Prophecy : The Demon Kingdom

Prophecy: Legend of the Demon Kingdom

Just going to say, I only played the first chapter. I'll explain why in the review.

To start out, this game, on face value, looks like a cliche riddled with more cliches, overloaded with scripting and excessive widgets. But allow me to tell you that this is a good, solid, well-made game. The presentation values are outstanding, and really draw you in. Okay, maybe some of the scripts WERE a bit excessive, but aside from that, I cared about the characters, and the storyline, while very classic and dare I say, cliche (a group of rebels from a remote farming village working to overthrow an evil local dictator, all the while the protagonist is the un-realized hero of an ancient prophecy yadda yadda yadda), it is fun and very compelling nonetheless.

Decent graphics, nothing you probably haven't seen before here. The little minor details make things fun to look at (leaves blowing overhead during autumn, little critters running around in the woods, etc). The sound and music was very well selected, even if I could recognize a few of the tracks from elsewhere. The soundtrack did make the filesize massive (well over 200mb), but it was always able to capture the mood perfectly. Being an avid music lover myself, I think I enjoyed the game alot more simply due to that.

The gameplay itself was pretty average, definitely the weakest point in the game, not to say it was bad. There were alot of unique and interesting things to take into account and mess around with, although there was alot about the gameplay that seemed... off.
The "skill slot" thing seemed really unnecessary. You were allotted a certain number of "slots" for your special abilities, and you needed to "equip" your skills to these slots before they could be used. First off, I never had more skills than my slots could afford. Secondly, it's annoying. I can't count how many times I went into battle short on my skills, simply because I forgot to 'equip' them. Thirdly, even if I had that many skills, why inhibit the player from knowing them all? It's no sort of added customization or strategic placement at this point. Just stupid.
You can tell this game had a greater focus on story than it did on fighting. While the battles were fine and balanced, there just wasn't a whole lot going on, nothing really to keep my interest. The boss battles were your standard swing-and-swing-back type of fight, no interesting mechanics to follow or work with in that regard. As much crap as I had to say about the skill slot system, the skills themselves were pretty interesting, and allowed for some breathing room in terms of variety in battles.
Now, there were two types of battles, and I've mainly been referring to the standard sideview battle system here. There were also points in the game where you battled in a more tactical format, where you and your allies moved along a grid, strategically placing attacks and preserving yourselves against enemy fire. It was a breath of fresh air to play something like this in the middle of such mundane combat. My only complaint about these battles is that they were just too damn easy. I felt like the author was just flexing his script-peen with how cool it was (though it was pretty cool, I will say that). The enemies did nothing but attack, and the AI wasn't all that great either. It would be nice to see them use a potion, or shoot an arrow, or cast a spell, or SOMETHING.
In this game, probably one of my favorite things was the Mixology portion. Throughout the game, searching your surroundings will often yield finding things you can put inside empty bottles. Using a cauldron, you can mix the substances you find together and concoct all different kinds of potions and things for your party to use. Made things really interesting, as there were ALWAYS things to find (from herbs, to fruits, to alcohol, to fish oil).
There's tons of little secrets in this game as well. Search everything. You'll find treasures everywhere, and items that you take elsewhere to obtain secret weapons and items along the way. This is another aspect of the game that really shines.
The main gripe I have about the game is that it's divided into two chapters, two completely different game projects. What this means is as soon as I finished chapter one, all the weapons, potions, gold, armor, everything you had DOES NOT carry over to chapter two. I hear the author is working on this bit, but that fact completely made me want to stop playing, 100%. So I did stop playing. Until this is fixed, I'm not even going to consider chapter 2 as part of the same game. Maybe that's unfair, but it really was frustrating to play through all of that to have my characters start back at square one.
Note: It's been brought to my attention that the chapter 2 included in the demo is actually just a teaser for chapter 2. Being so, this latter paragraph does not apply at all. (I still stand by the 4-star rating though)

The story in this game is definitely 'classic', but it provides its own spin on things. The characters all had their own personality, and really are what kept me playing the game. The dialogue was superb, and the emotions conveyed therein were really quite striking at times. Never once did I feel like the game was just being 'pushed along' by the characters. It moved at a very nice pace; Full of twists and turns, not too drawn out, but at the same time very cinematic. The polished look of the game is going to be why you start playing, but the story is going to be why you keep playing.


Pros: Great atmosphere, very fun game, easy to keep playing along. Great characters and compelling conflicts make the story something you want to keep playing for. Battles were balanced and challenging enough, skills were interesting and all had their unique properties. The tactical battles were really cool. Lots of fun details and treasures to find. Great aesthetic values, awesome soundtrack. Maps were fun to explore, though there weren't many. Lots of little details make this game great.

Cons: Huge download size (220-some odd Mb), battles were often bland but never too long or too frequent. Excessive use of glitzy scripts, often felt unnecessary and actually detracted from its enjoyability at times (not very often though), could've applied that focus to other things, like better boss/enemy mechanics. Only two real dungeons to speak of here (enchanted forest and bad-guy castle (castle twice, actually)), and while fun, it'd be nice to play more.

Other notes: Story has a very 'classic' feel. Felt like I've heard the story a hundred times, but its presentation and characters make it feel fresh and new.

OVERALL, this game is solid, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes a good potatoes-and-rice RPG. Not bland, just hearty.