Cages of Gold

The deathblow/combo system being the main feature of the game, it certainly carries the game through to completion. While brief and simple, Cages of Gold is an RPG that cleverly breaks up the standard flow of turn-based combat with its interesting mechanic.

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Is this a fighting game?

Upon reaching a certain level (some) characters gain access to "deathblows", a series of light, medium or heavy attacks that can deal a certain amount of damage and attack depending on the combination. The core concept is pretty simple: follow the correct combo to get bigger damage and land more hits. By the end of the game, I've figured out roughly how much damage most combo deals, enough to be able to min-max the amount of hits and damage dealt I need to take care of enemies in the least amount of turns. In addition to these attacks, characters also come with their own magic skills such as heal, silence and elemental attacks as per usual in most RPGs. The variety of skills adds to the combos you can pull off on poor slow-moving enemies, allowing me to cheese most fights by the end of the game.

Perhaps that could be a criticism on its own. Because the deathblows seem to only provide varying degrees of damage and attack amount, there is little room to make any clever use out of them. I often end up just picking the highest damage dealing deathblow to pummel the enemies into oblivion, with sometimes throwing in a silence or sleep in between for good measure. The deathblow mechanic was great fun, both in terms of seeing them visually and making use of them in battle, but I feel like it could be majorly improved if a variety of effects can be implemented into them, like that of magic skills (e.g. a deathblow that can stun or land crits, etc.) Based on the names of some of them, certain deathblows seem to imply elemental damage but there was no description indicating them as such, unlike magic skills that does deal elemental damage.

The types of deathblows lack meaningful effects other than big damage, more hits

The rest of the game is charming. The map designs are pretty simple, but not too confusing and thus serve their purpose well. Enemy placement is alright, giving you enough forced encounters and optional encounters that you won't feel like you have to grind too much to finish the game. I had to reload a save once, but after spending a minute or two beating up the local fauna I was able to level up enough to finish the rest of the game smoothly.

Fairly standard maps

The story was very nice. Writing was done well and dialogue/cutscenes were kept to a brief and succinct manner, enough to relay a good story to the players but not overstaying their welcome. The introduction throws us immediately into the action, and while it's a little confusing at first, along the way we get a better understanding of the entire story. It's easy to digest and enjoyable.

I like that each character have their own way of speaking

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Overall, the game manage to excel the most in the idea it presents and despite my wanting more out of it, it was still excellently implemented. With further polish to other parts of the game, it could become very outstanding! As it stands however, Cages of Gold was an enjoyable game to play through and a must-try if you're interested in something different from the standard turn-based battle system format!

8/10 HLH HLH HMH ftw