Take Down : Lambs of Destiny

Storyline- 3/5
I used up my good summary in the tagline already.

You begin the game as Black Belt from Final Fantasy 1. You're in a charge of 8-Bit for Hire, a down on their luck mercenary group who is having trouble paying their rent. On your way to visit your landlord in his opulent castle you encounter a pokemon who has been tied to a chair and forced to watch teletubbies for 24 hours straight. After freeing him and having him join up you decide the landlord deserves a good murdering, or maybe you just got sick of paying rent. Once you return a shady mafioso hires you to sneak into off world medifical facilities to scramble the DNA of a clone army and from there things start to get a little weird. The world of this game is basically composed of a collection of various video game worlds, obviously drawing a lot from Kingdom Hearts. You spend the game rapidly hopping from one strange world to the next, accomplishing your objectives while recruiting all manner of crazy characters to your group.

The story really goes out of its way to include references from a multitude of sources. Final Fantasy, Pokemon, and Kingdom Hearts seem to be the majority but you'll see characters from all sorts of popular franchises as well as a few obscure things. The references are not limited to video games as you'll run into several things from movies and the occasional sitcom. Sometimes it's a little excessive in that the game seems to include a lot of references just for the sake of being references. Although this didn't particularly annoy me I felt like there were a lot of lost chances to make jokes instead of just shoving characters in your face. Thankfully where the jokes are present they're usually funny.

Battle System- 2/5
Battles are ridiculously easy, but also extremely short.

The game uses the rm2k3 DBS and doesn't take a lot of effort to balance it or make it interesting. Fortunately, combat is not much of a focus at all. Nearly every single encounter is unique and your entire party gains a level each time they win a fight, even characters that have yet to join. Early on not much is required of you other than mashing the attack button, and a bit later later into the game you get a few powerful spells that completely decimate bosses before they have much chance to move. You can also gain party levels by completing minigames or performing certain special actions and if you go out of your way to complete these things the game becomes even easier. Generally character ability sets are tied to their respective universe which I thought was a pretty nice touch. Black Belt only has the Fight command, pokemon use special attacks any pokemon player would be familiar with, and black mages stick to the classic Final Fantasy spell list.

Characters- 4/5
They're all familiar faces, but there's a twist to each personality which makes the whole thing very entertaining.



Naturally since this is a sort of kingdom hearts parody it's completely stuffed with characters taken from a multitude of sources. Instead of just copying character personalities wholesale there's always some spin on the character, most of which are pretty entertaining. Most of these characterizations focus on some popular trait of a character and exaggerate it to an extreme. So you'll get a Mario who is completely blitzed out of his mind from doing way too many shrooms, or a super slurring Sean Connery. A lot of them are very well written and the main characters have a lot more personality and depth than you'd expect out of a game like this. Since the main focus of the game is its crazy plot its important to have a likeable cast and this group of crazies definitely kept me playing until the end.

Level Design- 3/5
Simple and functional.

I don't really have a lot to say about this category. Level design is extremely simple but functional. Your walk speed is quick, there are no random encounters, and the objects you can interact with are usually extremely obvious. There are no real puzzles and you'll blast through the dungeons in a few minutes. The only thing of note here is that a few areas of the game have absolutely no tile passability so you can just walk over everything. However these areas are few and far between and since you'll be passing through them so quickly there's a good chance you won't even notice.

Graphics- 3/5
Styles clash every 5 seconds. But that's the point.

The game is mostly comprised of rips taken from various games and various custom resources that were likely designed for various fangames. On the whole maps tend to lean towards Legend of Mana and Secret of Mana though you'll encounter various others as well. Aside from the odd out of place character or two each map is generally consistent with its own style. It is definitely a little unsettling to switch graphical styles completely on nearly every single map, but the game uses special indicators at exits for tilesets where the end point is not completely obvious so despite the constant shifting it's pretty hard to get lost. Occasionally when an original setting or character is required the character has drawn it themself, and although these are quite simple they also look decent. Each main character also has their own unique drawn portrait that serves as their faceset during conversation.



Music/Sound- 2/5
Dozens of game soundtracks mixed together. The problem is you'll only hear the first 10 seconds of half of the songs.

The soundtrack is comprised entirely of various video game mp3s. Mostly consisting of popular tracks from the different worlds you visit and character themes for people you encounter throughout the game. There's an astounding variety but since a lot of the scenes are quite short and the battles are even shorter you'll miss out on most of the songs before they even get rolling.

Random stuff I liked-
Save points are accessed via helpful creatures known as Save Slimes. They are located all over the place and they all have something different to say about saving.

Mario is completely blitzed out of his mind. That is all.

Random stuff I hated-
Any time you pick up an item a horrible 'power up!' sound clip plays.

Spelling errors. The biggest of which is 'mercinary'. You'll be seeing this a lot throughout the game.

Final Thoughts-
Full of ridiculous references and a fast paced plot, if you're not looking for something serious this game is a lot of fun. It's a little too short and simplistic to be fully satisfying but if you're up for a lighthearted and extremely weird adventure it's well worth the few hours it takes to play through.