. Now, you've only got control of Jayson, he has no skills, equipment, money or items and the place looks to be crawling with monsters, but actually we're OK, monsters here are pretty nice there is a shop run by a monster who gives you money to spend freely at his shop, therefore choosing your own starting items. There's only two items, a healing item and an attack item that will always do 15 damage (at this point in the game, that's a lot) it's best to choose a balance between the two. It'll be explained to you by a friendly slime that monsters will not fight you unless you choose to fight them first, monsters don't even move on the map, they're represented by different coloured crystals littered around the map. Blue is a one monster encounter, green is two monsters and red is three. Although we'll only see the Blue crystals so early on in the game. After each fight we'll receive precious EXP and Money (regular monsters don‘t respawn, you may find later on that some let you fight them infinite times for money), both being extremely valuable through out the game, but never before have I been so happy to receive more money than EXP in a game, since items are always the key to success in battles. Each dungeon has a shop somewhere in it (and you‘ll always be needing to backtrack to it), it always offers the exact items you'll need to advance in the particular dungeon you're in. The battles themselves are always challenging and you need to switch between items, attack and defend carefully (yes, defend, I couldn't believe it when I had to use defend in my strategy). You have to take each battle once at a time and save after everyone, but this is actually a good thing. You can walk past every battle if out want, but some battles are unavoidable (usually against a human, monsters are nicer in this game than most humans) and fighting every battle will bring you to the level you need to be to win against these tough battles. Did I say win? I meant scrap through by the skin of your teeth, as in 1 HP skin of your teeth…if you're lucky. Boss battles are so hard! It often comes down to pure luck despite being levelled to your maximum for that dungeon. These boss battles start out just fine as long as your careful but every single boss has too much HP, you'll be sitting there with your fingers crossed saying: “Miss, miss, miss, miss!”. Although regular monsters are tough, that's part of the fun, bosses are just ridiculous. It needs sorting out because I almost did quit.


You'll quickly notice after the first dungeon (by the way, these are called Tower Danger Zones) that the game is separated into two areas, the free roaming HUB area and the danger zones. The HUB area is full of NPCs and shops, it's a chance for you to take a breather, take in some story and relax. You don't need to spend much time here though since most places are closed at the start and it's easy to get lost. I did explore quite a bit and didn't find much myself, apparently you can find books that contain skills for your characters, if you return them to the correct person then they will teach you a new skill, yet I did not find any and Jayson and Aiden do no learn skills by levelling like Muffy does. I finished the game with only Muffy having two skills and Jayson and Aiden having none, making the third Danger Zone without Muffy very difficult. The danger zones themselves aren't much to talk about, they're small, have a lack puzzles and don't offer much in the way of treasure, some things can be examined and you'll find a little treasure or secret character dialogue now and then. That's fine though, the whole game is focused on battles mainly. There is one place in the game however where you have to find a key while soldiers target you. Although I didn't find the demo repetitive, more innovative game play like this is what will keep people playing the later Danger Zones.

Yoshio is honestly one of the better VX mappers I've seen. He really knows what he's doing. Some areas look great, like the agricultural floor and Levitz's Mansion, some are a little bland and samey like the hallways of the residential area (which in turn helps us to get lost Yoshio!). But everything fits and is normally easy enough to explore where it counts. I would like to explore more maps however, because there are just so many doors and places you just can't enter anytime during the demo and this tower is supposedly gigantic. Music is a bit of a hit and miss for me, none of it is VX RTP thanks goodness, but some tracks just grate in your ears. HM64Summer is unbelievably annoying. Boss Battle music and Normal music are terrific though (never change the normal battle. It's absolutely perfect) and all the other tracks do fit nicely with each scene and Danger Zone you‘re in. I really have no gripe with the music, it's up to Yoshio and it's just my personal opinion, but I few tracks could be changed.


Overall, this game is worth playing. It is full of little features I liked, for example talking to monster you've defeated for tips, info and conversation. It has a wonderful light hearted feel to it, it's comedic, it'll make you smile. But more importantly it will challenge you and make you think. On the other hand it lacks a lot of polish and is loaded with spelling, grammar mistakes and bugs (one game breaking, the others are mostly to do with items). What I think I should mention somewhere is the lack of scripts this game has, from what I could tell it had two, a caterpillar script which isn't even used and a script for putting battle faces in. None our particularly great and the game doesn't use any scripts to make it unique from all the default VX systems, I‘m not saying it needs to have some to make it good, one thing I do hate is just a bunch of random scripts, it's just aside from battling there wasn‘t much else. In the end, what we have here are some interesting game play ideas executed well, but in a game that doesn't quite reach it's full potential, not in this early demo anyway.

Score: 61% To many things drag it down.

Yoshio, you need to:

-That is the worst title screen I have ever seen. Please change it.
-Make it easier to learn skills for Jayson and Aiden, at least let us learn something that we can't miss.
-A lot of spelling and grammar mistakes, get a beta tester to go over it for you if need be.
-Reduce enemies HP a bit.
-Backtracking wasn't much of a problem mostly, perhaps later on we can get a portable shop?

How big's the line up for another review? I wouldn't mind having Phantasia Remake to be reviewed if the line up is too big, then I won't worry too much about it. ;D

I can't promise that PR is longer or shorter than Hero's Realm, since I never played all of HR... >_>;