Despoina

"Despoina" is a Greek word primarily used as a feminine given name in Greece, and it translates to "lady" or "mistress" in English.

Hello players!
Welcome to another review of an event game, and in this case it's a game made for the 2022 Swap in 3 Middle with You event, first half by Pianotm, and the other half by lavendersiren. This is a classic fantasy rpgmaker jrpg adventure made with Rpgmaker 2k3 with a two-characters party (I wonder if this is a reflection of the two developers ehehe).

Nepherenos is the world where Poah the Knight has to escort the wizard Seulk to Sitan City because for some reason the queen asked to summon every mage of the land. Why and what's going on here? Play and find out what's going on in this on-the-road adventure!


OW! I wish there was a bonus for catching this scoundrel! Anyway lots of funny bits in this game!

Despoina is a nice adventure: we visit various locations, roam the world map and travel through the world to reach the final destination and uncover the mystery of the request of the queen. It's a simple and pretty linear adventure, but there are enough "extra details" that makes the game, and I mean strange characters, weird epitaphs and other funny things and interactions, plus few optional locations. But details aside, how is the gameplay of the game?
Well it's about travelling dangerous areas with touch-encounter battles and restocking at the villages, but the game has also a story with some interesting twists and a very cool final section.
Oh speaking about the exciting parts I found that the best moments where the beginning and the final part, the middle half is a bit less interesting, and I had a couple of issues there for two reasons: the first isn't really a problem but the lack of refinement of some parts, that presented empty buildings and shops with no items on the tables, surely an issue due to the restricted time of the event and the large quantity of maps. The second problem is that there was a part in which it wasn't really clear where I was supposed to go (inside a town) to make the adventure progress, but I managed to find the way.

Aside for the emptiness of some locations, mapping is pretty good: the two developers used the classic White Screw asset pack (and edits, like Poah and his fedora!), and it's no mystery that they have experience using it, and they can map really well. Even the areas in the wilderness are different and designed pretty well.

Now the battles: the game has many optional encounters and some obligatory boss battles, but the difficulty is never too high, even if the final part took me some time due to a couple of tough battles and a epic final bosss (but luckily I had with me some useful little consumables that can inflict lots of damage and are particularly helpful in the final fight). The game uses the classic rpgmaker battlers (edited because White Screw assets do not have battlers) plus the milano-cat enemy sprites. All good for me, interface and battle system is classic but well done and balanced, even if in the end I often ran away when I was tired of fighting enemies and wanted to spare some hard earned consumables.


Battles, lots of them of course! Including some obligatory harder battles like this one!

Final Verdict
Despoina is a cool game, I'd give a 3.5/5 if this was a normal game made by a single developer but no, this is more: despite some imprecisions (such as some badly contourned potraits and the previously mentioned empty areas that in any case have nothing to do with the story and are just some extra places that could probably not exist) probably due to the lack of time for refinement the game is good, and the story is interesting. As mentioned before the beginning and the end were especially great, the middle half is enough, but still it made me play until the very end to see what was going to happen to our two heroes. So in the end for me this was a good game, despite the limitations imposed by the event... so it's a 4/5!