The Encephalon takes place in the year of 2112. A company called 'Vector' has created a virtual world, namely 'The Encephalon', to store the souls of humans when they die to preserve their soul for eternity. Eternity isn't free, however, as purchasing eternity in the Encephalon takes a large sum of money. Basically, the Encephalon is a virtual heaven where souls never experience death and can live peacefully forever.

However, hackers have recently taken to invading the Encephalon, deleting souls and corrupting the earth into a wasteland. Worst part is that the creators can't stop them due to the hacker's code blocking them. That's where you come in. You are a scientist who is sent into the Encephalon with your partner kentonaKenton to erase the Virus, a deadly script written by hackers.

Now doesn't that sound like a nice, solid plot? Unfortunately, the plot is much less enticing when in-game, as the plot is very much built upon but the characters are not. I only recall a single cutscene that provided insight as to who the characters are.

Also, another thing that I noticed is that the dialogue is extremely scarce and... I'd even go as far as to say it's dull. Deckiller said that since time constraints were very unforgiving, he had very little time to add cutscenes or develop characters, but they're pretty important in my opinion. 'specially since I felt absolutely no sympathy or emotion to any of the scientists that died. Although the storyline is gripping and well-thought out at first, it faded quickly and was executed averagely at best. The sparce and unengaging dialogue didn't really help redeem that point very much either, and the chilly silence from the shopkeepers really wasn't such a good idea~~~


Now, let's start with the opening sequence. The introduction was well done, and the fact that you could control when the text fades was well-received. You start out reading some dialogue (savor it, there's not much more afterwards), then the scientists (you and Kenton) are transferred into the Encephalon. On the inside, a man named Luther tells you that he was assigned to help you on your journey. Great. So, now that you have the three main party members, you're ready to battle, right? Right. So, you encounter your first enemies. Now this game has a unique battle system allowing you to change your party member's classes quickly. This kept battles pretty fresh, and made the balancing a lot easier since you simply had to attack the virus' weak point to kill it. One bad part is that the encounter rates are pretty high, and unless you purchase the absolute best equipment you're gonna have a tough time dealing with enemy after enemy after enemy.

Although the class-changing system is pretty cool, it's unfortunately plagued by glitches. I recall one battle it forced me to change my classes four times before I could play again, which ate up all my characters turns. So it'd be a lot more fun if you could fix that glitch in the sequel, please. The puzzles were fairly straight forward but that trite little backtracking in the first dungeon was kind of rage-inducing. A little more creativity with the dungeons and this would've easily been a 3.5.


Now, probably the most prominent feature of this game is that it's completely RTP. Every single bit of it. Although RTP is commonly associated with amateur games, The Encephalon uses it quite well. For example, the world map just works. It's fairly easy to navigate, compact enough to not bore you when traveling but also broad enough to make traveling interesting. The world map is quite a good example of how RTP can and should be used.

The towns are pretty dull, but it's totally understandable because you aren't supposed to be dawdling around shops all day, what with the world at stake and all. The signs make it easy to understand what shops are selling, although there aren't too many people to talk to. The dungeon design is, well... A standard dungeon. Not much to say, other than the puzzles are functional and the whole dungeon tends to be on the shorter side. The music is also average to above average. The Mp3 formats do add to quality, but quality aside it's pretty much what you hear in every other RPG. The sound effects were the same, as I think all of them were RTP? Anyways, it's appropriate, which in of itself is good ('specially that Spirit Temple rip. I smiled when I heard it.) ^^