Final Story

Final Story is a Maple Story fan game, using the same world in which to tell a different tale than the one in the MMORPG. The events in this game take place in a future version of the world of Maple Story and whilst familiarity with the source material is not needed there are some in jokes which are probably funnier if you have it.

Before the game officially starts you get a decision tree, with a choice of types (offensive, defensive and magic) and then some questions about wishes and the importance of things. These choices do make a difference to your starting statistics in regard to HP/MP as well as strength, intelligence and agility as I tried a couple of combinations before I chose the ones that actually resonated with me and started the game.

As the game opens our protagonist and his friend are contemplating leaving their home on Maple Island and heading out into the big wide world to advance their careers and find out what they want to do with their lives. Zeru, the main character wishes to follow in his father's footsteps and become a warrior, his BFF Antlan is setting his sight on a being a professional thief, sorry rogue.


Seriously cutest battle wins expression ever.

Once the opening cut-scene has played through you get a quick tutorial and introduction to the battle system. It's side-view with quite a few custom scripts incorporated including the soul rage system by Blizzard, which is basically a limit break with access to a specific skill dependant on the accessory and/or weapon that the character has equipped, a running monster statistics indicator as well as HP damage indicator. In addition there are super cute animated battlers that have been modified or ripped, along with quite a few of the later graphics from the game, direct from Maple Story. Still they've been used well and like I said, super cute.

The remainder of the graphics in the game are all the RTP and whilst they don't have a great deal of flair, with the exception of the barrel/cart cutting graphic which is hilarious, and they do suffer from road to nowhere and big empty rooms on occasion they're used competently enough without many passages errors or obvious glitches. I wish the same could be said of the ring menu that the developer has included, the font size is too large and cuts off the text, luckily I'm pretty familiar with the format so I know what each symbol means. However the same error happens on occasion with the dialogue boxes and that is less easy to forgive as whist I know the chest symbol means items, guessing the last few words in a sentence is a little more problematic.

Since I'm covering the aesthetics at the moment the music is also taken directly from Maple Story in a lot of places as well as a few other known games like Kingdom Hearts and Golden Sun, but as the developer mentions them all in the credits I'm not going to kvetch, they are catchy and used well. One thing though the credits are actually shown early in the game and I was almost convinced that I had mistakenly downloaded a demo version since they kicked in as our two primary party members were leaving their home island, but after a moment the game continues on. It's an odd way to show them, but it does get it out of the way early.

This game is rife with custom scripts and additions; apart from the ones in the battle screen there is also an AP distribution system, a 'Monster Book' bestiary, Zeriab's walking caterpillar script, a day/ night system, moving shadows and a raft of others. Most of them seem to integrate pretty well and it never quite reaches overload level, but just like the ring menu script some of them could so with a little tweaking to make them more user friendly. The Monster Book for example is one page per monster with no index so if you want to check out a particular enemy you've dispatched you have to arrow through all the previous pages to get to the one you want rather than being able to choose from a list and access it quickly.

Once past the tutorial, Antlan joins the party full time and you make your way through the starter dungeon of the snail forest, complete with adorable coloured snails that try to randomly kill you. Yes unfortunately the battles are random and set at a pretty high frequency which does get a little tedious once you get to the point where you can one shot them, and Zeru seems to critical more than he doesn't so that happens a lot. You also get your first of many side quests, but since this is a Maple Story homage game that is to be expected as quests are a mainstay of the source material.

After a run in with a mysterious hooded stranger at the port town of SouthPerry and a bit of back story for Zeru's apparently dysfunctional family we set sail and arrive in Lith Harbour, the destination point on Victoria Island for travel from the other islands. This is where we meet Antlan's sister Serene, the third member of our troupe who wants to become a magician. A quick trip around the town gives a clue to stay until nightfall, and introduces us to the arena, a place that should be avoided at all costs for a long time unless you enjoy having your newly minted characters sliced and diced in two rounds or less. So after visiting the fairy night market and stocking up on supplies, some of which are quite remarkable, (and one of the funnier typos I've seen in an RPG)...


Could I have a Zao Jun, two Annapurna's and a Deipneus, please?

...we head off into the wilds of Victoria Island to our first career destination, Kerning City where Antlan will be able to undergo training as a rogue. Though seriously if there was an entire city devoted to the training of rogues, thieves and cutpurses I'm not sure I'd want to visit with my hard earned spoils of battle and treasure hunting and yes gaining gold in this world is hard, but hey what the heck let's do it anyway. Of course it's not that simple and there is an annoying locked door barring our path, and our trusty adventurer types can't just climb over it or anything, but have to go back to Lith Harbour to ask around. Luckily the developer has included a handy chest with a one use 'return to Lith Harbour' scroll inside so off we bamf. This brings to mind another distance shrinking device the developer has included, town to town teleport rings. They only work once they have been activated, which means you have to visit the town in question first but once you have you can avoid all that messy green stuff between cities and just pop around like you've got Scotty on speed-dial.

