Vindication

The title of my review says it all. This game feels like a parody of Final Fantasy with a distinct Mel Brooks flair. In spite of some of the things I may say to LockeZ in forums, the fact is, I absolutely love his games--all of them. I don't think they're perfect, by any means.

Overview: This game is an irreverent comedy about James, a man who seeks vengeance for the death of his wife at the hand of Emperor Dick Tator. Unfortunately, Dick Tator's been dead for awhile, so James has to go after Dick's son, Lord Justin, who's just as evil, but doesn't do a very a good job of it.

Humor: The jokes and gags are simply hilarious. James possesses the legendary sword, the "Masamune", which is a 12-foot long sword that imparts great mystical powers upon its user (it had better, otherwise I'm not sure how you'd even swing the damned thing.) Also, how evil is Lord Justin? So evil that while LockeZ was telling us how evil evil evil evil evil evil evil evil evil evil evil evil evil he was, I began to think that he had accidentally programmed an infinite loop and was about to reset my computer when it finally ended (minor complaint here: if your audience thinks your program has glitched, the joke has probably been overdone). As for "code 4", I knew a guy who pulled that particular stunt, once. Okay, I'm going to stop here. Moving along to the next section.

Gameplay: Mechanics are fairly simple, you have a basic attack, a character specific ability, and some version of defend in which stats are gradually restored. One minor issue here (this issue becomes significant in Vindication and Inequity), is health, combat balance, and item management. After every single battle, if you don't restore your health, you are going to lose the next battle, guaranteed. This puts a tremendous emphasis on item management. The problem is, you're spending simply too much time making sure you're able to go the next round. It's with this issue that I begin to understand why some reviewers have rated the game so low. I'll admit, it's tedious, but fights still move quickly, and you're not fidgeting in-battle: you're just spending a lot of time in your menu after the battle, which annoys me, but doesn't kill the game. Further, if you have problems with battles, you can always grind to raise your stats (an option you don't have with Vindication and Inequity). Overall, balance is excellent. It occurs to me that LockeZ has made sure that you have only just enough to make it through each battle, and if you obey his system, you can make it through without dying once.

Graphics: Overall, fairly simple, standard RM2K3 fare. Worth noting are the fights. Someone on the game page complained that the enemy battlers were huge while the heroes were tiny. I disagree with the complaint. I thought the oversized enemies were brilliant, showing off LockeZ's artwork and making the enemies, even the poor little girl in the beginning, look comically menacing.

Sound: Again, hardly worth noting, except the obvious use of Final Fantasy's more memorable tunes, which actually helps reinforce the idea that this is a parody of Final Fantasy.

Writing: There are no grammatical errors; at least none that jump out, no errors in syntax or structure. The writing itself is gold, and never misses a chance for a pun. The irreverent speech between adversaries is always fun to observe.

Overall: I highly recommend Vindication to anyone looking for a good laugh in a classic RPG setting.