A Dust Tale

"This sci-fi Tale must not collect Dust, once the fullest potential is awakened!"

Okay, I've never played an RPG Maker VX game before, but did played decent sci-fi RM-RPGs such as Iron Gaia series , A Blurred Line, Alter AILA (the 1st release), and Ascendence. Why I've enumerated those notable titles, is that among them, this newcomer, in RMVX sci-fi scene is soaring past them!

First off, the title screen really struck me an astoundingly enjoyable jumping impression, such that the creator of this game gave it a professional spice, in spite of having it as an indie title! Then I played this game, and woah, I enjoyed every introductory scene in the game, in spite the fact the game relied on RMXP RTP sprite style, such that I feel like watching 24 which is suspense-packed.

Then after those scenes, the game drifted to its game proper and you take control as middle-aged Imperial soldiers, under the DUST Squad named Edward, and Jonny . Though, the portrayal of the two convinced me that the whole DUST Squad is memorable, heroic and bad-ass. So far, the animation of the characters (whether in field, or in-battle) are fluid, and the damage pop-ups are neat, like you are really playing a professional PS1 2D RPG title.

Though I found a handful of consistency issues while enjoying this game. The field version of the rebels contradict to their in-battle appearance. In battle, they appeared as medium-armored mooks, but in the field, their helmets were replaced by RMXP Soldier1's, and they wear some sort of chestplate, which their battler counterpart does not have. On the 1st robot enemy, well... their field version is a miniaturized version, and possesses a pair of barreled guns, compared to its in-battle version, which is a Metal Slug mecha that boasted gatling gun arms.

Just my 20-cent suggestion, make use of their field graphic as their battlers too, for consistency, not unless if they're intended to go Ultraman-in-size each time they oppose our DUST squad heroes.

Oh, another gripe, aside from graphical consistency issues, is that the final demo area is laggy, which rendered its speed sluggish, maybe I'm playing this on a laptop. Anyways, that did not killed my playthrough on this demo. Okay, after meeting the early mooks, finally, a boss fight! At first I thought it'll have an intentional-loss impression, but good thing that a hot girl with strange armor saved the DUST members from its doom. At first when I was confronting the mecha boss, I can select the parts to be attacked, which as suggested by Jonny that it might have weak points, but nope. Maybe, that's just my early impressions though.

Well, summing it up:

The good:
> Impressive tileset, faceset and charset edits
> Great music
> Battle system
> Title screen
> Character portrayal and their abilities

The bad:
> The lag in Cargo Bay

The ugly:
> The Miner's battle appearance contradicts its In-Field version.