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"I'm not crazy YOU CRAYZ"

Retro Quest 2

Throwback RPG for RPGMaker 2003

Gotta love alcohol!


Amount Played:
About an hour and a half.

Gameplay to Story Ratio:
There's not much story, but there isn't much gameplay, either.

Legality:
Completely illicit. The amount of rips in this game is staggering

Description:
Remember when games were good? When you could actually play them instead of watching them? Yeah, neither does this guy.



Gameplay


Learning Curve: 8/10
The game starts off insultingly easy, as it should. However, it doesn't pick up at all at later points. There's no real difficulty present in the game - your stats are either sufficient or they are not. It is fairly easy to figure out if they are, however, so at least this game earns decent marks somewhere.

Battle Mechanics: 2/10
This is where the game begins to fall flat on its face - there are no mechanics to speak of. Just good old 2k3 DBS.

Your starting skill is "Damage a foe". Until you happen across books that teach spells, you won't have any additional skills. Actually, my hero learned one skill - "damage a foe and remove buffs". A neat touch, except that no enemy I encountered ever buffed themselves. So it was really "damage a foe". Sigh.

Battle Balance: 1/10
Balance? There isn't any.

Upon learning a Fire spell, I was prepared to turn to it as my main form of offense - only to find it dealt less damage than my sword. Not only that, I had exactly two shots of it before my MP was depleted - or I could reserve two shots of Cure. Again, sigh.

Later on, you get a book of Haste, which instantly doubles your speed. In 2k3. There isn't much to the game after that except buying an Ether after every battle to continue fueling Haste.



Narrative


Story: Irrelevant
what is story can u eat it ??

Setting: 3/10
The entire game, as I saw it, took place only within a single castle.

Characters: Irrelevant
You are the Hero.



Aesthetics


Graphics 1/10
Rips, rips, everywhere, rips! Not only are they rips, they're bad rips. FF1 mixed with Legend of Zelda mixed with Pokemon with absolutely no coherence. Battlers are the biggest offenders - often quadruple-scaled, even for human enemies that would otherwise be your size. Battle backgrounds are simply RTP, recolored to grayscale - nowhere near the four-color limit of the consoles the maker is trying to emulate.

Audio: 2/10
The selection of music is just upsetting. Victory Fanfare is an instant mark against this game - who isn't tired of it, really? Mix it with RTP, various rips, and music of very non-retro quality, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Interface: 6/10
Nothing out of the ordinary here. Simple 2k3 - no marks up, no marks down.




Overall Score

Posts

Pages: 1
Corfaisus
"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats
7874
The only thing that I can say is that I -may- have gotten farther than you, but ultimately gave up before anything significant occurred.
If you hate rips so much you're probably on the wrong site. :P
I like this review. You should do some of games that have more interesting stuff to fill the gameplay side of things.
Magi
Resident Terrapin
1028
I do not really think "rips" should factor into a game's graphical rating. The graphics are pretty bland and mish-meshed, so maybe that is what you were trying to say
Sailerius
did someone say angels
3214
author=undefined
I do not really think "rips" should factor into a game's graphical rating. The graphics are pretty bland and mish-meshed, so maybe that is what you were trying to say
He's free to review however he likes. Some reviewers detract from the score for having RTP graphics, so how is this any different?
Magi
Resident Terrapin
1028
You are just adorable, aren't you
It's not much different than a prejudice to RTP graphics. A prejudice to RTP is similar to a prejudice to FF6 gfx, whereas a prejudice to rips is like a prejudice to graphics all together.

Then if it's not RTP and it's not rips that only leaves custom. We shouldn't expect custom graphics just to give a good score in that department.

However, I agree that the mere presence of rips shouldn't be the issue. Only if they are used bad. I never played this so I dunno.

I don't think chaos implied rips were the problem with the graphics. He was just describing what the graphics were essentially, then saying they were badly done. I like this review better than the other one because it actually accesses what the game is trying to be.
LouisCyphre
can't make a bad game if you don't finish any games
4523
Yeah, as much as I abhor using rips personally, good use of rips will get good marks from me.

This game did not use rips well.
I disagree, to a point. I felt the rips were used well for the style of game, and reminded me a little of FF Legend II. But yeah, some areas the rips could have been used better.
I like this review. It has lots of numbers and points out that fair use laws are COMPLETE FUCKING BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT, I TELL YA!

Seriously, the review's just scores with blurbs, which is lame enough, but LEGALITY? Criticizing freeware RPG Maker games not for having original artwork and music makes you look like a major league asshole who thinks they know copyright laws because they heard Square-Enix bullied a fangame into cancellation, but...correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't ChaosProductions make a couple of games on a game engine that you could only possibly have if you pirated it?

(Now, five bucks says the guy will claim to have conveniently bought the license to a derelict engine and copy-pastes the Wikipedia entry on fair use laws. I MAKE FRIENDS WHEREVER I GO!)

-Tabris
I vote the above posting as my all-time favorite.
I might be wrong, but I think you're being defensive because Sailerius and ChaosProductions in their reviews had perfectly valid points to give the game a low score.
I approve of this review.

On the subject of legality, you forgot about my HEINOUS use of RPG Maker 2003.
author=sbester
If you hate rips so much you're probably on the wrong site. :P
Welp, two things that go well together appear to be RPG Maker and rips.

I wash my hands of the whole thing.
Pages: 1