Re Quest

Intro

"Re Quest" was a game being developed by Kazesui using RPG Maker 2003 that features an active battle system. As such I already am predisposed to hate this game since active battle systems and RPG Maker 2003 rarely mix in my experience. This is because the systems are generally clunky and cause problems that render the inclusion of the system pointless since you basically just end up with a worse version of turn-based combat. To make matters worse certain aspects of the combat system don't work as advertised which is probably part of the list of glaring issues mentioned by Kazesui on the game's summary page.

author=Kazesui
. . ., it still has some glaring problems.

And since this project was eventually canceled those issues were never fixed so the demo contains game ending bugs that result in the player needing to completely shut down the game and load an old save to fix. Which is always a major issue in my opinion even if this is just a demo for a dead project. Though, I suppose I should focus on the narrative first and get into why the game isn't as fun as it was meant to be later.

Story

You play as a nameless hero that takes on quests to slay monsters, kill bosses, and solve puzzles for various people. Unfortunately the game really misses out in this area in my opinion since all of your quests are found within the confines of a book which can only be accessed from one side of the table.



And because all of the quests are accessed through this book you lose out on the fun interactions that can occur between the player and a NPC when it comes to getting a mission. Though I imagine these interactions would have needed to be short due to how the level up system works but I'll get into that later.

Though, I suppose the developer would have countered that interacting with a bunch of NPCs would have gotten annoying after a while since you'll need to replay missions a lot if you want to get the best possible scores in order to maximize your level and thus stats. Which I suppose if the demo wasn't around 20 to 30 minutes long I'd be more willing to agree with, but as it stands there is little reason to not include NPCs at the start of a mission to beg and bribe the player to save them.

At any rate the lack of dialogue in this game means the story is very weak if it exists at all since everything comes across like one of those generic monster slaying missions in "Atelier Iris 3" that the player can do repeatedly to farm for cash. So if your looking for an interesting protagonist or a good narrative hook for an adventure your going to need to look else where.

Gameplay

As mentioned above this game features an active battle system which allows the player to slay things up close and personal with a sword, but due to how the game scores mission it kind of just encourages the player to forgo defense in favor of trying to kill everything as quickly as possible with little regard for taking hits if you can land on in return. As a result combat in this game feels like your playing Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots albeit the enemy AI tends to be rather uninterested in combat since the player only takes damage when the enemy passes through you. And sometimes the enemy really shows disinterest by walking away and firing their special attacks in the wrong direction.



Though I suppose that is small potatoes in comparison to the skill system which really doesn't work as advertised. According to the readme file you should be able to assign a secondary attack to the x key if you've put a point into the skills power, speed, and coverage stats. Unfortunately your unable to assign a secondary attack even if you do this. So the only sword move worth improving is your basic slash attack since it's the only one that is actually useable. And because of how broken the sword skills are I haven't even bothered testing if the magic skills work correctly.

Another issue in my opinion is that the menu is impossible to access during missions. As a result it's impossible to quit a mission unless you close the game. Which is a really big issue in the second puzzle mission since one of the pathways doesn't work correctly and the transfer on the door is also busted so you can't try a different route either. So you just end up hopelessly stuck as shown below until you close the game and restart it to load your save file.


Notice the gate is shown to be down before you move to the next room.

I suppose this could have been avoided with a key activated reset but the only other puzzle mission lacks that feature as well. Though that one does include a reset option, but you'd have to luck out and guess that the mirror resets the puzzle to activate it.

Which gets back to my biggest problem with this game. It really should include some information on the controls at times since you can wander into things and have zero idea on how they work. As a result the game gets really frustrating at times which I why I only ever played one of the mini-games since being forced to try all of the obvious buttons to figure out how the mini-game worked got me super pissed off. Though, I suppose that mini-game being hot garbage in my opinion only made matters worse.

And finally the game's level up system is odd since you gain experience not from killing monsters but based on how well you did on a given mission, but only your best score is taken into consideration which is probably why the developer didn't include any NPCs to interact with before missions since you'd be seeing them a lot if you want to try and get the best score possible so you can gain as many levels as possible within the missions you currently have access to. And upon leveling up you gain points which you can assign to your various stats and potential skills in order to empower them. That way you can aim for even higher scores on missions in order to make yourself even more powerful. It's basically a cycle that feeds into itself up to a certain point and I'm rather neutral towards it. I can't say it's my favorite idea ever, but it does give the developer a way to level cap the player in a way so they can't just brute force their way through higher level missions by beating the easy early missions dozens of times. So I can't say it's pointless. It's just the game never got far enough along to make it's level capping nature seem all that worthwhile.

Graphics and Sound

As far as I'm aware the game relies on the RTP, but considering how annoyed I tend to get with this game when it comes to some it's underlying systems I wouldn't be surprised if I'm wrong about that. At any rate the game looks and sounds alright, but isn't anything special in my opinion when it comes to either category.

Conclusion

"Re Quest" does have an interesting leveling system going for it, but it's incomplete nature and inability to provide the player with basic instructions on important information like being able to reset the attic puzzle by interacting with the mirror makes for an annoying experience. To make matters worse the enemies appear to be programmed rather poorly in order to counter the usual issue with the player and enemy just trading shots with each other in close quarters combat when an active battle system is implemented in RPG Maker 2003. Which arguably just makes the overall experience even worse since it feels like I'm sometimes just slaughtering monsters just because they are there and not because they are threat to the average citizen. And to make matters worse the game is setup in a way that makes telling any sort of compelling story impossible so I really don't have anything to motivate me to engage with a combat system that seems subpar in my opinion.