BBBB-Milennin

Intro

"BBBB-Milennin" is Milennin's entry for the Boss Battle Build Bout a contest about making a boss battle with a mostly set party that can be beaten in under ten minutes by your average player with . Unfortunately, I'm not sure this game meets the time requirement since it took me around twenty minutes to beat this game. Admittedly I was recording a Let's Play episode for the game at the time so I probably added a couple minutes to the run by taking some time to add commentary here and there, but I don't think it would be enough to double the time it takes to beat this game.

Story

I'll admit this section is kind of superfluous seeing as how this game doesn't have any story elements to discuss. You simply start the game attacking a sleeping dragon. We don't get any sort of explanation as to why were fighting the dragon. And I understand why Milennin didn't add any sort of narrative hook considering it was against the rules of the contest to include any dialogue, but it's a rule I really don't like since a fight with nothing behind it is kind of boring.

Graphics

Oddly enough this game does have a sort of an unofficial theme going for it in it's visuals. Admittedly I don't think Milennin intended for this game to have a theme, but if I had to peg what the theme is I'd use the word "clashing".



After all, this game's various visual elements definitely clash a bit. On one hand you have character sprites like Embla and Victoria that look like they came from the Final Fantasy and Breath of Fire series respectively. While the facesets on the bottom of the screen just scream RPG Maker to a person with my level of experience with these types of games. Admittedly the contrast between these elements isn't that great considering RPG Maker games have a retro look to them.

On the other hand the Obsidian Dragon is so aesthetically different from the rest of the stuff that it's an absolute eye sore in my opinion. So much so that I'm wondering why the people running this contest forced Milennin to use it. I mean if your going to force people to use a boss from a random resource pack you might as well include some visual elements for the playable characters as well. At least that way the game wouldn't look like it was frankensteined together.

Gamepaly


Oddly enough the game's unofficial theme pops up here as well. This is because the amount of damage all of the character's in this game can inflict will really clash against your expectations. For starters the playable characters all have 50 points of health or less but can hit for well over 10,0000 points of damage in some cases.



Albeit to get that high you need to stack a bunch of power boosts on characters like Marielle, but it's very feasible to do this since power boosts in this game last indefinitely and can be stacked on top of each other. Jeez, power boosts in this game don't even fade away if a character gets knocked out over the course of the battle.

And this weird clash against expectations also shows up in the Obsidian Dragon whose damage output is really low considering it has over 20,000 hit points.



That aside the game features a pretty standard turn-based battle system with your party being comprised of a Holy Champion, a Witch, an Alchemist and the Angel of Victory. Though, I'll admit the Holy Champion feels rather weird since they focus almost entirely on healing and drawing in attacks. Though their ability to agro damage is pretty weak in my experience with most attacks still reaching your allies even when you try to draw the dragon's ire. On the upside Embla does have a passive ability that revives herself and all of your other knocked out party members at half health when she goes down. And being the character that can tank the most hits she'll likely be your last character when she is defeated.

Though if you want to inflict a lot of damage in a hurry you'll need to make use of Marielle's ultimate skill whose damage is controlled by how much MP your party has at the time. Which means MP management is really important if you want to feel like Saitama when you attack the dragon.

Sadly, Neyel the Alchemist feels like the most useless character in the party.
On the plus side she can inflict some useful status conditions that can either wrack up damage over time or delay the dragon's attempts to go on a rampage for a turn by stun locking it. Something you could potentially do multiple times in a row if your placing a heavy emphasis on stacking power boosts early on in the battle. Since you'll need to keep your MP pretty high to make use of Victoria's best power stacking skill since it requires 12 MP to cast.

Conclusion

"BBBB-Milennin" is a bit hard to score since most of the things I find most questionable about the game are a byproduct of the Boss Battle Build Bout contest. As such I can't hold the game's lack of dialogue or atrocious aesthetics against it. At the same time I really don't feel like the combat in this game is particularly amazing either. And I find the game's attempts to clash with my expectations a bit annoying. Sort of like when you go shopping for an item you get every week and learn they've changed the artwork on the can or box for no apparent reason. Admittedly you'll get over that sort of difference eventually but it does get stuck in the back of your mind for a while. As such, the fairest rating for "BBBB-Milennin" is a three.