Boss Project IV

Preamble
This Boss Project is longer than the previous two. In fact, I daresay this is a straight up genuine game, and not just a compilation of rejected boss ideas from Ephiam's main project du jour.
Said "project du jour" at the time was Eternal Paradise, and I'm going to be drawing a lot of parallels because Boss Project IV is like EP's younger, less accomplished sibling.

Visual: 2/5
By less accomplished, I'll begin with the first thing a player sees upon hitting 'New Game' : a series of uninteresting background images accompanied by wall upon wall of text. Boss Project IV, meant to be regarded at face value as a hardcore boss rush, begins with a horrendous infodump of epic proportions.
Was this really necessary? Will any of this novella matter? More on that topic, in the Storyline section.

Gameplay begins in a place referred to as The Asylum. It's a dark and gloomy hole of a dungeon, certainly fitting it's name, but therein lies the shortcoming. Eternal Paradise had a unique set piece : Venaitura. The flying island opened on it's misty outcroppings, and the party traveled through icy caves, eerie towers, green pastures, rocky cliffs, subterranean tombs, and spacial rifts.
Meanwhile, Boss Project IV has one single long, dark labyrinth. And by long, I do mean it. Expect a lot of footwork.

Still, it's all about the bosses. Just like EP, the boss assortment is drawn from the 16-bit era with preferential treatment given to Final Fantasy 6 and Rudras. But wait a sec... Why just enemies from two of the most prolific games of that era? These guys have been used in hundreds of RM games. I understand they're the common go-to for devs, but some variety, especially in a game where they're the stars, would have been nice.
Variety, such as this guest opponent.



Audio: 1/5
This is the rare soundtrack of Ephiam's that I'm not particularly enamored with. He usually puts together a good concert to go with his storytelling, but this one fell short on all accounts. The boring and overly arduous labyrinth I've already lamented about is dressed with similarly stodgy BGM. Bite sized snippets of dark interiors and short forays into the cave are normal for standard RPGs, but what happens when the entire game is such a setting? Monotony : That's what.

Not even the many battle BGMs could rouse my spirits. I haven't bothered to sift through the Music folder for gems like I usually do because, well, there are none.
And there's no fanfare music after the battles either. What gives?

Storyline: 1.5/5
I liked how in Boss Project 1 and 3, you start at the entrance to a room full of bad guys ready to feed you a diet of Game Overs. Hit Start, get killing.
Not so, here. Remember the prologue walls of text I mentioned? Make sure you pay attention, or you won't have a clue as to what they're talking about during the actual game.

After umpteen minutes of narrative, when you are finally deployed and able to control the heroes, you'll see that you've been given the entire cast of Eternal Paradise as your party, albeit with Andrew renamed to Blair, BPIV's protagonist. The other three don't exist as far as story goes. They're just there to form up the party gameplay-wise.

Moving story progression along is an enigmatic fellow named Essilhum who interacts with Blair a few times, and then each boss has a smidgen of dialogue before they engage you. Occasionally they'll offer up a tidbit of relevant information for the mystery-unraveling gumshoe player, but more often than not, it's just forgettable yammering.
In the end, Essilhum explains everything in another infodump anyway. Very tacky plot handling.

On a plus note, Blair calls the almighty demon lord an "asshat".

Gameplay: 2.5/5
Ah, the bosses. The crux of the game. The entire point of Boss Project IV.
I invoke Eternal Paradise again, because the system is nearly identical. When you beat a boss, you get an appreciable amount of exp to level up and gold to buy stuff with. All equipment, spells and items are available from the get-go, and none of them are "ultimate", making it a strategy play when picking what to buy early on, and what to equip later on.
In theory it's a rewarding system, offering diversity in playstyle and creativity in tackling challenges, though anybody who knows RM2k3 algorithms can immediately beeline to the dominant build. max speed.

But the positive aspects are hampered by the inclusion of a deliberately slowed-down walk speed with full blown odysseys between bosses to maximize time wastage. A few passability issues are thrown in just to accentuate your frustratingly slow crawl, and then for some ungodly reason, hero-centric lighting is used in certain dark areas. This isn't an exploration game. There are no treasure chests or even dead ends. Dafuq, man? Seriously.

Overall: 2/5
Just go play Eternal Paradise. It has all of Boss Project IV's good, and none of the bad.
Speaking of which, I should get around to doing a review of it.