This is a demo review.
This is a review of v0.7 which was downloaded on Oct 17, 2020.
My playtime: 04:58:06

Intro
The world ends in seven moons. Can you save the world before someone destroys it? THRONE - OUR FINAL TWILIGHT plays out as you, Zeda, a forgotten goddess, try to save the world through Ōdessa, a mere mortal.

Graphics
The menu is designed beautifully to make it match with the dark theme. The visuals also capture the game setting at night perfectly, especially with the eerie and mysterious vibe.

Story
To be honest, I had a problem understanding the story. There is a dubbed intro when you start the game that tells about the game's background. However, the voice is not clear and my poor listening skills can hardly pick up anything that the person is saying without a subtitle.

There isn't much story after you start the game either. Most dialogues can be accessed by talking to people through certain keywords. Some keywords will be available when you start the game while other keywords require you to do a certain action to unlock. However, most dialogues feel meaningless because it doesn't seem to help me understand the story; it only serves as an additional knowledge of the dangers that lurk outside the village, which is mostly useless since people don't seem to know much about it.



Some events that happened in the first 3 days also doesn't make sense. I still couldn't comprehend what happened on each day and how they are related to each other.

Most dialogues use difficult words which might be a problem to some people. However, I found the word choice to be perfect given that the setting took place sometime in the past.

The Game
Exploration
Exploration is the main point of the game. You have seven moons to explore the whole area and kill every boss. You can finish the bosses in any order that you want although the difficulty will make you do it in a certain order.

I like how the game has a lot of places to explore. The forest, the area outside the village, is very vast with a lot of hidden areas and tricky places. You also can drop a rope in some places, making second-time exploration to be easier and faster.

Chests and locked houses, which usually hold useful items, are also spread across the map. However, you need to use a lockpick to open most of them, and using a lockpick is a 50-50 chance between succeeding and failing. You'll most likely save and load to make sure you don't waste your lockpick since it's costly to get a second lockpick.

Although the game gives a good premise on the seven moons, you basically can do everything on the first day. There isn't much to do on the other day if you do that, despite new NPCs appearing and events occurring in the next few days.

Combat
It took me some time to figure out how the combat works. I thought it works the same way as other RPG Maker games since it has HP and FP bar, which I assumed as MP. It turns out to be completely different since you can't spam attack in this game to win.

Enemies will give a hint of whatever they are going to do on the next turn and you need to counter it appropriately. If the enemy is going to do a physical attack, you can cast Parry, which costs 25 FP to cast. The skill will recover 25 FP, parry one enemy attack, and do a counterattack whenever the enemy deals a physical attack on the turn you cast it. There is also a skill that will reduce your damage taken and recover FP and offensive skills to damage the enemy.



However, the game doesn't seem to be in favor of magic attacks. Magic attacks cost 25 HP, which is very costly considering that it's 1/4 of your HP and the damage isn't as great as physical-based skills. The game tries to balance it out by implementing enemies that can only be attacked with magic attacks, but it proves to be a problem when your character hasn't learned a single magic attack. You need to pay 750 gold to learn one and trust me, it's very expensive.

Most enemies won't respawn. The small number of enemies that will respawn will only respawn in a certain area. This makes it hard to grind money and resources. Luckily, you won't need to spend a lot of money to buy items if you know how to deal with enemies.

Equipment
There isn't much that you can buy. The game has 3 different weapons that can grant different skills and stats: sword for strength, bow for dexterity, and staff for intelligence. There are only 1-2 weapons of each type and you can reinforce certain weapons to increase their stats. The same goes for armors, although there are fewer choices than weapons. All in all, you don't have to worry about gearing up, since you can use whatever you have and upgrade it along the way.

There is also a tarot card that will provide some boosts to one of your party member. You can activate them in our out of battle without wasting your turn. There is also one card that can help you to pass through a certain area, which I found to be interesting. I wish there were more cards like this.

