Lost Dreams: The last Magus

Hello!

Lost Dreams - the last Magus is a rpg game released in 2012 as a demo, made by a team of developers lead by Jeroen_Sol. It's a classic jrpg inspired by the Final Fantasy series, but it has a distinct modern setting.

In this game we play as Steve (even if you can edit the name, if you really want), a shy but nice 15-years old boy that practices fencing and goes to school, as every other kid of his age, like his friend Jake. Unfortunately the town is apparently infested by some poisonous rats, and that's for probably the reason why Jake walks around with a gun, anyway this is just a mild annoyance: the world in fact faced a terrible crisis in the past that was won by the powers of light (and Seraph) and that saw the end of magical creatures and magic (considered an evil power used for destruction by most people).
In this demo Steve will go to a pair of lessons, will quarrel with a redhead bully named Bruce, and will also get a girlfriend, Lucy. But the real adventure starts when, accompanied by Lucy and Jake he will have to stuy the local wildlife, for an assignment of the Biology class...


In this game there are no armors, but t-shirts, and no potions but burgers! And you will never have too many burgers, trust me!

Lost Dreams - the last Magus, aside for the modern setting that includes guns, cars, burgers and modern clothing, is a classic jrpg game, even if it takes place in a world where magic is shun (even if shops sell magical scrolls, but I guess these are considered weapons like a gun, and aren't hated as a sorcerer that can unleash elemental attacks) and enemies consists not in monsters but in feral animals (from the poisonous rats to wild cats, mad dogs and swarm of bees) and normal bad guys (I mean no orcs, elves or undeads, just humans!) even if I supposed that the story was going to surely have a supernatural turn later (it's about the last Magus after all!).

Concerning the gameplay it's a classic adventure with exploration of various areas that contains chests of loots, random battle encounters, obligatory main quests and optional sidequest. Characters are restricted to equip a single kind of weapon. starts with zero abilities and level up killing enemies.
This would be all ok if it wasn't for a couple of problems: the first is while our heroes have no abilities and just some rare useful item that can help in battle, enemies instead have a variety of attacks (rats can poison, bats can drain life, and the bandits can one-shot the entire party with explosive attacks!) and are pretty powerful, while our characters take a lot to level up and the best weapons and equipment available do not help much.
Another problem is that you can save anytime while in town (that's plagued by encounters with the poisoned rats) but NOT on the world map or inside the dungeons. WEll to tell the truth there are TWO good things: the first is that every harmful condition ends after the battle, and the second is that killed characters are revived with 1 Hp. IT's not much but it's something I guess!

The graphics: I'm not an expert of RPG Maker XP but I'm pretty sure that even if there are some RTPs (some chipsets and the battle backgrounds), there are also many edits or custom made assets or maybe taken from some packs. The final resul is pretty cool for what concerns the outdoor maps and just ok for the indoor areas: these aren't really bad but I think they're a bit "bare bones", for example the classrooms looks more like cells, with not even a locker, the kitchens in the houses consists of just a table with some knives (no fridge, no cupboard, nothing!). There are also some errors on positioning regarding the battlers (that looks like they're walking on the walls!), and it's visible on one of the pics here.
Concerning the music, it's instead perfect: the game has an original OST that is still available on youtube and the composer did a very good job in my opinion. Anyway I'm still pretty sure that there are some sounds and themes that aren't original but it's ok.


Jake is so badass that he fights with a gun. Well, this time he did that rather badly! Sigh.

The Final Verdict
Lost Dreams - the last Magus is an almost good demo with two problems, one small and one big: the small one are the graphic imprecisions, that aren't really a problem, instead the big problem is combat: to progress the game requires lots of grinding and that's not really fun, in my opinion. Since the game is at the beginning you've few money, few not so powerful items available and no skills (even if you will find consumables that can recover SP points but... it's no use!) leading to having NO much strategies available in combat and not even the possibility of save-scumming that other rpgmaker games allow. Siiiigh.

But for the rest is pretty well made, well written and interesting. Final rating is: an ok game considering also its devo status.