Dhux's Scar

Dhux's Scar is absolutely worth playing, mainly for its quirky and difficult gameplay mechanics and its sharp, if sometimes rough-around-the-edges, aesthetics. There's a lot to say about this one, so let's just get into it:

Story
The story of Dhux's Scar is a mixed bag. The initial portion of the game follows the weakling, anti-hero merchant Elijah as he escorts a young girl named Celliann--who is the physical reincarnation of an ancient demon named Dhux--to Jheridan. Their goals are simple: Celliann wants to kill the pope because, well, she's a demon, and Elijah wants to turn Celliann into the authorities so he can be filthy rich. The basic premise of escorting the "secret demon" is something that's been explored quite a bit in JRPGs--Grandia 2 immediately come to mind. However, I still found the early scenes engaging, as Celliann isn't fooling anyone in the party with her "I'm just an innocent girl" act, which creates a nice tension. Unfortunately, this tension seems to fade away a bit as the game progresses, and, at a certain point, it's dropped completely.

Celliann is a pretty sympathetic character despite her tendency to butcher Christians in the most grisly ways imaginable. The different sides of her personality are fully explored, and although she ends up falling into a trope we're familiar with, she's still interesting and relatable. Of the other primary protagonists, Faye (a mercenary who befriended Elijah prior to the events of the story) was rounded out more by his back story than any actions he committed over the course of the story. Faye didn't feel like a flat character per se, but he definitely wasn't very engaging. Elijah, on the other hand, was a great character, and the game does a great job of slowly rounding him out over the course of the journey, but then the game makes a pretty serious misstep: it chooses to use a plot twist instead of actually having Elijah grow as a character. For the rest of the game, the result is a flat character with no moral ambiguity.

That's one of Dhux's Scar's biggest problems as far as storytelling is concerned: what begins as an interesting, tension-filled journey turns into a series of plot twists and melodrama. The issue isn't that the plot twists aren't warranted, it's that they tend to replace meaningful character development, or, in the aforementioned example with Elijah, destroy it. The result isn't a terrible experience, but you just won't connect to the characters that much in the end, which makes the last portions of the game lose a lot of their impact.

My other big issue with the storyline is the tone, which felt uneven. There's a lot of meta-humor, but the game also tries to be dark and serious. A lot of the other reviews praise the meta-humor, but I actually found it to be pretty trite; it's easy to poke fun at the fact that the characters are in a game. Instead of lightening the mood, I just found it to pull me out of the story. If being self-aware fed into the storyline, that would be one thing, but it's clearly included only as an attempt to be funny. It's not just the meta-humor, though; it's the ratcheting between somber and outright silly that just didn't work for me.

Here's a good example: at one point, Faye tells Elijah that his mother committed suicide soon after he was born. Elijah responded with something akin to, "Were you really that ugly as a baby?" This was an incredibly insensitive thing to say, which I actually didn't mind--Elijah is a total prick, anyway, and this would have been a cool characterization of him. However, the game doesn't want this moment to characterize him as a prick, as Faye isn't phased by this in any way, and the dialogue quickly progresses to the next plot point. So, instead of being used as characterization or plot advancement, the humor was just there for the sake of eliciting laughter, which pulled me out of the story and made me go, "What?!"

All this is to say: the early characterization and party dynamics in Dhux's Scar felt strong, but the uneven tone and the shift into melodrama made me too aware I was playing a game. One last thing that bugged me: there is a major, devastating moral choice that the characters have to make at a certain point in the game. I can't get into it because of spoilers, but they make this existential, impossible choice without so much as a second of hesitation. That's just another example of melodrama taking over, but I had to point that out.

Graphics
Most of the graphics are custom. The portrait graphics looked a bit too amateur, but the battle animations, sprites, and monster graphics were gorgeous. I particularly liked the demons, who were twisted, creepy, and generally covered with unnecessary eyes (in a good way). There are also picture cut scenes at important moments in the game, and these tended to look great. Dhux's Scar has its own unique feel, and the cinematic moments in the game really pop.