So we get the key to the gate via a fight with a terminally bored guard and head back into the wilds, no wait we go visit the elusive island off the coast first that we've been mysteriously told only shows up at night, get attacked by a trio of root vegetables and die. Right, reload from last save and avoid island. Important safety tip, island turnips are mean. Lith Harbour seems to be the place you go to die horribly. Probably best to avoid it until I'm level 90, or a god or something equally ridiculous, (as it turns out, level 40 is good enough).

So back to the road to Kerning City and through the gate we get a maze puzzle with a series of helpful hints literally signposted to guide us through the maze, but of course that is too good to be true, and it's an ambush. Yay! So once the pesky miscreant who lead the party up, down, left and right on the garden path is dealt with we are free to finally enter the city, right? Right? No of course not, you still have to get past another obviously bored guard with a puzzle and a fight, but once that's done in we go, whew. Seriously these guards are the hell spawn of bouncers and door bitches.

Though that does bring up a pet peeve, this game doesn't seem to remember when a puzzle has been solved and keeps resetting them as you exit and enter maps, especially the multitude of boulder pushing obstacles that get thrown in your way. Now whilst that works to correct a mistake and redo, these are more obstacles than actual puzzles and it becomes tedious to have to push boulders out of the way every time you wish to traverse an area more than once.

Skill learning is a mixed bag, everyone gets the same first level skills, Nimble Feet and Snail Shell Throw, but no more skills are learnt via the levelling up process. In order to advance your skill set you need to use the ones you have as multiple skill usage creates a more advanced version of the skill. However not all skills advance for all party members, Nimble Feet will upgrade to Haste, but only for Antlan, and it's not Haste in only the traditional sense but also activates the ability to use the dash movement on the maps. Charged Strike which is a skill of Zeru's has the ability to enable you to cleave through stone boulders and find what is inside, but you need to upgrade that skill to Final Strike in order to break open the tougher ore boulders later in the game. Certain skills have multiple advancements, for example Double Shot creates Triple Shot after 50 uses and Triple Shot creates Strafe after 200 uses. However not all skills have a upgrade and you don't know which ones will enable a better skill later so it's a bit hit and miss. In addition skills can be gained via tomes, some of which require you to hunt down missing pages and give them to a certain character; some are whole tomes that enable you to learn the skill once you give them to the right person. Those skills can also be upgraded via the multiple uses dynamic.

Now back to the game, inside the thieves town and we set about finding the lair of the thief lord, which really isn't so much a lair as a dank basement under the inn, and Antlan gets his upgrade from beginner to thief, with the addition of a couple of much needed extra skills and the ability to be mean to his enemies in battle.


Now that's just rude, can't you see they don't have mouths?

Now did you notice something different about that battle screen-shot in comparison to the first one, other than the additional party member that is? Go on scroll up, I'll wait....yes, the window skin has changed! Every major area of the game changes the window skin, so on Maple Island it's all green and lush, on Victoria Island when you enter the port it becomes sea blue and the above is after you've visited the desert on the road to Perion and we've got shades of ochre. Yet another custom script in action.

So after reaching Perion and allowing Zeru to follow his dream and become a warrior we get another visit from our mysterious hooded stranger, or it may be a different mysterious hooded stranger, he/she is hooded after all, and anyway they all look the same, and we get to meet the final member of our party, Royke; he of the yellow outfit and ambitions to be a bowman. After a bit of a challenging battle the party gets mysterious warped out of town just as we are handing Night, the name of our hooded stalker (so it was a different one), his nethers, which is a little disappointing but hey since we've been warped to the town of the magicians at least it's saved us some shoe leather. Right off we go to find the guy in charge, lucky for us the doddery old man Archmage Grendel has 'borrowed' a bit of the energy of the bow from the bowmaster-general Athena. Really if you're going to go with a Greek goddess name then picking Artemis the mistress of the hunt who actually uses a sodding bow would have been more appropriate, but it's a Maple Story tie-in so I can't really blame the developer for that one. So as well as Serene becoming a magician in her own right, our newest recruit Royke can get his stripes too and become a fully fledged bowman. Royke in a rare display of garrulousness and a fair degree of perception asks why they are getting the fast track and Grendel gets to launch into a doom laden monologue and we get the overarching quest object.

It seems that those hooded stalkers are members of the Dark Order; a group of ne'er-do-wells who are intent on obtaining ultimate power for their leader. The way they intend to do this is by collecting the five crystal cores of Victoria Island, and it's up to our intrepid band of newly minted professionals to stop the evil doers in their tracks and protect both the Island and the world in general. Well it's not like our guys had any other plans since they've all be accepted into their relative guilds now, they were just going to mooch around, practice their recently acquired skills and brag about stuff they haven't actually done yet to pick up, may as well have an enemy to vanquish.


Antlan don't, you'll just walk into a tree.

