Game: Strife of Cosmos

Developer: MythBuilder

Story: The Void Tyrant has invaded the cosmos in an effort to destroy the universe! You and your party must infiltrate the Blackstar Citadel to stop him! Waves of enemies stand in your way! Robots, warlocks, and void mutants created by the Void Tyrant's twisted experiments. You go on a series of missions where you infiltrate deeper into enemy territory to stop the Void Tyrant once and for all.



Writing: Very classic video game style. Except for the opening animation, the writing is presented as a text-based, choose-your-own-adventure style. I mean, there are points that are very literally choose-your-own-adventure. The text occurs between combat and tells the story of your missions through the Void Tyrant's territory as you are given certain tasks with choices for what to do. Is it better to gather data or destroy the void mutants? Free the rebels or avoid detection? The text-based adventure aspect of the story focuses exclusively on getting you to your goal, the Blackstar Citadel.

Gameplay: The writing serves as a means to get you from combat to combat. The fighting is really what this game is and the story, in and of itself, serves virtually no purpose except to give you a reason for continuing to play this game. Except for the opening animation, there are no cutscenes. Anything that isn't combat is just very short bits of text, and the combat is where all of the focus is on this game. The style of combat is very reminiscent of Phantasy Star, and the combat is engaging and interesting.



Combat is not straight button mashing as it is in so many other RM games. Certain attacks work on certain enemies better than others, and it isn't just a matter of choosing the right attack, but the right aspect of your character. Each character can be switched between light and dark versions of themselves. The Fighter can be changed between a paladin form that uses good attacks that help the party and a berserker form that uses his hitpoints to do tremendous damage. The Rogue can be changed between a gunslinger form that is focused on removing buffs and an assassin form that is focused on adding debuffs. The Caster can be changed between a Wizard form that focuses on destroying enemies and a Cleric form that focuses on healing the party.

Combat occurs in waves. The types of combat can be chosen during each encounter. You are given a choice of what type of enemy to face, and strong enemies with one wave, or weak enemies with multiple waves. You will periodically level up, at which point, you will have the choice of whether or not each of your characters gains a dark ability or light ability. You, logically, get stronger abilities the higher level you are. The Fighter's strongest abilities will absolutely wipe out the field, at a cost. The Rogue's strongest abilities are very precise attacks directed at a single enemy, and will usually one-shot them, but are fairly expensive. The Caster's strongest abilities focus on buffing and debuffing, and will usually improve the effectiveness of the party.



Obviously, the hardest enemies are the bosses. At first, I thought this game swung on the too easy side, but then the enemies got progressively more challenging. Then I got to what was the last boss for me, and he was tough enough, I wasn't sure I'd make it, so I used a handy little skill the Fighter learned that if he gets KO'd, he does a boatload of damage to the enemies, and that's how I beat that boss!



Graphics: These are fantastic! This really looks like an old Sega game. I'm not sure what else to say about it except that the pixel-art looks absolutely amazing!

Music and Sound: This game sounds freaking authentic. The music slaps and the game just really generates that perfect early 90s feel, through and through. Like the graphics, the choices made here are frankly perfect.



Conclusion: This is a very fun retro game that makes turn-based fun again. I want to give this a 5 star, but I don't know if I've justified it to moderators, so I'll stick with 4.5, the highest score I can give without risking my review getting rejected.