Echoes of the Scourge

Intro

"Echoes of the Scourge" is a horror game developed by KazukiT126 using RPG Maker MV that was created for the Transformation Game Jam. Unfortunately this game isn't amongst the list of entries due to it suffering from a multitude of major bugs.

TheRpgmakerAddict
. . . for some reason when meeting Elek the game freezes during the cutscene!

And while the above issue brought up by TheRPGMakerAddict was addressed. There are still many more issues that remain. So much so that I actually gave up on this game shortly after beating the demon in charge of the high striker. And while I realize a review that just covers bugs won't be accepted. I have other issues with the game beyond the multitude of major bugs I ran across over the span of about 30 minutes.

Story
Summary

You and an old friend find yourselves in a dark and twisted version of their hometown of Springure on the day of it's founding festival. And in this version of the town powerful demons run the various booths and wish to have fun with the player. Of course, fun in their perspective is playing with the player's characters in a rather violent way such as shrinking us down and throwing darts at us like were balloons just begging to be popped. Though what dark secrets your supposed to learn over the course of your time here will forever be a mystery in my case.

Grammar and Syntax Issues

The game suffers from a few notable issues when it comes to grammar. Jeez, one of the first lines said by Odette once you've entered the world proper contains an obvious error.



And these issues continue throughout the game. Though, I'd say the funniest one is the one shown below.



For starters the word scary should obviously be scariest, but the cherry on top is that the transformation technique is called "Aurification" meaning the developer got the name of his/her transformation technique wrong in his/her own tutorial on this ability.

Greatest Strength/Weakness

On the plus side the basic concept of the player being sucked into a twisted version of the real world in order to deal a dark truth involving the death of a friend isn't a bad idea. Unfortunately the game undermines this by subjecting the player to flashbacks that fail to advance the story in a meaningful way. I suppose the flashbacks are meant to establish why Valerie was important to Odette and Elek, but some of them are wasted on building up the relationship between Odette and Elek which could be done without the aid of flashbacks in my opinion. TO make matters worse in one of the flashbacks the developer used the sprite for Elek when he clearly meant to use the sprite for Odette.



Gameplay

On the gameplay side of things the game features turn-based combat. Unfortunately the combat system also suffers from multiple bugs. A good example of this is Elek's skill rally which is meant to be instant cast ability. As you can probably already guess this spell doesn't work as an instant case. To be more specific it sometimes acts like an instant case and other times it will consume your entire turn. Another odd issue is that the amount of AP needed to transform is based on your current blight level. This means if your blight points go up enough from taking damage during your turn the AP cost of transforming will go up. And if you lack the AP to transform at this point the transformation will fail and your entire turn will be wasted. To make matters worse if this does happen and the character in question dies they might actually pop back up in their transformed state after death.

Outside all of the bugs caused by various scripts getting in way of each other. The game also suffers from balancing issues. This is most obvious with the fight with Hemza. This character has a special skill that can grab one of your characters and kill them on their next turn unless you defeat their arm. The problem with this is the arm has so much health the only way to successfully break it in my experience is to use Odette's "Double Pirouette", her most powerful attack, while having a high blight point count in order to land three strikes with a high critical hit chance. Other wise your likely going to lose the character that was grabbed. And if that happens the fight is essentially over since Hezma will have enough time to grab your other character when he gets low on health. And while an obvious solution to this problem would be to use a revive item. You can't actually buy any at this point in the game nor are any dropped by the trash mobs you can defeat this early on in the game either.

To make matters worse the mini-game you need to clear before fighting Hezma is bugged as well. In order to fight Hezma you need to do well on the high striker mini-game, but if you fail the game will have you try again. This is an issue in two ways. For starters your character will move two square to the left and two squares up. And due to the location of the high striker this will soon have your character phasing through the door of a house.



To make matters worse the poor programming for this mini-game means you'll begin interacting with the door while trying to play the mini-game after your first loss. The ability to simply phase through the door is just the cherry on top of an already busted mini-game since the developer just looped the mini-game. As a result the character repeats the steps used to approach the high striker after every failed attempt.

And it gets even worse still. After your first failed attempt the bar that's supposed to bounce up and down to indicate how much strength your going to use to hit the high striker with stops functioning. So it becomes basically impossible to beat the mini-game after the first failed attempt since you'll be blindly stopping the power meter. The only plus side I can offer to this whole mess is that you can pull up the menu after your first failed attempt in order to tell them game to go back to the main menu so you can load your last save.

Graphics

The game appears to be a mix of the RTP and custom assets. On the plus side it does mean this game has some unique flavor to it. On the other hand I'm not a particularly big fan of the look of some of the custom pieces. Though, I'd be hard pressed to say why I don't like it. If I had to hazard a guess it has to do with a combination of smaller issues from the odd facial expressions in certain portraits, the proportions of the full body images in the menu, and the size of Odette's head being larger for certain facial expressions for no apparent reason.

Sound

On the sound side of things the game is utterly forgettable in my opinion, but as I've mentioned before this isn't that surprising. I tend to find background music rather forgettable unless it catches my fancy. So it's probably safe to assume this aspect of the game is simply average.

Major Bug

You'd think with all of the issues I brought up with the high striker mini-game and instant cast spells that don't function properly that I'd be out of bugs to talk about. Unfortunately for the developer this isn't the case. After you've beaten Hezma a new enemy will appear in the game's town square. That's all fine and dandy, but if you walk back to the area you arrived in this dark and twisted version of Springure and return to the town square this enemy will disappear. As a result it will become impossible to beat the game if you left the town square, returned, and then saved over your old data. At least it will be if you were only storing your data in a single save slot.

Minor Bug

As far as I'm aware this is only a minor bug, but if you return to the starting area after you've beaten the tutorial fight. You'll actually trigger a dialogue sequence that makes zero sense based on what you've been through up to that point in the game.

Conclusion

"Echoes of the Scourge" is a buggy mess of a project. The only other game I can even think to compare this one to at the moment is "Queen of Cups" which suffers from a lot similar issues. And at least that game came with a devlog telling people to wait for a proper version to be released. This game on the other hand doesn't even warn any potential players that it's a broken mess. Add in fights that are super difficult due to balancing issues and your left with a game that's an absolute chore to get through. So much so that's just not worth it when you could be spending your time on a better game like "Remnants of Isolation" or "Red Syndrome".