Red Moon

Intro

"Red Moon" is a RPG developed by pantsman9 using RPG Maker 2003. This game is also pantsman9's first game so I'm going to cut it some slack in terms of score, but this game suffers from so many mistakes common to beginners that I can't give this game even an average score. In fact, this game is so heavily flawed I really can't think of anything particularly positive to say about it. Though, I probably should start by exploring the narrative and where it fails in my opinion.

Story
Summary

You begin the game as Geo and his friends whose village gets attacked by an evil beast known as Malvice at the start of the game. After waking up in the ruins of your village you set out to meet the king of the land and get told that you'll need to acquire the four elemental orbs of power in order to take down Malvice. And that's really all there is to the story. You simply go around collecting the orbs and then use them to go where Malvice is to stop his evil once and for all.

Greatest Strength/Weakness

Sadly I really can't think of a narrative strength this game has going for it. While you can find some background lore surrounding Malvice in the library of the game's main town. This lore really doesn't paint Malvice as anything more than your typical human turned demon out of petty jealousy. To make matters worse you don't even have to visit the library in this game. So you'll only learn about Malvice's background if you enter the library and bother to read the various books on the shelves as well on the tables in the library. Which means the game doesn't even incorporate the lore behind the main villain in a way that would be interesting to the player.

Another major issue with this game is that the dialogue is really boring and straight-forward with the king telling the player to go to location x which is located in this direction from his castle. As a result the characters in this game tend to feel devoid of any real personality. In fact, I'd go so far as to say calling the characters in this game flat is being generous.

Grammar

The game contains a lot of grammar errors. The most noticeable of these errors is that most sentences in this game don't begin with a capital letter. A factoid that can drive you absolutely insane if this error is the kind of thing that gets under your skin.

Gameplay

On the gameplay front this game relies on the default combat system that comes with RPG Maker 2003. As a result combat in this game is extremely slow. Thankfully this can be countered by buying speeds ups. Unfortunately those speed ups are extremely cheap at 200 gold a pop. In fact, there are only a handful of enemy groups in this game that won't give you enough money to buy a power up. As a result it's possible to utterly break combat in this game by enhancing the stats of a single character so much they'll be able to wipe out entire enemy parties before they can act a single time. And the cheap nature of the power ups also means it's pointless to buy better gear in this game since you'll get better stat boosts from buying power ups then you'd get from the weapons. For example a dragon spear costs 24,000 gold to purchase and grants a boost of about 220 attack or so over your starting weapon. For the same amount of coin you could buy 120 stat boosters that raise your attack by 3 points each for a grand total of 360 points. In fact, the only weapons that might be worth buying in this game are the cheaper options like the mace.

Another issue is that certain enemies in this game drop level up gels. At first I used these as intended, but it's far more useful to sell these gels in my opinion since they are worth 2,500 gold a piece. And there is one enemy in particular that consistently drops these items. These enemy being the fake versions of the guardian of the water orb. And these enemies can be challenged instantly by interacting with them as many times as you want. So you can easily farm tens of thousands of gold in a matter of minutes if your strong and fast enough.

And finally the game's final boss if you decide to side with your brother is an absolute joke as long as go into the fight with all of your MP. This is because you gain the move brotherly love during this fight and can spam it as much as your like as long as your MP was full when the battle begins. And there is a healer right next to the boss to restore your MP. Unfortunately this fight is almost impossible to overcome if don't use brotherly love due to the boss's powerful hits and meaty body. Which is why I'm of the opinion that brotherly love is poorly designed as a skill since it requires the player's MP to be full in order to use. So if you simply challenge the final boss without having a full MP bar you'll die a slow and prolonged death. Especially since you lose access to half of your party before going into this fight for unspecified reasons.

Graphics & Sound

As far as I'm aware these aspects of the game rely entirely on the RTP. Unfortunately the graphical assets contained within said RTP aren't used that well in my opinion. A lot of the maps in this game contain large open areas comprised of the same tile over and over and over again. As a result maps in this game are extremely boring to look at. And while the game does fare better on the sound front since I can't think of any songs that were used incorrectly. The apparent reliance on the RTP means this game doesn't stand out in this area either.

Conclusion

"Red Moon" is a first time project that suffers from a lot of problems typical of such games. These issues include bland characters, bad maps, and poor balancing. As a result this game is extremely bland and forgettable. In fact, pantsman9 apparently holds a lower opinion of this game than I do.

pantsman9
yes i know the games a piece of shit.

In short this game is best avoided as far as the developer is concerned. Though he still appreciates feedback on this game apparently.