Hello heroes!
This time I'm gonna review Cataphract OI, an experimental turn-based RPG escort mission made in RPG Maker 2000. The game was made by Koff, the author of a really game that I reviewed a lot of time ago, LanVodis, a totally different game with no battles about travelling and looking for treasures. Anyway This Cataphract OI is just one part of a trilogy of games that includes Atom OI and Ocean OI, and they're all complete anyway I decided to start from this one!

In any case this game is a self contained story that does not require a lot of explanation: it's the end of temporal cycle, but a group of heroes wants to change the destiny if the world and save it. Unfortunately, the only person who can save the world is the Supplicant, a totally harmless person. But to guide him inside the dungeon there is a trio of heroes that will have to escort him...


A dead end! Still I am sure that this key will be really useful!

If you're expecting a classic rpgmaker 2k adventure game, you are wrong! Cataphrac OI is an original party-based tactical game: besides the previously mentioned Supplicant, that's totally useless in battle and whose death will determine a Game Over, you have the three heroes. One is more suited to protect the Supplicant, another is a destroyer, and the third, not less important, has skills to control the Fray. But what's the Fray? It's the deadly center of the battle: those inside the Fray can kill and be killed, those outside are safe, and moving friends and foes inside and outside of it it's the key to win.

But the game is not just about battles, because our party have a dungeon to explore while the time is running out. The party moves like a single person from a zone to the other, and you've just to decide to the direction, but beware! The place is a labyrinth, there are dead ends and closed doors. Some locations can hide useful items (color coded keys for color coded doors) and can be used to rest and save your game, but remember that you have a limited time to complete your quest and save the world. And the place is also infested by undead skeletons...

Visually there is not much to say: this is an all RTPs game without anything really new, aside for the interface and system. Anyway mapping is done well, and there are also some nice touches, like the cutescenes, including the bad ending, for example.

Aaaaand the game is all here, I think that you can finish it in about two hours, maybe less, but I'm pretty sure that you'll hsve to play and fail at least once... or more times to understand how combat works and find the path to the final area. It's a single dungeon but a really peculiar game.


OPS!!! An encounter with some bad guys! Combat will be inevitable!

Final Verdict
Ok, here we are, what can I tell you is not to trust the pictures: the game is far more interesting despite looking like an average Rpgmaker 2000 game, because it's not that case, even if the combat screen looks identical. Any bad things? Well it's probably not a really varied game with many different enemies (three normal enemies and one mini-boss is the one that I found), still I had fun with it even if some aspects are never explained and the played has to learn them by experience and experiment. Yes, experiment is also a nice word to define this game, that's pretty cool and also not that easy, the final battle was pretty tough but it can be done (it's also amusing how you can interrupt the villain while his speaking that typical bad-guy monologue!), but do not expect to find a complex story or deeply characterized characters (the party members have basically nothing to say, even if they're well animated during their adventure, for example when exploring/examining rooms).
Probably a game not for everyone and just little more than an experiment, bust still a cool game with a clever system!