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Sacred Reviews: Coldsteel and the Chaos Shards



Introduction

"Coldsteel and the Chaos Shards" is a Sonic fan game that was being developed by MightyBobBarker as a joke. Apparently the joke wasn't good enough to warrant a full game, but we did get a demo out of the deal. Seeing as how this project is only a demo, I don't feel comfortable placing a numerical rating on this review. After all, it's not like I'm looking at complete game here.

Story
Plot Summary
While the game's summary page does give a detailed description of what the game was going to be like. The demo only covers the first dungeon and boss battle. So, I'll summarize the demo as being a game where you play as a purple hedgehog trying to save the chao while Sonic is busy putting out other fires.

Main Character
You play as Coldsteel, a purple hedgehog who shares a name with a villain from Disney's "Gargoyles". Outside of being purple you also appear to be a massive douche. A douche so massive it's hard to believe someone hasn't murdered you yet. After all, who wants to be neighbors with a guy who would burn down an orphanage and take a dump on the wreckage?



In fact, the only thing Coldsteel does appear to care about is the chao. Though, I'm not entirely sure why he cares about a bunch of fruit eating racers and martial artists. After all, it's not like they spend their time glorifying Coldsteel and his endless dickerey.

Gameplay

"Coldsteel and the Chaos Shards" features an active-time battle system with a slight twist on the formula. In this game you can delay enemy actions by attacking them with Coldsteel. In fact, if you plan your moves carefully it's possible to take down enemies in this game while not taking any in return. And while I'd argue this idea is interesting it only serves to make combat in this demo even more dull. This is because you start out with over 500 HP in this game while the regular enemies you come across can only do around 20 points of damage. As such, it's pretty easy to get through the demo while only mindlessly attacking your enemies.

Outside of combat the game also features a puzzle you need to solve in order to reach Dr. Eggman. An electronic lock where you need to turn all of the symbols on the screen into green circles.



Graphics

"Coldsteel and the Chaos Shards" is a rather interesting game graphically speaking. This is because the game includes several custom assets that both help and hurt the game overall in my opinion. On the plus side of the scale, the inclusion of custom art assets help the game stand out from the numerous titles that rely on the RTP for their visual style. On the down side, the demo's art assets aren't entirely homogeneous in terms of direction.



Music

On the musical side of things the game makes use of some rather iconic pieces from the Sonic franchise. A decision that makes sense considering the nature of this project. Though, I'm still scratching my head over why the developer decided to include Pain by Three Days Grace in the opening credit sequence.

Conclusion

I find myself at a bit of an impasse here. On one hand, I really don't want to recommend "Coldsteel and the Chaos Shards". This is because the game will never truly be finished and is going to remain stuck in the demo stage until the end of time. I suppose it's possible that MightyBobBarker may change his/her mind in the future and decide to complete this game, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that. At the same time, I don't want to recommend against checking out the demo for this game, because there are some interesting ideas on display here that I'd like to see incorporated into other projects. I suppose in the end, this demo serves as a potential tech demo for what RPG Maker VX Ace is capable of.