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This game is simply a masterpiece design-wise

I'm pretty much the type that goes by facts and not so much by impression, so my reviews will go down straight to the facts without too much talking. I'm going around and try out various Indie RPGs lately, posting a review for each one on their corresponding website (to do a collection of all at the end of my journey). This game really surprised me. I will explain why in the upcoming paragraphs.
I hope the author will read this review to maybe reflect on where he can still improve.

Graphics - The graphics are unique, detailed and simply amazing. They might not have a very high resolution for modern 2D RPGs, but they still look simply incredible. I really liked the feeling the game gave me through them. Although at the beginning everything was quite grey-ish, it keeps getting better the deeper you get into the game. At the end I was surprised on how detailed some regions were. All the graphics seem to be completely self-made, a big plus too. On top of all that there are plenty of well-drawn cutscenes. The correct picture always showed up at the correct time of the dialogues and the pictures themselves were always really fitting to the scene. You could really get the feeling of the characters at that time simple by looking at those pictures. I have nothing to criticize here, so I'll give it a perfect 5/5.

Music - The music unfortunately isn't original but taken from various sources. However it sounds really amazing (I love the normal battle theme). Also what I like was that most music wasn't taken from too popular sources. Most of the themes I haven't heard before or not heard for long enough that I could recall where they were from (if I didn't look it up). If that music would have been completely original I would probably also have ended up giving it a perfect score, like this I can only give it 3/5.

Story - The story is simple amazing. This is not only the best story I've ever seen in an Indie RPG, it is also one of the best stories I've ever seen in any RPG. The story fascinated me from beginning to end. So many sudden plot-twists. You can really feel that the story was really well thought-out by the author. The story is so good that I really hope the author will continue making RPGs. Perfect score for this aspect 5/5.

Dungeon Design & Exploration - Another aspect where the game is truly perfect. Dungeons aren't just simple linear paths, they require quite some searching and usually include clever puzzles. Some dungeons are fairly easy with only a few dead ends, but most are really amazing with integrated types of puzzles I've never seen before in a similar way. Also the whole game is played from the side (like a platformer, just without a "jump" button), which makes the whole thing completely original. The game has also plenty of exploration. While it's usually pretty obvious where to go to follow the main plot, there is quite some optional content in the game. Most notably every dungeon has a certain "trick" to it that allows you to reach a location you could usually not reach. This is often quite hard to figure out and needs some thinking. Everything here is simply amazing, so another perfect score from me: 5/5.

Battles - Finally an aspect that I can criticize a little. But good things first. The battles are actually pretty fun. I really love that it removed the concept of MP conservation which in my opinion is pretty outdated and replaced it with an AP/EX system where you start each battle with 5 AP and 0 EX and gain AP by waiting and EX by using abilities (+ several options later in the game to change this system upside down). What I also liked is that this system applies to the monsters as well, they can only use skills if they have enough AP/EX for them. All battles, even the normal ones are quite hard, but I like that. They aren't impossible, but quite challenging. Most challenge lies within a fast reaction to what happens (quickly using a healing item for example) at least during normal battles. There are quite a few stragical aspects too, but they usually only are of great importance during boss battles. Strategical aspects include: Elemental strong&weak points, field effects (certain effects that affect both players and monsters alike), trying to get full AP/EX fast to use a special move, while preventing the enemy to get full AP/EX.
While this is all good and well, here are the bad aspects: First of all, the battles are incredibly buggy (I'll come back to this in the stability section), this is especially a problem because the battles are so hard and challenging that a single appearing bug basically could mean instant death. In boss fights it's guaranteed instant death. This can get frustrating, if you keep dieing because of a bug and not because you messed up. Another point I want to criticize is the lack of different formations, especially in the first half of the game. The game certainly doesn't have a lack of different monsters, however those monsters always seem to appear in the same formation, there is hardly any variety. A dungeon might have 4 different enemy types, but only 3 different formations. There could have easily been 10 times as much even without adding more enemies, just by variation. In the end the battles are still a bit above average, because the battle bugs will already affect the stability score, I'll round this one up to 4/5.

