From the Light

From the Light is a game originally developed for the Trials of MZ event, being limited to default RTP (with self-edits allowed) and no plugins. The game has seen a number of improvements since that time, largely for the better in my opinion, though it would still need quite some work to make it a great game. There are good ideas in the game, but for a significant part of them, the execution is lacking. It's obvious to anyone who played the Dark Souls games and "souls-like" games that this one takes a lot of inspiration from this genre of games in atmosphere, setting, storytelling and also gameplay to a certain extent (as much as a top-down, 2D turn-based RPG can do so).

What's the premise of the game? Your character wakes up in a forest clearing with no memory and through a nearby statue, he/she learns that they've been chosen by the God of Light to bring back light to the world. Apparently, light in the world faded years ago and days are shrouded in perpetual twilight. Your patron deity needs you to fill his temple with Light so that he can fix things. And that's that, the plot is not complicated and it doesn't need to be. You get some more background information from the very few NPCs that are in the game as well as some flavor texts. This derth of NPCs makes the world feel suitably deserted and mysterious and gives it a certain atmosphere.

Now, how does it actually play? It has the default RPG Maker battle system, you have no other party members (except for one boss fight) and thus have to do with one character. The statues of the God of Light are scattered all around the world and function as sort of safe havens, where you can heal to full, level up, respawn when you are defeated and also recover any used Prisms. What are the Prisms? They are the basic healing item, you have a maximum amount of them you can have in your inventory and whn you interact with a statue, you stock of Prisms is refilled. Through exploration, you can also increase you max amount of Prisms, as well as adding additional effects to them, like clearing status effects and stronger healing.
Defeating enemies doesn't give you XP, instead they drop Light (the currency of this game), which aside from buying items is also used to level up at the statues. When you are defeated, you lose all the Light you were holding at the time, which leaves behind a glowing orb of light at the place where you were KO'd. In order to recover your Light, you have to return there and interact with the orb. If you are defeated on the way there again, you lose all of your previously-hoarded Light forever. Defeating bosses gives you a large amounts of Light and the goal of the game is to get 15000 Light, then travel to the temple of the God of Light to complete the task set out by your patron deity.

Now, to talk about the combat some more. The different weapon types each provide you different skills to perform as well as different passive effects. For example, the starting mace gives you a chance to stun an enemy, while an axe you find later gives your attack a chance to cause a Bleeding status effect. The weapons are more of a tool to be used instead of a secondary character progression, you won't find yourself replacing them every so often for new weapons with bigger numbers. In fact, I used the default starting mace for the most of the game, simply because I found its stunning effect combined with the ability to be wielded with a shield (which gave you access to a counterattack skill) simply irreplaceable. It's important to note that while there are a relatively few different enemy troops, each is very fleshed out an unique, with unique skills and behaviors. As you gain levels, the low level enemy encounters are laso replaced with different, higher level ones, which seems like a better way to do level scaling than boosting the strength of a harmless critter so much that they are able to go toe-to-toe with a legendary hero. The boss fights are also great and heavily rely on tactics.

So, what are the game's shortcomings? Well, for one, there's too much backtracking. You do unlock additional shortcuts, but that happens late in the game, when your need for them mostly passes. The one thing that makes it even worse is the encounter rate, which ranges from "a bit too high" to "way too high", depending on the area. The swamp maps are the worst in particular. The combat also takes longer than it should. The game would have been improved a great deal if random encounters were replaced with on-map encounters, which could be avoided.

And in the later parts, the game goes from challenging to incredibly frustrating. Solving puzzles with random encounters turned on? Check! Having to backtrack through a long, winding path with high encounter rates? Check! Cave dungeon with groups of 4 enemies that poison your character with every attack and also attack 4 times each? Don't remind me, that was awful. There's also an enemy called Lightning Goat that eventually becomes the random encounter in the mine area after you reach max level (or close to max level). This enemy uses an attack that deals damage AND paralyzes the player character. The issue here is that said skill is spammed every turn, seemingly without cost or limitations. Meaning, if you don't flee from the fight at the first sight of this creature, you will get stunlocked and essentially watch a cutscene of your helpless character being absolutely destroyed over the course of a few rounds without any chance to fight back. Experiencing this will certainly make you think that the game simply hates you.

The game also offers a "guided mode" and an "exploration mode" with zero handholding. The only difference between these two is that the guided mode adds an NPC priest to the starting area, whom you can ask a few questions about basic gameplay. In my opinion, this is too little to be called another mode. Either the priest should have been there by default and the choice removed or the two modes should have other, larger differences. Anyone who would be interested in figuring everything out themselves can just choose not to ask any questions.

On the presentation, the game uses a few sample maps, with minor edits, however they fit in well and there's no noticeable difference in the quality between the sample maps and original maps. The world of course has a dark tint in keeping with the premise and there's a few weather effects here and there. All in all, a fairly well used RTP.

Now, how to rate this... this really is a game that really drops in quality as you near the end, perhaps a sign of the approaching event deadline. Now, the early parts would be worth 3-3.5 Stars, but the later partts would be 1-2 stars lower. So, gonna rate the overall game 2 stars. This really is a game that needs either a sequel, spiritual successor or a remake that can take the good ideas here, polish them up and leave the bad in the dust. Maybe we'll see it someday, there's definitely potential for something great here.