Hello players!
This review is about Catharsis - demo v0.20, an interesting RPG Maker VX Ace game by Melkino (with music by Happy) started in 2011 and released in 2015.
The demo is almost two hours long and puts us in control of Moshi Cenalus, a mage.

Moshi Cenalus is a pink haired magician with experience in fixing and maintaining machinery, but her main interest is elemental magic. She lives in the port city of Dejanor and she's quite nervous due to the anti-mage sentiment and fear present in the area.
After a dangerous encounter with some rogues, she befriends the woman the helped her and learns of a forest called "Last Sanctuary", where the mages like her can live free, outside of the influence of the oppressive order of clerics that believes that mages are a threat to the society. So she starts a journey that will let her visit various places and meet different people...


Uhmmmm I'm sure we can work out a solution!

Catharsis is a classic story driven party based rpg, and it's pretyt easy even if you select the Hard difficulty setting, anyway this is the beginning of the adventure, so it was predictable. Anyway do not underestimate battles since there are no free-healing zones, but grinding isn't really required because leveling up as just the little effect of growing a little the bars for the energy bar, in any case for the most part enemies are visible and avoidable, except for some obligatory battles. Various items are used to add nex abilities (active or passive) to the party members, for example books for a magician like Moshi and bullets and weapon attachments for Leiko Fortena the gunslinger, in any case this is still a demo so you will just be introduced to these elements, and you won't find many of these special gear. Like other rpgmaker games Catharsis uses the TPs (earned attacking or being attacked) to power spells and abilities, but there is also a "Chain system" based on how many attacks you land that gives a stat boost. All kept pretty simple, but since this was the beginning it was not really a surprise.

Visually the game is in my opinion pretty, very pretty! The developer used a mix of classic rpgmaker resources and custom made portraits/facesets to create a game that does not like your typical fantasy adventure with wizards and dragons, it's more like a low fantasy steampunk world divided in different nations where magic user are oppressed by an order of clerics inquisitors. Pretty cool in my opinion, the setting has some dark/serious overtones but also interesting characters, even if being the beginning we cannot speak of development of course. But the art is very good, all the important characters are really well designed, and the battlers are nicely animated, I also liked the monsters, even if in the case of human opponents, they're clearly Milano-Cat sprites, anyway not bad at all!
Even if the demo isn't very long, for me the music selection is good and appropriate, I also liked the use of ambient sounda, for example inside the pub you will distinctly hear the sound of people talking, a really nice touch!


BANG! Eat lead, hideous creature of darkness!

Final Verdict
Catharsis - demo v0.20 is a really good incomplete game in my opinion, that shows lots of attention to the details and a good use of some original artworks that perfectly fit the game, giving a unique style to it. The setting is particularly interesting and the plot is simple but intriguing, My only gripe is that this is not a complete game, and it's the only flaw I can really mention because taken as a beginning chapter, it does everything in the right way and made me wish for more! What a pity!