Ragnarok Midgard Chronicles

Throughout the RPG Maker community, there seems to be some sort of hatred towards games that are directly based off of a pre-existing product. The typical reason I hear for this is "they suck!" I fail to believe this is true. If you have a good understanding of game design, you put in the effort, and you generally know how to make a game in the first place, you should always come up with a good product, no matter if it's a fan game or something entirely new. The problem is, however, is that many developers of fan games tend to lack these qualities, while the more experience developers would rather work with their own ideas. Ragnarok Midgard Chronicles is yet another addition to that list. From bland character development to an awful structuring of RPG battles, you might need help from someone with a PhD in order to even get past the beginning of this game.



I'll admit, when I first saw this game it looked somewhat promising. The ripped, Ragnarok graphics look nice, and it seemed like I was going to go through a remarkable experience playing this. Boy, was I wrong. For a start, the color of the window skin doesn't contrast enough with the text, which means if you come across a bright room, or even the title screen, you have to work those eyes in order to actually see what is being said.

Anyway, I start the game to find the intro scene. I think the author could have worked this a little better. It looks very bland, and the graphic for the "meteor" (looks more like a cluster of sparkles), doesn't disappear upon impact.

Now we go to the next scene, were we are introduced to Bradshaw, a typical silent protagonist, and his annoying fairy bitch named Lif. Needless to say, I do like how the game actually explains why the protagonist can't talk. He is basically a mute, and Lif is there to communicate his thoughts. Maybe this would work better if the characters had more personality in general.



None of the characters in the game, by what I was able to play through, really show a lot of distinguishing personalities. The dialog feels dead, and to make it worse, the creator decided to put emoticons in the message window to make up for the fact that he lacks the ability communicate emotions through words, which is a part of good writing. Needless to say, this is only a minor problem when compared to the game's major downfall.

What really, and I mean really, kills Ragnarok Midgard Chronicles is the game play. The author thought it was a good idea to directly copy the statistics of the monsters from the original game... An MMORPG. What you get are horribly imbalanced battles, some that nearly take about 5-10 minutes to complete, only because the enemies of this game have excessive amounts of stats. A simple, little rat can take away a good fourth of your health in this game.

You cannot develop a single-player RPG the same way as an MMO. For a start, MMORPG's are meant to be grind-heavy, simply because there are a massive amount of people playing, and making the game too easy would ruin the sense of "accomplishment" that the genre strives to achieve with its players. A single-player, linear RPG, which is actually meant to have an end to it, shouldn't contain the same type of game play. If this game had random encounters instead of seeing your enemies on the map, I would quit this from the very start. Even so, you are so under-powered in comparison to level 1 enemies that the best thing you can do is simply run away from them, that is until you get to a powerful boss and die.



To add a cherry on top of the turd sundae, in the beginning of the game the battle windows and stats are darkened out, which was apparently done as a special effect. I cannot think of why the creator would do something like this. Players need to see those stats. It's not just bad game design, its shows a lack of common sense.



Brushing my boredom and frustration aside, I finally make it to the mines, where I meet up with some extra, peasant woman and she joins my party (I think by the fact that your main character is mute and the second heroine is blind, it shouldn't be surprising that the choices for main characters in this game are crazy). I really had no choice but to dodge every battle that I could, and pray that none of those zombies or rat monsters get smart enough to overpower the RMXP default system and touch me, because the battles are just awful. Then I get to a cut scene where a lost man is hiding from the monsters, and describes a demon that was chasing him. Take a good look as to what this "demon" looks like:




... Seriously? Seems like someone from Kirby's world decided to wreck some havoc in this game. Quite frankly, he does a good job at that, as the little bugger does a good 200 - 400 damage to my characters, wiping the entire party instantly. At this point I gave up playing, as there was really no way I could possibly get past that point without loosing any more sanity.

So here is the run-down:

Story: 3
You are some random sage/wizard/magic person who wants to check out a meteorite. You aren't really told what your position is in the world, nor why you want to find out about this meteorite in the first place. Is it near his home? Is he looking for excitement? Who knows. Upon reaching the crash site, he discovers that what crash-landed was a half-naked babe, who is blind and can't remember who she is... You can already know where this is going. Maybe such a tired storyline would be tolerable if the game itself worked.

Characters: 2
I think Lif, the annoying fairy thing that sits on the main characters head, may be the only character that doesn't speak 100% mechanically. The characters, for what I've seen so far, feel very lifeless and uninspired. There is really no reason to care about them, especially Luna, who has piss-poor combat abilities in the beginning of the game and is generally worthless.

Sound: 3.5
The sound wasn't really a big issue overall with this game, though some tunes felt a little out of place, namely the theme of the mines. Sorry, but when I go into a mine shaft I don't think of poorly-vocalized techno tunes.

Graphics: 3.5
Not to bad looking-either. There are some XP-styled trees, however, that don't go completely well with the rest of the maps, but they worked in the introduction. I would give it a higher score if some of the graphic elements didn't distract me from playing the game (i.e. the dark shadow around the battle windows).

Game Play: 1
The game play is what stabs this project in the heart. Poorly balanced battles that take up to 10 minutes to complete, and these are just random encounters. What makes it even more shameful is that the first boss is considerably weaker than the rest of the monsters in the first chapter. I don't know what script the author used, but he added some thing where instead of a battle background, you are using a dulled-out version of the current map you are on. Since the events (monsters) of that map don't go away, it causes some confusion as to what you are really fighting against.

Overall: 1.5
This game is barely... No... Almost entirely unplayable. I'm trying to figure out how the author himself, assuming that he play-tested this game, was able to get through it. Maybe he used the same tactic of dodging everything in sight? I hope the "Completed" status of this project is just a mistake, because this project is in desperate need of a revamp.