I'll Defeat the Monster From the Comfort of My Bed! Power Nap Edition EX

Wake up! In this RPG Maker VX Ace game by Hasadore the town of Gervasburg is in danger, because a terrible Minotaur is ready to attack town! Too bad that the local witch prefers sleeping and planned to teleport the deadly best to attack it directly from her bed. Unfortunately she does not have the magical components for the teleport spell, and being her a lazy magician, guess who will have to run these errands?

Yes you, or better, our unlucky protagonist Norbert, her attendant and son of the captain of the town guards. At least he can trust Froschkönig (name that means "frog prince") a big frog familiar that will provide assistance durig the adventure, and that I will call Fro' for the sake of brevity.
Ok, so the witch needs three components, and luckily there will be no need to leave town to find them, so expect a short (took me 1 hour and 15 minutes to complete) adventure, but not a simple one, since there will be several tasks including combat and puzzles distributed among (you probably guessed it) three dungeons.

Some good news: the dungeons can be explored in any order, since there is NO experience level. Yes, you understood perfectly, this game has no levels or experience points earned from combat encounters, you will just get loot from normal enemies and extra abilities or improvements for your characters by defeating bosses and optional bosses. You will also get additional bonuses if you complete each dungeon without interruption (this means without exiting to restock consumables), and well I was able to do that for each one, so it's not too difficult.


Completing a dungeon in a single sitting means earning a bonus!

Another welcomed feature is the lack of random encounters: dungeons have colored tiles, yellow indicates where the dungeon start and ends (think them as starting and finish line), blue/purple squares indicate enemies that must be fought (usually you have to walk on those squares to progress, if they aren't optional enemies), and red squares are the dungeon bosses that you have to beat. Usually nearby there is also a green teleport that can be used to leave immediately the place, and a yellow crystal, that can heal completely the party members but it has two uses only. So choose wisely (you may use it to heal before fighting the boss AND the optional boss or just fight the dungeon boss, heal afterwards and leave, to be ready for the next dungeon).
Clearly you can also explore town to loot and buy consumables (I did not se any way to improve the equipment, but there is no need for that), but trust me, I was able to complete the game without spending a single gold coin on items, I just used what I could loot, find and obtain, so talk to people and interact with everything for some extra items.

Now, the heroes: except for some instances in which we have an extra temporary party member, for the most part we have a party of two: Norbert and Fro'. Norbert is a classical warrior, with different special attacks and offensive abilities, the one I used more was the neutral attack (so with no element attached, nor piercing/cut feature and this means that normally no opponent is immune to that damage) that ignores the defense and inflicts a ton of damage when Nobert is nearly dead (that's why I risked heading in battle with few hitpoints, so I could oneshot enemies). Fro' the frog is instead a more magical character with several elemental attacks, but with a twist: it has no mana, and relies on Norbert's reserve, luckily he can use a special tongue attack once every three turns to cause damage and also drain some mana from the enemies.


In some rare instances there will be some additional supporting characters. Learn how to use their abilities before facing enemies!

Anyway there's not only combat in this game! Oh no, not at all! To progress you will have also to face traps and a couple of puzzles, anyway if you want to know the hardest points of the game, for me were these three: 1) The boss of the underground cave section, 2) The secondary boss of the Wizard's tower, 3) The puzzles of the Wizard's tower. Uhm maybe the bosses where hard just because I wasn't accustomed with the game system, also optional bosses aren't mandatory (but the optional boss in the cave level seemed weaker than the dungeon boss, unlike the Wizard's tower where it was the opposite), in any case there was no shortage of gold and consumables, and you can also save anytime and anywhere, so I guess it is ok.

Visually the game is really pretty, not only because is uses the under used Time Fantasy retro resources pack, a colorful and nice collection of assets (perfect for this kind of lighthearted adventure), but also because these are used pretty well: maps are well made, and I'm referring both to the village and the various locations, and the dungeons that aren't too long, and possess different features or gimmicks to distinguish them.
Exploration is often rewarded and I like how the history of an old hero becomes important to the quest, the only thing that left me puzzled is how some characters seems to speak in a certain way that looks like they will be useful later (because they say "feel free to ask if you need help" or "Tell me if you need something"), but in the end they will never actually help nor we'll need them. Also some interactions with inanimate objects are rewarded by items and others don't even answer to the player's interaction with a line of text... uhm ok! For the rest nothing else to say, story is simple and a bit predictable, but fun and populated by likeable characters (even if only the witch and Norbert are somewhat characterized, ).


We're ready! Bring it on! And read the...

Final Verdict
"I'll Defeat the Monster From the Comfort of My Bed! Power Nap Edition" is the game with the longest title I've ever played, but not the longest game, since it's pretty short! However it's a game that oozes quality, and is an entertaining self contained short story and adventure. The gameplay is sufficiently varied and complex to entertain for about two hours, and not too difficult. This is a little great game, I can recommend this one especially if you like interesting combat encounters, but you have no time for a ten hours adventure! 4/5, no less!
Now, I'll go back to sleep...