Ragnarok Midgard Chronicles

Introduction

"Ragnarok Midgard Chronicles" is another entry in the long list of shitty fan games that have been made using RPG Maker. This isn't to say that every fan game out there is bad, but the vast majority of fan games in my experience are developed by first time developers that don't have enough experience under their belt to understand what works and what doesn't work with these engines. So much so that developers like Sloth often times take great pride in their mistakes. Often times claiming that their game is meant for hardcore players that are dedicated to reaching the finish line rather then conceding that their game is a buggy mess that's barely playable by even the most masochistic of gamers.

Despite the sheer intensity of my own self loathing, I still wasn't able to beat this game despite dumping hours of my life into grinding against enemies in order to overcome the various bosses that pop up, because I eventually reached a point in the game which was so bogged down by bad scripting that the game effectively traps you in a small room where you can interact with one character and blood splatter, but are unable to leave. As such, I eventually decided to give up on the game. Since, I imagine the only way to effectively get around this bug is if I could avoid grinding in the dungeon where it happens. Which at this point would require me to basically start the game all over. I suppose I could mess with the game's files in order to get around this issue, but I refuse to buy a copy of RPG Maker XP just to finish a crappy fan game.

Story
Spelling

I'm honestly a bit surprised that Ratty524 didn't hammer the game on this point, because the game is just a treasure trove of horrible misspellings. After all, this issues not only plague the game's dialogue but also the names of certain skills like "Incrase Agiligy". Though, I suppose some would argue that the misspellings while atrocious don't hamper the player's ability to understand the game's dialogue. It just serves to heavily distract the player and make it hard to take the game's various antagonists seriously. After all, how seriously can you take a woman screaming this is "rediculous!" at you?

Narrative

On the narrative side of things the game appears to stick to a lot of the usual cliches involving amnesia and evil corporations. Normally this wouldn't bug me that much, but the dialogue in this game feels to mechanical and poorly thought out that only serves to exacerbate my issues with the game. So much so, that I eventually go to the point where I was largely skipping through large chunks of the dialogue in order to get to the next battle. And, I'll definitely have to agree with Ratty524 that the inclusion of emoticons in the game's text doesn't help things.

Gameplay
Items

It probably says a lot about a game if I have to devote an entire section of my review to complaining about them. Though, I suppose I should dig into the most obvious issue first. For starters there are notable number of items in this game that are devoid of any type of useful description. This ranges from the game leaving their description entirely blank to simply describing the item with a hyphen. While a few of these items like spiderweb appear to merely be disposable loot, other items like the green herb appear to be a restorative item of some kind, but without a clear description of what it does. It's hard to work out how to use it.

Another issue you'll notice is that a lot of items in this game have descriptions that are overly wordy and poorly thought out. A good example of this is the the survivor's rod which has the following description: A staff created as an united effort of the Mage Guild and the Prontera Church. As you can see this description is not only overly long but contains a notable grammar mistake as well. Which is why I would suggest changing the description to the following: a staff forged by the efforts of the Mage Guild & the Prontera Church. While my description isn't much shorter it does chop the description down from 15 words to 12 as well as gets rid of the grammar issues of the original.

Though, I suppose the final issue is the most noteworthy. A lot of items in this game doesn't work as described. A good example of this is the white potion whose description is the following: A potion made from ground White Herbs that restores about 325 HP. The reality is that this item restores your HP on a percentage basis. As such, it can easily heal in excess of 1,250 points if your maximum health is high enough. As for why the developer failed to correctly describe how his various HP & SP restoring potions work in this game. All I can do is shrug my shoulders and shout I have no freaking idea at the top of my lungs.

Combat

As Ratty524 and others have already mentioned. The combat in this game is need of serious rebalancing, but this point has been dragged up and beaten like a dead horse by so many others that I don't feel like going into the details. After all, it's pretty obvious after only a couple of battles that the enemies in this game are so much faster then the player that your chances of winning are rather remote because of how bosses will often times get 2 to 3 attacks for every action the player gets to take. An issue only made worse when you run into bosses with moves like "Incrase Agility".

Grinding

This is game that requires a lot of grinding in order to beat, but the player is often times unable to leave areas in order to do this. So much so, that grinding is near impossible. As a result, it can be extremely hard to beat a lot of the bosses in this game unless you devote hours of your life to grinding to level 50 or so in the game's starting area. Since this is one of the few areas in the game where you have access to easy/cheap healing. As you can imagine, this makes for a rather tedious experience that will push most players away. So much so, that I could easily use this issue of the game alone to recommend against it.

Skill Description's

Yeah, a lot of skills in this game have rather useless descriptions in my opinion. Though the bulk of these issues appear to be tied to Kuhleborn who has multiple skill descriptions which basically boil down to the following: Knight''s special move. And yeah the inclusion of two apostrophes was intentional, because that's how his ultimate move is described. Though oddly enough the game only includes one apostrophe on the description for his Ignition Break.

Music

I'll admit that I'm usually pretty easy to please when it comes to this category. As such, I usually just combine it with the graphical aspects of the game and give them both a pass, but I'm afraid I can't do that with this game. This is because the game suffers from some rather questionable tracks such as the use of techno music in the game's opening dungeon as well as includes several scenes where the game's background music will give the player tonal whiplash. So much so that I think my ears started to bleed at points.

Graphics

Graphically speaking the game does include a few decent rips of sprites from Ragnarok Online, but manages to spoil this by having enemies and other random objects dot the battlefield. Of course, the game also earns my displeasure for intentionally covering up the combat menu at the start of the game for no other reason then shits and giggles as far as I can tell.

Bugs

This game contains several game breaking bugs. These range from bosses sometimes refusing to appear when they are supposed to, to the game refusing to advance after beating certain bosses. As such, I recommend running multiple save files in order to get around this issue, but this may not be enough. As such, you may eventually find yourself helplessly trapped in this game. Unable to go forwards, but unable to go backwards as well.

Conclusion

"Ragnarok Midgard Chronicles" is easily among the worst fan games I've ever played. As such, I really can't recommend anyone check this game out. In fact, I'd actively recommend that people avoid this game and try to pretend that it never happened.