Stability & Other - Outside of battles the game is actually pretty stable. There are no wallmapping bugs which is quite rare for RPG Maker games (usually I find hundreds in them). There was one bug when leaving the game, windows would tell me that the game didn't shut down properly. The real bugs appear inside battles though: Characters attack dead monsters, selecting of a skill suddenly cancels, the menu shows during a special skill, a skill you selected doesn't execute, a revived hero is still treated like a dead one and doesn't get his ATB filled up, the timer doesn't stop properly during battles even if you set the mode to passive. Plenty of things. The author also stated those and that he can't fix them (easily) and yes while they may be problems with the engine, I'm not rating it depending on the engine, so I'll substract points here, just to emphasize that this is one of the main problems in this game. The author is a genius and shouldn't ruin his games through crappy engines. I heard he decided to switch to RPG Maker VX which I think is quite a good choice (I know games are more stable there, also it is possible to completely recode the battle system so "can't be fixed" is not even possible anymore). Other aspects were okay in the game, but nothing "special" that could be mentioned additionally. There could have been some more improvement with the menu handling (optimizing equipment / sorting / possibility to only unique characters that are not in the party instead of just all or none). In the end I'll give this aspect only a 2/5, even though it's mainly RPG Maker related.

Summary:
Graphics - 5/5
Music - 3/5
Story - 5/5
Dungeon Design & Exploration - 5/5
Battles - 4/5
Stability & Other - 2/5

Total: 24/30 = 80% = 4/5 = "good"

Final impression: This game amazed me in many ways. The graphics, the story and the dungeon design and exploration were simply perfect. Original music (if as good as the one used here) and a more stable battle system with a higher monster formation variety could improve the game further. This ends up being the Indie RPG I gave the best score ever so far and it is FREE. With original music and a more stable battle system a game of this size and quality could easily be sold for $10-$20 without me regretting the purchase. I can only recommend everyone to get this game, since it's simply amazing and doesn't cost anything.

Posts

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Thanks a lot for the review man :). A lot of the sprites are actually rips/edits, but I'm glad you liked the cutscenes.
Ah I see, thanks for the info. Guess the partly rips/edits would mean I'd reduce the graphics score to 4/5, but it would still come down to the same score (since 23/30 would still be rounded up to 4/5).

Honestly you're really good with story and dungeon design, you should get yourself an artist (or draw yourself) and composer.

Oh yeah, mainly for myself, but here would be the updated review paragraphs:

Graphics - The graphics are unique, detailed and simply amazing. They might not have a very high resolution for modern 2D RPGs, but they still look simply incredible. I really liked the feeling the game gave me through them. Although at the beginning everything was quite grey-ish, it keeps getting better the deeper you get into the game. At the end I was surprised on how detailed some regions were. According to the author many of them were rips/edits, but I didn't really recognize them being taken from popular games. The game also has plenty of well-drawn cutscenes, these were completely self-made by the author. The correct picture always showed up at the correct time of the dialogues and the pictures themselves were always really fitting to the scene. You could really get the feeling of the characters at that time simply by looking at those pictures. The only thing I can criticize about graphics is that they are partly rips/edits, so I'll give it a 4/5.

Summary:
Graphics - 4/5
Music - 3/5
Story - 5/5
Dungeon Design & Exploration - 5/5
Battles - 4/5
Stability & Other - 2/5

Total: 23/30 = 77% = 3.8/5 = "good"

Final impression: This game amazed me in many ways. The story, the dungeon design and exploration were simply perfect. The graphics look amazing and are fitting, too bad they aren't fully self-made. Fully original graphics, original music (if as good as the one used here) and a more stable battle system with a higher monster formation variety could improve the game further. This ends up being the Indie RPG I gave the best score ever so far and it is FREE. With original graphics/music and a more stable battle system a game of this size and quality could easily be sold for $10-$20 without me regretting the purchase. I can only recommend everyone to get this game, since it's simply amazing and doesn't cost anything.
lolwut

You either like 'em or you don't. Why'd you reduce the score because they're rips?
Because it is less effort to rip graphics than to draw them yourself!? That's pretty much common sense. I usually reduce the score for graphics/music by 2 if graphics are ripped, but since it was only partly done for the graphics, I left it at only 1 point reduction.

I guess RPG Maker communities are not that strict about it, but I am. I know other communities where you get kicked out of the community altogether if you use rips in your game or at least automatically get the lowest score in that aspect. I'm pretty much going a middle way by saying perfectly ripped graphics get rated the same way as average completely self-made ones.
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