Length and Difficulty
To be honest, it took me some time to understand how the game works, especially the combat. I kept on dying in combat because I thought that I just need to spam skills to win. I thought healing items weren't useful since they're costly and there are not that many healing items that you can get in the wild. The lack of auto save is also annoying because I had to return to my house every time to save the game.

However, everything turns to be wrong once I understand how the game works. I enjoyed both exploration and combat. Healing items aren't that needed at all as long as I'm geared. I still died and restarted the game a lot of times, including the random crashes, but it wasn't as bad as how it was. I just knew that if I found something to be very hard to beat, it means that I needed to explore other places and get stronger. The manual save is still annoying though, but I was used to it.

It took me ~4h based on the in-game time to finish the demo. However, I believe I spent more time than that since I had to restart the game several times whenever I died or crashed the game.

Problems
As I said before, the game crashed a lot. I didn't remember the exact count, but I believe there were more than five times where I had to experience it on my playthrough. There were also some annoyances like how some music file wasn't in the game and I had to keep on pressing the retry button to continue the game. Sometimes, the game also stuttered a bit after I exited a building.

Speaking of annoyances, there is this section in a cave where you will get a game over screen if you stand on a crack for a while. However, there are enemies in that area, and initiating a battle with the enemies will usually mean a game over because the ground will collapse after the battle ends.

Pros:
- You can explore the area from any order that you want
- Freedom in choosing weapon types

Cons:
- Random crashes
- The game might be hard to understand at the beginning

Final Rating: 4/5
I was about to give it a lower rating because of the random crashes, but I believe that this game has great potential which offsets the crashes. It's an interesting game to play although I believe it will be better with more dialogues that explain the current situation because I didn't get much from the story.

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Typo:
- When you ask the Bartender about Zeda: "My nana would tell stories about the occult-- stories of mages who once made living sacrifices on this very island./!" should be "My nana would tell stories about the occult-- stories of mages who once made living sacrifices on this very island!"
- After you finished playing the demo: "To be coninued..." should be "To be continued..."
- On fifth night's dream: "We agreed with one mind to be born, to seperate, to follow eachother in sequence." should be "We agreed with one mind to be born, to separate, to follow each other in sequence."

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Bugs:
- Enemy that runs away (Gallboy) is still having a turn although it doesn't give damage
- The game keeps on having error Failed to load: audio/se/DevilsRoar.ogg after you cast Devil's Roar
- After you look at the mirror on the Maze of Unknowing (the place where you fight L'tar Sai), another error Failed to load: audio/bgs/Darkness.ogg
- (Might not be a bug) You can't change your tarot card after you use Judgement (the 20th card)
- The game will freeze if you ask for a tarot reading on the seventh day (might be related to the previous bug)
- Using viscera (through the "Sacrifice" option in the altar) several times might reduce your HP
- Constant crash - I tried to not save and fast-forward to the last day from the first day since I just want to know what happened (and you can't save in a different save slot) and the game always crashed. There are also some random crashes but I can't reproduce them all.
- Basalt Blade respawns from the same place every other day. I got two by the end of the seventh day but I'm not sure whether you can get more since I didn't check the place every day (and I lost track because of the crashes)
- Collision error


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Suggestion:
- Make the priest unequip the dark gears, not destroying them.
- Implement a combat log. Sometimes I didn't pay attention to enemy attack or just want to make sure I made the right decision.
- Make the screen transition when you leave the blacksmith smoother. I think there is a delay or something.
- Don't give a game over screen if you fall on the cracked floor in one of the caves after you fight The Prowler. It's annoying. You might want to reset the floor to its original state after you re-enter the room.
- Improve load time when you open the game.
- Get a healing skill for Anann? He's practically useless although he's designed as a magic attacker since he can't recover his HP. You might want to reduce the HP cost too since it's too pricey (the healing skill only recover 10HP per turn after all).