Dego

Intro

I'll admit that I've really struggled to write a review for "Dego". I've been trying on again and off again for years with writing a review. I'd sometimes get a few pages worked out during my break but would ultimately find them insufficient and would scrap them in favor of starting over or set them to the side to consider editing and expanding upon at a later date. A later date that was basically pushed back multiple times. Sort of like how the United Kingdom still isn't doing all of the import checks their supposed to be doing against goods coming in from the European Union since leaving the single market and customs union because of Brexit.

But I've finally decided I just need to sit down and put this review together since I want to do roughly one review a day for a period of four months and this is a good game to target as part of that process since it's a game I'm actually familiar with. And while I haven't updated my unfinished Let's Plays for the Warrior and Necromancer classes in a while. I'm still actively grinding in those runs for a few extra levels every month. So, I'm not entirely trying to put this one together from old rough drafts and memories that are months old.

Story

You play as a hero whose on a quest to defeat the undefeatable Malie King. And that really all there is to the plot of this game. Sure you can go on a few side quests here and there, but those quests usually just lead to short missions where you need to slay all of the monsters in a given area for one reason or another. About the only thing potentially interesting about those quests is that you might get to fighter either a rare monster or a nameless mid-boss. Unfortunately both types of previously mentioned monsters are just as vulnerable to status effects as regular enemies. So it's pretty easy to cheese fights against such enemies since they will engage you one on one in most cases.

Admittedly a few of the quests change things up a bit by having you collect teddy bears or replay a song, but one of those feels like a chore while the latter one is beyond my abilities since my hearing isn't as sharp as it used to be. And those are really rare curveballs that only pop up in the ice area to my knowledge. Though maybe they pop up more often after you've beaten the game's normal difficulty setting. I've never looked at hard mode so I really can't say if they become more often there or not.

Gameplay

You start out by being able to shift your appearance and choose your gender, but the amount of options you get is rather limited. Admittedly things open up more afterwards with you being able to equip various accessories, capes, and wings to make your character better fit your own desires at the time. Unfortunately you need to either unlock these through finding random pieces of clothing by defeating enemies, finding them at random inside treasure chests, or by buying a random piece of clothing within a specific category at the store. The random nature of these finds makes buying them rather unappealing though since you can drop 500 gold on a pair of wings to simply learn you spent 500 gold coins on wings you had already unlocked. And gold is pretty scarce early on. So it's better to save it for more meaningful purchases.

Albeit the shop in general tends to annoy me since the selection for gear is randomly generated from equipment meant to be effective based on how far you are into the game. So if you want to collect every weapon and accessory you'll need to spend a lot of time entering and leaving stages to get the shop to reset to include items you don't already have. And if your looking for just gear meant for your specific class you can run into the same problem where the equipment you really want might take a few tries to get.

I suppose I understand why Ramshackin doesn't allow the player to have access to the full list of items since it would take a while to find something appropriate in a list that would include hundreds of items, but I still think that would have been preferable to hoping the shop randomly generates gear the player wants/needs.

Though I would say the game's biggest problem is it's not well balanced. For starters the various classes aren't particularly equal in my opinion. A good example of this is the Necromancer class whose ultimate ability can revive dead teammates, but if your playing this game solo like I and a lot of other players probably have this ability is entirely useless. I suppose this could be fixed by having the ability auto activate and revive the player if they are playing solo, but that might make the Necromancer class way too powerful in comparison to the others since you slowly earn points for using your special abilities over time as well as gain additional energy for it by taking and receiving damage. So such an ability would potentially make the Necromancer class effectively immortal at higher levels if they have the right stat spread.

Another issue is that the game really favors ranged and magic based classes. This is because a lot of enemies in this game spam offensive magic with little warning so avoiding certain attacks if your within melee range is basically impossible. This means characters that can sit back and take pot shots at enemies have a massive advantage. In fact, I'd say the most over powered classes are magic casters since they can easily abuse weapons that give the player access to guaranteed status effects when it comes to any enemy besides the game's major bosses. This means a necromancer waving a blue flag will have a significantly easier run than a warrior swinging around a two-handed sword.

