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An enjoyable and interesting adventure.

  • Waxius
  • 04/05/2018 12:56 PM
  • 1411 views
Looking for a short game to play, I decided to check out Maze of Heroes by WerePanda83. It was a cute story with a couple of plot twists and interesting dialogue. I played for 6 and half hours over the course of a week, and I wasn't disappointed.



The Story: (3/5)
An evil being named Piranos wants to enter the world and walk freely in it. Many a hero has opposed him, only to lose and be cast down into the maze. Those who can complete the maze will have another chance to face Piranos again, if they live that long.

You play as Alrick, a warrior/mage who is skilled in elemental magic. Along for the ride is Sandra, a Paladin Healer who can slice up enemies as well as cure ailments and heal wounds. Next up is Mitchel, a crafter who has some odd, but useful skills.



All three characters have their own reasons for attempting to defeat Piranos, but lost. The trio will have to work together to get through the Nine Mazes and face their ultimate enemy. They'll meet friends along the way, and secrets will be revealed all in due time.

I won't post any spoilers here. The ending of the game is satisfying, if bittersweet, and there may be future games in this series which I would happily play as well.

Game Play: (3/5)
The game play was pretty standard for an RPG Maker VX game. You begin in a hallway that has 10 doors. Nine of the Doors least to the Nine Mazes while the last one leads to Piranos himself. You have to work the mazes in order, as each one is a bit more difficult than the last.

The enemies are on screen as plumes of blue smoke. Touching them brings you into battle (Default VX Battle System), and once you defeat them, they are gone for good, even if you finish the maze and comeback to it.



The challenging part comes from the fact that you can't LEAVE a maze until you defeat the boss... and you can't defeat the boss unless you are strong enough. You'll have to choose your battles and use your healing and mana items with care. Do you risk clearing the stage of all enemies and have less healing items, or do you fight the boss after half the enemies are gone?

It is inadvisable to mash the "attack" command in this game. Normal attacks are very weak, compared to your characters skills. The in-game tutorials even tell you not to use the attack command unless you are desperate, which I thought was a great tip, because I would have probably been very frustrated without this prior knowledge. Instead, use your characters special skills and manage your AP with care.

Skills:
Speaking of skills, Mitchel's "mini bomb" skill is completely spammable. It costs only 3 AP, and once Mitchel has the ability to recover his own AP, you won't need items for him anymore. I found myself using mini bomb even in the endgame when he has stronger skills. The reasons... it's strong non-elemental damage that attacks all enemies.

Alrick learns an array of elemental magic throughout the game. Some spells target one enemy, some all. The key is to conserve your AP and experiment with them to find the monsters weaknesses and not overkill (wasting AP).

Sandra, being a healer and a paladin, has healing skills as well as sword techniques. In regular battles I've used Air Slash exclusively, but in boss battles it's almost a necessity to use the Mend skill on every turn to heal the whole party.

Graphics and Music: (3/5)
While I'm not an expert on RPG Maker VX, I would say that the game consists of the standard assets. Nothing looked out of place, and the level design isn't fancy. If you take a look at the title screen, you'll actually see mini versions of the actual levels themselves! Nice touch!

My only gripe would be the battle backgrounds. Each level uses the same "nebula" background with a different tint. It works, but I would have liked to have seen some surroundings to make me feel like I'm in a maze.



The music seemed like the standard RPG Maker selections, which fit the scenes well. I have no complaints here.

Overall:
Overall, I give this Maze of Heroes 3 stars. It's a short, fun, enjoyable game and I'm glad to have played it. There's nothing new in terms of graphics, music, or features, but I can certainly appreciate the way it was all put together into a nice flowing narrative. I did find a few bugs which I'll list here, but nothing major or gamebreaking:

Bugs:
- The 4th Maze has vines on the walls, you can walk on them. Simple Mapping Error.
- After you have beat the 2nd Maze at least once, if you enter it again, you'll come back out in Maze 1.
- For some reason, the 9th maze opened early, right after I exited the 7th maze. I don't think that was supposed to happen, so I went to maze 8. Prior to this, I did go back into earlier mazes to grind for experience, so maybe there's a count that's off somewhere.
- During the intro, the text doesn't stay on long enough to read, I would suggest adding more seconds or allowing the player to press enter to move on.


While I spent 6 hours on the game, it is possible to beat in 3-4 if you know what you're doing and don't feel the need to go back and fight legendary monsters and open every single treasure chest.

I definitely recommend playing "Maze of Heroes" if you're looking for a short, but challenging game.

Posts

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Wow! Thank you so much. Yes I am definitely planning to make a part 2 and maybe a part 3. I'm glad you enjoyed the game. Unfortunately, I lost my original build file and cannot make any changes to the game. Please take a look at my own playthrough of it when you get a chance.(You can find it in my Media section.) Again thank you for the kind words.
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