Being that this is my first time ever enrolling into this site, I figured I might as well get straight to it and make a review. Here's my review for Enelysion, a story centered around love, fear and ultimately, death (or at least that's what it says it will be. This is only an hour-long demo, and the story hasn't exactly been explained too much as of yet.)

Let's get straight to it, shall we?


Gameplay

The battle system for the game is relatively simple, yet maintains enough variety to remain interesting. It's your usual RPG battle setup; a turn-based side-view battle system, with slots for a basic attack, skills, guards, and items. What's different is that there aren't any random battles. I haven't played any other RPG Maker games, nor have I really played too many games where random encounters actually happen (aside from maybe Pokemon), so I can't really praise it for that. I will say that it helps maneuvering in the dungeons.

What's interesting to me is the conditional auto-skills that are used whenever certain conditions are met. For example, when Laine goes into low health, Wrath gets activated automatically, or when Rolf goes into low health, Laine uses some sort of defense spell on him. I really like that.

The only things I'll harp on about the battle system is the overuse of states within the battle field. Don't get me wrong, states are pretty cool, and I encourage the fact that it's more prominent in the field. The only thing I would change about this is the effects of a few of the states. Paralysis, for example. If both Rolf and Laine happen to be paralyzed by the paralysis whip guys (I forgot their names), you're basically screwed. Neither of you can attack or run. You might as well pull a game-over and leave it at that. I know there are items that prevent paralysis, but there should at least be a way of preventing that scenario from happening, or at least having the chances of that happening be low.

The skill buying system is a nice touch to what would have been a rather dull skill system. If I were to add anything onto this, I would also add a limit to the amount of skills you can have equipped to a character at a time.

Outside of battle, the entire world is incredibly open-ended. Lots of places are able to be explored, and every nook and cranny has some transport to another area of the field. I find this to be a strength, but also a weakness. While I enjoy being able to actually explore areas and find items hidden within them, it should also have some sort of general direction to it. The quest the guy at the bar gives you (I forgot his name) isn't implemented yet, but even then I had no clue where to go. He mentioned something about Rez-something and left it at that, assuming the player actually knows the area. This problem can be easily fixed - have a map of some sorts that shows where the player needs to go and the paths they can take to get there.

Rating: 4/5 (Just needs a bit of polish here and there, and it'll be perfect)



Story

As of yet, the story hasn't been expanded all too well, but that's expected of the first chapter of a game. The intro tells the tale that the world 3000 years ago was thrown into chaos by beings called the Nyx. The world went into war with itself, and the Nyx just sat back and laughed. That is, until a young boy went up and defeated the Nyx and its leader, Archsage Atheon, single-handedly. Unfortunately, his name became cursed, the world fell into civil war, until a series of unnamed extraordinary events reversed that.

Admittingly, the backstory won't be winning a prize for the most original story ever. World at war, single person rising up to save it, unbearable curses on our protagonists...we've seen and heard it all. But hey, it works, doesn't it? Don't fix what isn't broke, as they say.

The story then turns to our protagonist Laine, a mercenary currently taking whatever commissions she can get so she can remain financially stable. As she defended a caravan from bandits, she discovered a mysterious blue stone, who she hands to her priestly, frail, pacificstic friend-of-12-years, Rolf for analysis. She then goes to get a commission from a mysterious robed man, who says that evil is on its way and they should watch their backs from now on.

In terms of hooking in the character, the main story is...rather bland and cliche. Cliche's aren't a bad thing, but they only really work if there's innovation along with it.

What really stands out to me the most is the effort the producer put into creating the NPCs. While not mind-blowingly three-dimensional, you can certainly tell that they all have their own individual personalities besides the basic 'here's a tidbit of information! Bye bye now!' This is really pretty prominant in the bar 'Dirty Dogs.' The dialogue between characters is believable, and a few of their lines made me chuckle a bit (or groan and slap my head at their stupidity. It was written stupidity though, so that's good!)

As far as the protagonists go, Laine and Rolf need polishing, to put it mildy. Laine in particular irritates me. She comes off as selfish, overconfident, she acts like she's infallible, and is generally kind of an ass, pardon my language. I mean, she pulled a knife on her contractor! I won't make too many judgements right now considering this is only the first chapter of the game, and even if Rolf says that she never did that before, it's still horrible. It's a personal opinion, but I don't like her. Rolf, on the other hand, is developed a lot better. However, the after-battle lines get annoying after a while. He says he doesn't like fighting, even after he's killed a good three dozen of wisps and spiders and wasps. I suppose that's gameplay and storyline segregation, though.

Rating: 3/5 (I absolutely love the NPC dialogue, but I just don't like Laine very much.)


Music

All music is wonderfully put together, and many of them work well in the places they're in. They may not exactly be catchy, but they're certainly not droning. My favorite is the song that plays on the merchant's trail. Really upbeat and fun. I like how the producer also put in the background noises of the areas within the song.

Rating: 4.5/5 (I didn't like a few of the songs, but they work in the areas they're in and that's what matters)


Graphics

Overall, the graphics in the game are really impressive. Everything works where it needs to be, and it's far from being square and dull. There are a few problems with the light overlays, though. While it looks good on a still image, when moving it makes it look like I have sunlight blocking my monitor instead of it being beams of light within the game. There's also some really odd passage settings in some areas (I'm able to walk on the roof between the weapon and armor shops, I can walk through the wall in the mansion to the north, a few stumps can be walked on...). Additionally, there's a few misplaced shadows, but that can be easily fixed, so I won't put it against the game itself.

Rating: 4/5 (The light overlays are annoying, and the passage settings set the player off, but with a bit of editing they can both be fixed pretty easily.)


Overall Rating: 3.5/5 (Overall a fun game! I'd recommend playing it and I'm eager to find out how it goes! Just a few graphical fixes and some small rewriting and it would be perfect!)