The dungeon locales got a bit boring for most of the game; basically, you should get used to seeing forests and mountain ranges. The graphics themselves looked good, but they were too repetitive. The last couple of dungeons offered a nice reprieve from the monotony.

Music
Most (if not all) of the music was borrowed from other sources, which, as a musician, is a drawback for me. The battle and scene music tended to be well-chosen, at least--it was nice to hear the boss theme from Live-a-Live, which is an indicator that the developer pulled from a pretty eclectic mix, so you won't recognize everything. Some of the towns and dungeons had themes that were forgettable, or, in some cases, straight-up annoying. I can think of two points where I caught myself grating my teeth: the constant "drip" noise in the prison and the crappy MIDI version of The Doxology in a religious town that reminded me of someone constantly ringing one of those novelty doorbells that are marketed to hardcore Christians. Considering the developer could pretty much choose any song in existence, I found these choices to be absurd. The soundtrack ranged from the crappiest MIDI you can think of to stuff that used actual instruments, so I found the soundtrack to be inconsistent, and the lack of original tunes hurt the game.

Gameplay
Dhux's Scar plays much like a traditional RPG, but the underlying mechanics are way different. Elijah is a merchant, so, he's a complete weakling, as is Celliann. I found both of these characters getting one-shot quite a bit for a good chunk of the game. Faye, on the other hand, is a murder machine, complete with a near-full heal on the entire party and several powerful attacks. Elijah can use attack items that no one else can, but, even with these, he's weaker than Faye, and Celliann is completely useless--except for her ability that takes all enemies, including bosses, down to one hp. This isn't as overpowered as it sounds: in order to cast this ability, you'll lose precious P.E., a score that begins at 50 and goes down every time you visit or revisit a town or dungeon or use the aforementioned ability. If your P.E. goes below a certain point (twenty, I think), you can kiss the good ending goodbye. If it reaches zero, it's game over.

The P.E. system creates an interesting dynamic: the game pressures you into not revisiting towns, which means no spamming inns. You're allowed to rest at save points, but you can only do so once per map, and this only heals a portion of your hp/sp. Without an easy way to recover your party members, the game becomes all about inventory management: what items should you buy, when you should use them, and so forth.

In most RPGs, I'll find myself hoarding money and items while abusing inns and healing magic, and I really couldn't do that here. I experienced some growing pains at first: this game kicked my butt. I think I fought the first "tough" boss somewhere between five-ten times before I lucked out and beat him. Once I caught on to the fact that the game was about managing your inventory correctly, I started thinking about the cost of using items versus what I'd get from each battle, and this led to a stable way to grind my characters up to a decent level so I didn't just avoid enemies for fear of using up my money. Once Elijah and Celliann stopped getting one-shot by bosses, it was smooth sailing. I found a lot of the boss battles to be engaging and consistently interesting, and though I was tempted, I didn't use any P.E. other than what was necessary to move the plot forward.

The central party dynamic does disappear in the final portions of the game, which I've noticed some reviewers mark as a bad thing, but I actually welcomed the change. This shook up the gameplay for the last couple of levels, and the final "real" boss fight played off of the character composition well. I died quite a bit here, but after shedding my pride and grinding the last four or five levels to hit the cap, I realized that I just needed that last bit of health to survive being one-shot, just like the earlier portion of the game. The grinding didn't feel excessive, and the level cap was low and easily attainable. When I went back and fought the last boss, I felt rewarded from my tactics. The balancing was a real strong point for me, and it was consistent throughout the game.

I should also mention the level design: it's pretty linear. The game throws a few wrenches in the works later on, like a few puzzles and a strange, short visual novel segment in the final dungeon. These definitely felt welcome, but I would have liked to see more gameplay variation throughout the game.

Overall
I seem to have written quite a bit here; if anything, that's a testament to the fact that I enjoyed myself while playing Dhux's Scar, and I was clearly invested in it despite its shortcomings. The storyline will pull you along and is presented well, but, while it's not shy about showing you mature themes, it doesn't have the follow-through to make these stick in a meaningful way. Above all, Dhux's Scar is a game you'd recommend to your friends who want a challenging RPG experience without feeling cheated.