Hello, players and Harolds of every dimension!
This time the game is "Har vs Old", a RPG Maker MZ game made by BerryRMN, author of Life a Live and :Eternity, besides a bunch of other games that I still have to play, and hopefully review. But today, it's Har vs Old, a game made in 2022 for the Harold Game Jam that can be considered as a sort of mix between a visual novel and a series of rpgmaker battles.

The game, after selecting the difficulty between Easy and Hard (no medium?), starts with Harold, the good old rpgmaker hero, that glitches! What's going on? Enter Oldhar, a version of Harold that decites to organize a tournament between the Harolds of every dimension to see who's the true Harold, the Champion of the Harolds. Only rule, there must be squads of three members and groups composed of two squads for a total of six. Well that's it.

In this game we play as Zakrias, a dark mage and the son of Blackbael Harold Oni, vassal of Oldhar. He decides to join the tournament with Haroldine, Haroldina, Harorc (Harold Orc), Harotaur (Harold Minotaur) and Harobat (Harold ̶B̶a̶t̶m̶a̶n̶ ... Bat). Each has different skills, Zakrias is a dark mage, while Harotaur is a powerhouse and instead Harorc is a supporter, Harotaur is a combat powerhouse and Haroldine a light mage, and so on.


Oh yeah sure, and OBVIOUSLY every Harold in the other team is a bad Harlold, I guess!

The game is a visual novel about a tournament, so do not expect exploration: you will have to form your favourite party and battle various versions of Harold, from Fairy Harold to Shadow Harold, Mannequin Harold and Jojorold. Guess what? Every one, like our party members, will use various skills and powers, healing allies or unleashing storms and other terrible powers. You start with one ticked and can buy more to skip lesser fights, but there are some confrontations that will be obligatory, like the ones with the dark version of Harold's companions, such as Shamar, the negative version of Marsha, the cute mage or Esether, the corrupted version of Therese.

But wait, you clearly have to make your party members stronger and tougher if you want prevail and defeat the stronger enemies, but if you expect to level up thanks to the hard earned experience points... NAH! You're wrong! Our party members starts at level 50! So what?
Well winning fights awards money and sometimes also some permanent upgrades that you can use to improve the party members. Also there is a relationship system where you can talk with party members after the battles to improve the relationship and their stats. But it's not game of rpgmaker battles without a shop where you can buy useful items like healing potions and other supplies, so pay a visit to the Harold Mall for every need.

Visually let's start saying that I cannot speak about mapping since there are NO maps! All is about cutscenes, menus and battle, and they are good! Graphics mixes some backgrounds that seems to be taken somewhere (maybe Rtps?) and custom made sprites, cutscenes and battlers. While the two styles do not match very much, I appreciated the use of all original graphics and characters, and hey there are lots of them! Not to mention all the dialogues that includes some exchanges during battles against some particular unique opponents (like the Lich Harold, for example), and guess what? Since you can choose your party members, the exchanges with the enemies will be different depending on your party composition! Well done!


No, this is not the end, but a turning point in the game! WHY the tournament? Play and see by youself!

Final Verdict
Har vs Old is a rather fun game that took me about 1 hour and 35 minutes to complete, ok it's all about dialogues, battles and party management, still I liked playing something a bit different from the usual (well not too much since battles use the classic rpgmaker system where using the right element and exploiting enemies' weknessses is the key to win!). The game is professionally made and story and dialogues are well written. Maybe I'd have liked a third, medium difficulty setting, but hey that's rather a minor complaint.
This is a simple but good game that includes a nice story complete with some twists. Well done!