Adalyn

Wow, I think this is my first review? I finished this little game before the download was made available here so I thought I should toss up a quick review. First off, I have to say this is the second short game (Rubi being the first) that Ocean presented in which I found very pleasurable. Like Rubi, this game is a contest entry that was actually created on Rpg Maker VX this time around.

Like Rubi, the game adopts the Secret Of Mana type action battle system but tries to add a bit more flare in terms the story/character compared to Rubi. I wouldn't really say it's a vast improvement in that department but there's certainly more substance when compared to Rubi once again. In fact, I think this can easily spin off a full game. I kind of would like to see something like that happen hehe.

Lets look at a short break down shall we?

Playtime: 30-45 minutes
It took me about 35 minutes the first play through. The second time through it took me shortly over 40 minutes. I sort of took my time this time around. I tried a few different things such as the side quests for cash at the Mercenary location.

Story/Characters: 3/5

Story... Well It was actually not that bad. We have to keep in mind that the game run-time, according to the contest entry, could not be more then an hour. With that in mind, I actually was quite entertained. The game starts out with our heroine (we'll call her that for now) Adalyn making her arrival at a dessert town. She's exhausted and needs a drink. Adalyn is pretty pessimistic about her surroundings and quickly makes you aware of this. She's also has quite the temper (rawr). Anyways, it's a short game so I won't go into details here and will let you play out the game. Basically, Adalyn's brief pit stop at the local bar turns into a full out rebellion against the local Tyrant Sheriff and his personal police force, the GCC. I personally liked how Ocean added a few assaults missions :P.

There are some interesting characters like Sarita. Sarita seems to be the typical local towns gal who dreams of better times. She's pretty cliche too be honest but some how I found her pretty appealing. She seems to adore Adalyn and what she stands for and even helps her with her plight!

Midway to the end of the game I think the story plummets quite a bit but I wasn't really that hopeful about it to be honest and kind of expected that. You could see that somethings felt rushed. An example of this can be seen in the opening. Adalyn randomly talks about past rebel wars in the intro. Some dialogue boxes were kind of stuffed with details that didn't really fit or perhaps should have taken more time to elaborate on. Estrella, the right hand Woman to the Sheriff was pretty bare. The Sheriff who you've been trying to assassinate with a random group of mercs (I believe) did not say a word until you defeated him. I was expecting some opening words before the battle commenced. And when you you actually defeat him he just didn't say anything that interesting. The ending is interesting... To say the least!

Adalyn as a character didn't have time to grow which makes sense of course! Still, I would love to see this area improved on if there was perhaps longer and more polished game in the works :P.

Despite what I said I think story could easily span out into a longer game. Like, you can basically write up anything as far as story goes. Adalyn drifting from town to town and so on. I'm quite critical when it comes to this section of games. Most of my comments are just what I feel should be improved. It doesn't really reflect my level of enjoyment of what was presented. I still think Adalyn was pretty interesting but the delivery could have been better. Btw, story sort of had elements which reminded me of Trigun~



Gameplay: 3/5

Good:
Adalyn features a pretty cool battle system. As I mentioned it's Mana esque but has cool features. First off this game features 8 directional movement making the ABS that much better. It was actually pretty smooth too surprisingly. Adalyn also features some cool (and few) skills like healing and my favorite, stealth as seen in the screen above. Stealth allows your enemies to stop chasing you as they lose sight of you for a few seconds. You can actually purchase a modifier that allows you to open up with a hard, critical type hit to your enemies when coming out of stealth. All skills are purchasable in town and you can equip them as skills and they are assigned to the "A" key. A secondary skill can also be assigned to the "S" key as well.

As far as stats go there's not too much you have to take note of. There's your HP, which can be refilled by picking up honey pots through out the battle areas. You can also go to the local bar and buy some drinks which also refills your hp, not entirely though so drink up :P. Armor can be picked up as well. Armor in this game reduces damage taken by 1/3. It's actually pretty decent especially with full armor. Besides your primary range weapon which is assigned to the "Z" key (which btw you can change at anytime in town at the shops), you can also purchase another weapon that gets assigned to the "X" key. If you have problems making money or you want to try out all the stuff in the store. There are some side jobs at the local Mercenary hub you can do to gain some cash.

I didn't quite notice this at first but there's a small collection feature that wasn't really expanded on. You can find a few random items in town and about. These items are then placed on Sarita's dinner table at her house when you pick them up. Pretty fun idea though hehe.

All in all, gameplay is definitely really good for a week's worth of work! I can tell Ocean spend quite a bit of time on this cosidering how entertaining this short game was.

Bad:
I would honestly love to give this a better score. There wasn't anything significantly wrong with the gameplay at all besides one HUGE lag issue triggered by any action that activates the auto ammo update script. In other words, picking up ammo, shooting, etc will trigger a massive amount of lag. This is the sole reason why I didn't give this section a score of 4 or 5. Ocean had some problems with a particular script he used to help monitor this process. Normally, in rm2k3 he could have just displayed the data via pictures or something. In any case, that's the bad. I think another issue which was probably out of Ocean's hands because of the time restraints is... The enemies aren't really interesting at all. They just walk up to you and do damage through contact lol. In the future, maybe some of the enemies can do some cool attacks :P. Enemy A.I requires a bit more time to really make them realistic anyways.



Graphics: 4.5/5

I thought it was well done. I didn't have any major complaints. There's quite a bit of customization done but obviously not amazing groundbreaking stuff. The maps were pretty decent. The drops you pick up were pretty neat and recognizable. The art for Adalyn is really good. The system set and menus are easy on the eyes and it's easy to tell where everything is. Everything is also colorful too.

Music:4/5

Simply loved it, I won't go into where everything came from as they are in the credits at the end of the game (play the game :P). But, I actually noticed some nice tunes while playing the game. Usually, in a lot of games I don't notice at all.

In Conclusion

I guess I'll finish off by saying this game definitely has a lot of potential. It actually feels really weird in that something like this can spawn into a full game without much effort at all... As the ground works have been already been worked out. That really goes to show you how much effort Ocean must have put into this in just one week or less. *tips hat. I suggest you give this a shot. If that lag issue was ever addressed, this game would be really cool!