Angel and Devil Chapter 1

Intro

"Angel and Devil Chapter 1" is a game that was started by wolftriplex in late 2007, but was never actually finished, but he did release a demo which I'll offer my input on. Albeit I had to jump through a few hoops to get the demo to work. So I guess I'll need to start this review by explaining how to get the game to actually launch.

How To Get the Demo to Launch

The demo for this game comes with RGSS100J.dll. Unfortunately this file is only compatible with illegal copies of RPG Maker XP to my knowledge. So if you have the official RTP you'll need to replace this dll file with RGSS102e.dll which you can easily copy from games like "Three Temples". I was originally going to go with the "The Mysterious Wonderland of Alicia-chan" but that game has apparently been hidden by the developer some time after I downloaded it.

You then need to change Library=RGSS100J.dll to Library=RGSS102E.dll in game.ini file which can modify with notepad. After that the game should actually launch and work correctly. At least until you hit a soft lock about twenty minutes into the demo. Oh well, at least it gave me more material to work with than "Taret Blade" which crashes due to a divide by zero error within the first five minutes of play.

Story

You play as Imorim, an angel, that was captured during a war between angels and demons. As you can probably guess she's been suffering in hell ever since being captured but with a little help from her sisters and a mysterious friend/stranger she was able to escape from the depths of hell, but what will she do now that she's free. I have no idea since the game soft locks shortly after she escape due to an eventing error.

Soft Lock

Yeah for some reason this one character remains on the screen after the fight with guardian of the gates of hell. The evil General Zianox slams into him and this causes the game to soft lock. It even causes the music to turn off, but that seems less important.



I suppose this could have been intentional in order to tell the player the demo was over, but wolftriplex could have just as easily played some credits after this scene or after the fight with the guardian of the gates of hell to achieve the same effect. And it would have made a lot more sense then having the game end because of an apparent eventing error. Or maybe this would be better described as a pathing error.

Gameplay

As far as I can tell the game mostly features the standard combat system that comes with RPG Maker XP. Which is fine in my opinion since I enjoy turn-based combat but the few changes wolftriplex did make only serve to make the combat screen feel cluttered and ugly.



For starters the green health bar up top for enemy monsters while useful for gauging if you want to spend SP on a powerful skill just comes across as very unappealing visually. And this issue only gets worse when you have to deal with enemies with even more health. At least if the images provided by the developer are to be believed.

Another issue is that the character sprite for Imorim is way too big and makes reading your current HP and SP basically impossible. She either needs to be given a black dress or shrunk down considerably and moved to a spot where she won't hide her HP and SP values from the player.

And another weird issue with the combat is that some of the units get a skill that casts sharpen on your enemies. This spell is actually an attack buff. Why on earth would you ever cast that kind of spell on your enemies? Admittedly this does make the fight with the demon guarding the gates to hell a lot easier, but I don't think that was wolftriplex's intention. And even if it was it doesn't explain why one of the angels that rescues Imorim at the start of the game has this vary same ability. Albeit she can't cast it since the angels that rescue Imorim are basically out of MP.

This leads to another annoyance for me. The player doesn't get to use any special skills in this game. I realize that Imorim and her new found friend are level one. And this does make sense considering they've been rotting in hell for a while now, but I don't get why the angels that rescue Imorim are entirely out of SP. After all, it would be nice to be able to utilize some of the skills will most likely have access to in the late game at the start while we have access to characters that are over level 20.

Graphics

Visually speaking the game is alright for the most part I suppose, but it does feel like the game has a little too much wasted space on some maps.



This is a good example of what I'm talking about. Like why does the hallway need to be so wide? It's not like I need the space to dodge touch encounters in this room or anything. And I suppose the back wall could use a few tweaks as well like including skeletons on the wall or something to make the area feel a little less empty. Of course, you don't want to overdue either since that would make the game feel cluttered, but there is plenty of room for a few additional objects on this screen. And considering were in hell you'd think there would be people nailed to the walls to suffer in misery as the torches burn their feet and creatures emerge from the wall to slowly eat them. I suppose that is a bit morbid, but this is hell were talking about.

Sound

It's serviceable I suppose, but considering I had the game's volume dropped to 30 percent and some of the music still felt like it was going full bore. The developer probably does need to modify the audio files to be a bit more even in terms of volume.

Minor Notes

The game contains a bunch of spelling errors like "swoarn" as well as weird dialogue.



Conclusion

I'll admit I do have a soft spot for mystical creatures so this game does intrigue me somewhat. At the same time what is here probably isn't worth checking out considering the game is probably never going to be finished. Add in the fact the game soft locks before the main quest really begins and your left with a demo that raises some potentially interesting questions, but doesn't give the player any answers.