The Greatest Survival

Hello!
And welcome to an original adventure! The Greatest Sturvival.
This is the story of Lyza, a girl that is looking for her missing father, a quest that will take her in many different locations...

Ok, first thing don't mistake this for a survival game, nope, this is another kind of game, it's a game about exploration. Well, exploration of dangerous areas, to be precise, that will see out protagonist doing mainly things:

- the first is getting ready: buying consumables, finding equipment, levelling up, unlocking abilities and so on.
- the second is solving puzzles (from looking for levers and buttons to pushing boulders and classical sliding puzzles), avoiding obstacles and dangers and fighting bosses. Yeah, just them, not their minions!


Remember Frogger? You have to cross the road but these huge guys are lethal!

Make no mistake, in this game there is A LOT to do! Quest, subquest, so many unlockables I cannot remember, crafting, levelling, finding secrets and special items... every corner may hide an achievement, really! And this happens in a game that is not your typical rpgmaker game, since there is almost no combat...
yeah, almost!
...
And I have to admit that this is the part that gave me a lot of troubles: the boss fights. Unlike all the normal enemies, the bosses have to be fought and they always require a particular strategy that you must learn by observing them. Despite this you also need to be fast and exploit their weaknesses, but trust me, they are tough and Lyza is a little girl, so expect these parts to be rather difficult.
No wait, very difficult!
Oh yes, the difficulty spikes of the boss fights are in my opinion really high, I mean that even the first boss that serves as a sort of tutorial is pretty difficult! Bosses not only are difficult but sometimes they even summons minions, that, as every other "lesser monster" present on the map cannot be attacked at all! Clearly you need to taker your time to improve your character ('s abilities and equipment. Unfortunately for what concerns the first boss there is not much we can do!).

Luckily there is still hope! I mean you can change the difficulty and make these deadly encounters less dangerous by modifying the quantity of damage received and inflicted. Anyway this means that you still have to figure out the way in which the enemy shall be defeated, and it is not always so easy (see the boss in the snowy area, for example, the one in the desert was far easier to figure out, I think).


No, we are not dead and this is not Heaven!

And that is the only complaint I have for this game, for the rest it's a pretty original adventure with some classic puzzles and activities, it all happens in real time so it requires strategy, planning but also fast reflexes.
Mapping is average probably due to the use of Rtp, but not bad at all and in most cases the resources are used in a good way (even if I expected levels to be longer), I like for example how usually there are ways to outsmart the monsters, like the presence of pillars that can be used to block the pursuers. Anyway if you are aiming for the 100% completion be ready to face some unavoidable damage since some optional chests are sometimes nearly impossible to open without jumping into the mouth of the dangerous fauna!

In these moments the game reminds to me the old Amiga arcade games, but it's true that the whole crafting and upgrading adds a new dimension to an apparently simple game. Places can be visited in any order and in some cases they need to be revisited to unlock more resources and powers. There is a handy autosave each time you enter a map, but you can also save anytime and anywhere, and also the game asks before facing a boss if you want to go home (if you do not feel ready and you have some upgrades to make), but consider also that there is a (much needed!) healing area before the encounters, so you do not need to waste the precious potions!

Ok, this is more or less everything. No wait, I did not speak of the story, but please mind that this is a game full of mysteries, encounters and funny scenes (giant fluffy creatures, weird communities of snowmen, etc...) that have to seen and for this reason i won't spoil you the fun! Anyway I can confirm that there are a lot of lovable characters and many silly and bizarre situations both in the main base and in the wilderness locations. I also liked a lot the font used and the graphic style of the menus, it's less generic and different from what is used in most other games that use this same engine.


As I mentioned in the review there are 500 achievements... but these are not just for fun, they let you earn money too!

The Final Verdict
The Greatest Survival is a game that I expected to be easier and simple, but instead offer a lot of content and challenges. On the other hand the levels are somewhat smaller from what I expected (ok the introductive part, but I expecte for example to have bigger snowy and desert areas... the desert is just a large temple!), but this is not a bad thing at all since I understand that the game can become boring if it gets too repetitive. The difficulty is ok in these parts, nothing to note!

Things becomes ugly when facing the bosses, but I do not know if this was just my experience or if I did not prepare enought, the truth is that I HAD to reduce the difficulty (before trying serveral times various options). I do not know if I missed something or if there is a way to skip them, as says the game description. Finally there is the mystery of the fishing pole... I was supposed to have it (from the dialogues) but it never worked. Uhm weird!
Anyway these are a couple of things that I noticed, but I cannot say if maybe I overlooked some parts since this game has (unexpectedly) a great depth and complexity.

So I am a bit torn since this is a cool game spawned from a nice idea, with a nice story and many things to do. I will award this originality hoping that the difficulty will be a bit rebalances, but hey, maybe it's me that I did not find the right escamotages to win and profit more easily! Anyway give it a try, it's a solid entry and I've no doubt that for someone it may become a real classic adventure game!