The Legend of Gladius

Hello!
"The Legend of Gladius" is a short, 30 minutes dungeon delving adventure that cabn be divided into two parts or tasks or quests. This is a beginner attempt to creating an RPG Maker VX fantasy game made by Irili after following a tutorial called Benko's guide. Anyway let's speak about this game:

This game follows the adventures of two adventurers, Salazar and Zach, that were kicked off a ship and left on a little island. While they were spending some time waiting for the next ship, they look for some kind of job, and the sorceress of the village offers them a quest: retrieve the Gladius, a legendary sword from the nearby forest. Now, this looks so easy that obviously means that there is a catch, but I won't mention what happens next, I'll just say that getting the sword is easy, but this will be just the first half of the quest!

"The Legend of Gladius" is a classic jrpg adventure of a party of two (later three) characters with a couple of 3-4 rooms dungeons each with its own final boss and lots of random encounters in the middle. Characters starts weak but get stronger and learn new abilities as they get levels, and the helpful thing is that getting a level also means restorin hit points and mana points. You can also samve anytime in any location, but the game has unfortunately a couple of problems:


Zach did the right thing! Blinding the big bad guy means that he will never hit us! And that beast can hit hard, trust me!

The first is the incredible frequence of random encounters: you cannot make few steps (no matter if you are on the world map or inside a dungeon/forest) without having to fight, making backtracking really annoying. And this leads to the second problem: the enemies.
Enemies comes in two types: normal ones and strong ones, and the only difference is that strong ones are damage sponge with lots of Hit points... but not much more offensive capabilities. Strong Slimes and Strong Spiders aren't particularly dangerous (Strong Spiders were able to inflict 1-14 of damage, and that's pathetically low!) but have tons of Hit points, and these battles are more tedious than dangerous. Bosses aren't even different, except for the last one that has some powerful attacks and also can regenerate if hit with a particular element, but it's the only really interesting opponent that gives some kind of challenge. Oh and there is no equipment except for an armor I found and the magical sword Gladius... and both were SLIGHTLY better than the default gear!!!
Moreover Gladius when used produces the effect of a series of punches! That's odd!

Third problem, the story: it's... pretty much absent. I mean, our heroes go around and do what other people tell them, but there is no real motivation or story about them or the Gladius itself. Or the island, or the npcs they meet. Everything happens and no one knows or explains why. Why this sword is so important? Why they sent them to retrieve it? Wha... ok nevermind!

The visuals are what you can expect from an Rtp standard game, and there are some locations that look ok, almost good, and others that aren't so well made, there are no errors or bugs so I'd consider that average, taking in account this is the first attempt for making a game. Monsters are also ok, the only issue is that the final bad guy does NOT disappear from the map (or fall dead) after being beaten, and he's still there during the penultimate cutscene but uhm ok! You will also find some locations that apparently have no purpouse, no hidden loot, just some characters to talk to (and in a case a door blocked by a crate!) and nothing else. Why? Just to add some time wasting, I guess.


This is the world map or, better... the map of the island where the game takes place. I'll now leave by boat and see you in the next review!

Final Verdict
"The Legend of Gladius" is one of the many Rtp jrpg games that was probably overlooked by many players, and after finishing it, I can understand why. It's not a terrible game but it's very shallow and average, with enemies that are rather harmless but require lots of time ti be dispatched, and also insanely frequent random battles, with the result that dungeons feel like time wasters (more than usual!). If only the characters had actually any charm or an interesting story... but no. Well as least this is a complete game with no bugs and so easy and short to be completed in a simple sitting (also really better than Summer Fun: Crab Dodge! But that wasn't hard), but that's all!