Quondam Warriors

Quondam Warriors is a jrpg game made with RPG Maker VX Ace by Loowiz in 2020 and released as a complete game. I decided to look for the game and try it when they told me that the download link was outdated and there was no way to find it.
Guess what? If you want to try the game, here it is the link: Quondam_Warriors.rar

And then I was happy! A complete game? Yay... but unfortunately I wasn't able to finish it, but I will explain later why.
Quondam Warriors starts with Firion and his friends acting as freedom fighters against the evil empire, but before we can even act the empire destroys their village and they have to flee... apparently each one in a different direction, since in the end they are lost.
Time pass and Firion, that started living in a forest as a hermit, decides to go back to civilization. And here's the game starts.

Quondam Warriors is a classic party based jrpg game (even if we start controlling Firion the lone warrior) complete with random encounters and characters that possess different abilities. A nice thing is that they use TP earned being hit during combat, one has a powerful attack that can (rarely) stun, another a flurry of blows that may (rarely) blind the enemy, and so on. They also use different equipments and weapons, anyway some do possess a Magic ability menu, but no skill and not even a Mana bar, so I wonder if the developer forgot to remove that option or this is supposed to be unlocked on higher levels.


How could I say no to her???

I'm not a fan of random encounters, anyway the developer opted for the possibility to save anywhere and also placed pretty frequently some fireplaces that are used to rest an recover completely, a good idea since this made me keep the precious potions for the hardest moments, like the fight with the giant mummy (where it's rather necessary to have healing items or there is no way to win). Difficulty is pretty medium-low but it's true that there are some optional harder combat encounters (like the one with the bandits' ambush) that are totally optional, and in any case you can often run for every fight, except the duels with bosses, of course.

But there are NOT just combat encounters: the game features also some other tasks like a chase section (even if the nearby fireplace at first made me think that was a boss encounter... instead no, you have to flee!) and a labyrinth that is infested by an unbeatable minotaur, but as Firion says the big horned monster is slow, so you can totally escape from it. You guess what? For once I was surprised that this is true, there is no reason to fight the (apparently invincible) minotaur at all, as you can avoid it and complete the mission.

Did I say mission? Oh well yes, the adventure starts as a series of separated missions done for various place in which Firion passes, and during his adventures he will also encounter his missing friends that that will join him.


These are too many mummies for my tastes!

Ok, so why I did not complete the game, that until now I wrote it was pretty good? Well because after the mission at the pyramid there is apparently no way to go back to the village, since one exit does not work and the other leads to a woman that asks for a ticket and I found no place that sells them (probably in the village, that, as mentioned before *I cannot access anymore!*). Did I miss something? It may be possible, I liked exploration but I did not explore each corner and I'm pretty sure it should have been possible to go back to the village because the mummies leave items that can be sold at the village! Also there was no reason to block the way back (problem that made things harder since I had no options to restock consumables, and the boss is rather difficult, not because it's overly strong but because it is encountered inside a dark room where almost 1/3 of all attacks will miss! And I saw no way to avoid that!).

Aside from this the game is pretty ok: the difficulty is average, no need to grind at all. Visually it's average too: most maps are quite big and empty, but maybe it's also because that part is set in a desert. Anyway I found the forest locations and the villages to be my favourites compared to the villa and the maze that are rather meh. Thre are also some odd choices, like a sort of column used to rapresent an altar, two sort of altars that looks useful and instead are just decorative, a sword used to indicate a hole where you can jump... well odd choices, but uh ok, not bad ones.
Also shops are identical in every village, only the clerks are different! For some reason the item shops have also only empty tables... weird. Maybe this game wasn't really complete after all.

And it's a pity, because despite the dramatic beginning the game is a lighthearted adventure with many funny exchanges and party banter between the protagonists and also the quest givers. There are also some mysterious characters that are hinted to be the bad guys, but of course I didn't see a lot of them, except that they are looking for some powerful gems.
The story isn't without some inconsistencies (for example regarding the maze quest or the girl inside the pyramid), anyway I did have fun for exactly 1 hour and 15 minutes, so that's not too bad, even if the part in the pyramid was the zone I liked less due to the high rate of encounters (I ran from most of them) and the unfair bossfight(but I won on my fourth try).


This pub is very crowded, and there are some interesting customers!

NOT the Final Verdict
As you can see I gave an average rating, because I believe this is an average game. Not bad, not terrible, but enjoyable despite some overlooked parts that could have been made better with some more refinement and attention (for example the part with the camp in the desert for some reason has no background music, and that's odd). I mean there weren't big issues, except that one that made me stop playing because I could not proceed further, so I consider this a decent demo. There's nothing that made this game stand out (uses Rtps, for monsters charsets and tilesets, so nothing new), anyway there are still some nice ideas and parts that entertain and make the adventure less boring. I've played far worse games, really, I'm just disappointed I could not reach an ending (and I wish I had RPG Maker VX Ace to see if I can fix this).

TRUE Final Verdict
Ok, so the new version fixed the bug and I was able to progress further.
The game becomes pretty simple when facing the normal enemies and EXTREMELY difficult when facing the bosses: I was able to beat the Ice Queen at level 21 despite their fury area attack, and also the next boss that I found later that is able to hit (and kill) up to two party members out of three.

The secret was using the Lyre of Resurrection found earlier, since only Firion (at lvl 21) was able to survive the Crystal Queel Fury attack, and keeping him at fill health and resurrecting the others between attacks was the key to win. Same for the next boss battle (with the difference that with its double attacks not always was Firion the one that survived).

Unfortunately now I'm stuck at the boss in the haunted mansion (also because you lose a party members, and all his equipment including some terrible useful accessories! ARGHHHHHHHHH!) where first you have to hunt for ALL the ghost (sigh) ... time to grindddd!