Another issue on top of the ones previously mentioned is that weapons within the same class in terms of power can be wildly different in terms of overall effectiveness. The previously mentioned blue flag only increases the magic stat by 30 but gives the player a massive advantage in one on one fights with anything short of bosses. This makes the blue flag one of the most powerful weapons in the game when it comes to dealing with rare or mid-boss type enemies. On the other hand, the vampire sword which has a similar base power level is effectively garbage since it only gives the player 1/10th of the damage it inflicts back as health. This means the only way to make this sword useful is if you can hit for hundreds if not thousands of points of damage which will only be possible in the later parts of the game where your level is extremely high. And that's assuming you pumped the bulk of your points into raising your attack stats instead of into HP.

And I usually go for a high HP build in this game since I'm not that great at dodging enemy attacks and then rely upon accessories that give passive health regeneration over time that is percentage based to win. This means I have an incentive to pump up my HP as much as possible so I can work towards becoming so tanky that I can survive the lengthy boss fights in this game to emerge victorious.

Another issue that pops up in a few fights is that certain points on the map can actually be exploited to make yourself impossible to hit. One of the first examples I found involving this trick was with the ranger on the storm lord. You can actually sit in a certain part of the map if you begin the fight by summoning one of your familiars and be completely impossible for the storm lord to hit while your minion is keeping it locked in position.

Though my favorite comes from the warrior run where I learned that it's possible to render the game's first boss entirely harmless if you position them correctly on a rock as shown below.



The warrior can also exploit positioning in the fight with the cave troll as well. And while it isn't as effective as the fight with the dragon boss. It's still useful since you can render the trolls melee attacks useless by slamming into their backside. This makes it impossible for them to turn around for some reason so every time the troll swings their club you can just keep spamming your basic attack for massive damage. This strategy also works against some of their magic attacks as well, but some of them have a locator function so you'll still be vulnerable to some of them if you don't move away to avoid them. Of course, if you have enough HP and can inflict enough damage you can take advantage of this trick to defeat the troll while just absorbing the damage you can't avoid.

Another thing that bugs me with this game is despite how much inspiration it takes from games like "Shining Soul" and "Shining Soul II" on the Game Boy Advance. You can't activate healing items during combat. The only way to heal is by using camp fires which typically appear before boss fights or by outfitting your character with gear that gives you auto regeneration over time. This means your forced to play near perfectly if you want to focus on some sort of pure offensive build. And the inclusion of healing items you could stock up on and activate during battle would make melee classes way more viable in my opinion since you wouldn't have to worry as much about enemies throwing attacks that feel like they come out of a bullet hell game at you.

On a more positive note the active battle system in this game is fully functional and doesn't feature odd pauses or make it impossible for the player to get close in order to land hits without taking a hit in return. So the game is definitely better than all of the attempts I've seen at creating an active battle system using RPG Maker 2003.

Graphics

The bulk of the graphical assets come from the RTP for RPG Maker VX which is both a blessing and curse in my opinion. On the plus side it means the enemies and whatnot look pretty decent. On the other hand it means this game looks similar to a lot of other projects out there and lacks a truly unique visual identity. So much so that when I think about this game the first thing that comes to mind is the numerous other games I've played that were actually made using RPG Maker VX that relied on the RTP like "Castle Oblivion".

Sound

On the sound side of things the game is alright. You'd think a game with lengthy bullet hell style boss fights would have a sound track I could praise, but that really isn't the case. Though I suppose not every game can compete with Tempest 2000 on the Atari Jaguar.

Conclusion

On one hand "Dego" has a functional active battle system and reminds me of games like "Shining Soul II" on the Game Boy Advance. On the other hand, it's hard for me to deny that "Dego" is inferior to those games by a noticeable margin due to major balance issues as well as missing on certain key features like being able to activate items for healing during combat.

On a more positive note you have infinite inventory space in this game so you don't have to warp out of the dungeon every now and again to sell of useless crap which really grinds my gears in some of the later dungeons in "Shining Soul" and "Shining Soul II". At the same time my gripes about needing to warp out of a dungeon to sell stuff is a minor gripe in comparison to my issues with the poor single player balance for certain classes in this game.

Add in how powerful certain weapons are in comparison to weapons meant to be in the same tier and your left with a game that favors spamming magic to the point you'll want to turn every class into a mage. And the only other class that would really benefit from that in my opinion is the ranger. And that's assuming the power of there summons is based on there level and not there attack stat.

So while I won't recommend for this game. I don't feel it's so bad that I would actively recommend against it, but if you enjoyed this game you'd probably enjoy something like "Shining Soul II" even more.