So start the clock, people, it's now a race against time to get to the cores before the Dark Order does and foil their nefarious plans. The remainder of the game is spent traipsing back and forth around Victoria Island, occasionally running into hooded villains and kicking them in their well clad arses, whilst simultaneously searching through dungeons and temples for, and being invested with the power of, the cores, sorry that's actually a PR spin, they're really stars. For some reason the person in charge of hiding these artefacts of power thought the term cores denoted a less powerful object. Personally I think whoever it was needs to retrace his steps to obfuscation school and pay attention when the teacher speaks. Still, I digress. It seems that each of these five stars corresponds to an element and wouldn't you know it each of your party members has an affinity to one of the elements and can gain some extra skills and stats through being infused with the power of it. But wait you say, there are five stars and only four party members, nice catch, and as to who can use the power of the fifth star, well that would be a spoiler, so you'll just have to play to find out.

These stars add an ability to transform the character that can wield them, complete with an updated battle sprite, to do so requires the soul rage meter be at 100% and then you can activate the star in battle. There are a couple of little quirks with this system, one is that it last for four rounds so if the battle finishes before you've completed those four rounds it stays active and you are walking around glowing like radioactive waste. That doesn't have an effect except in one area where you can't proceed if you character is all starred up, but it does mean that when you start the next battle you are able to use the additional skills that come with the upgrade straight away. The other quirk is that though it does stay on for four rounds you can only use the upgraded skills for three, you can choose one of them at the start of the round but when it gets to your action the star fades and you lose a turn so it's a good idea to keep track of how many rounds there have been and when it gets to the fourth choose an non-upgraded skill or attack to use otherwise you'll lose a move. One other thing to be wary of, the star ups HP/MP whilst it is active but just like the other bonuses those disappear when the character reverts to non-starry form, if the damage you've taken whilst upgraded is higher than your normal level then when you revert you can find yourself on 1HP. I never reverted to being dead but it was as close as you can get.

Of course nothing is as simple as it appears and you'll have to deal with heartbreak and betrayal, redemption and restitution, alternate personalities and memory walks, conflicting loyalties and the bonds forged of blood and friendship before you make it through to the end.


Fourth wall breaking, but important safety tip.

There comes a point where you begin to be given character choices, question asked by a number of the party members of each other and where those choices affect the outcome of the game and the ending that you get. Getting the good ending is actually quite difficult, you need to make the right choices each time, even one wrong answer will mean you miss out on it. Still you will get an ending that tallies with the choices you make so if you decide that a certain character doesn't get a chance at redemption then that's the ending you'll get, if you want to give them the benefit of the doubt and follow through on that belief with each choice then you'll be able to see that ending. One thing of note, the game does not end with the 'ending' at least not if you get the good one. If you do manage to achieve it then you'll gain access to a bunch of additional content, included some optional bosses, a bit of back story for Royke and a final upgrade to those killer weapons you've been carrying around for a while.

There is one section late in the game where you are reduced to a party of one without any multi-enemy damage skills and are in areas where multiple enemies are common that can a tad tedious, as there is never any chance of you being overwhelmed by these enemies, so it just become a bit of a button mashing slog-fest. However this only takes place in one area and doesn't last too long, though it feels longer than it is, so whilst it could have been done better it is by no means a game breaker.

In the latter stages of the game you also get to try out a few extracurricular activities such as mining, which leads to smelting which leads to refining, fishing which in once instance leads to one of the harder battles in the game, tome hunting for additional skills and cooking (good thing you bought those cooking gods early on). Some of these pursuits eventually enable you to craft the best weapons in the game, with the help of something that resides on the island of the killer root vegetables just off the coast of Lith Harbour.


Die you mutant hybrid turnip mandrake things, die!

There is a very perverse sense of pleasure being able to turn those animated turnips into something you'd put in a pan and drizzle with olive oil and rosemary. And I think that in itself encapsulates just what it is I like about this game, it's just fun. Yes there are a few graphical and grammatical errors, yes there is some balance issues early on, and the plethora of additional and optional content can at times feel a little too much, but in the end it's just plain fun to play. The characters are pretty formulaic and the quest to stop evil by the collection of a bunch of mystical artefacts is as generic as they come, but I find I just don't care. I had fun. Whether it was the unending positivity of the characters in the face of overwhelming odds, the hammy dialogue on the part of the villain and his cronies, the unintentionally hysterical typo's, the catchy music and yes modified but really cute sprites I don't know, but put it all together and it worked. It shouldn't; but it does.

Or at least it does for me because I spent 15+ hours playing this thing and I don't consider a moment of that to be wasted. I have no idea if this game will work for anyone else the way it did for me, but I was truly pleased to discover that the developer is not only continuing to work on this, even though it is listed as completed, but has actually created an additional two sequels (which is where that additional content and upgrades from the good ending can be handy). Unfortunately they are not housed on RMN, but I'm going to drop a line in his forum to see if he'll cross post the other two over here as well.

So in the end, play or don't. I did and I had fun, if you pick it up hopefully you will too, which is the point of all this, after all.