Breach: Awakening

Hello prisoners!
welcome to a review of Breach: Awakening, a really peculiar Rpgmaker2003 game made by KillerWolf, that unfortunately exists only as a demo, released in 2012.
It's not a mystery that this game takes some inspiration from Shin Megami Tensei, and not just because of the first person visuals (wait, is this rm2k3? Well, YES it is!).

As soon as you start a new game, you're assaulted by a LOUD music and a female newscaster appears, telling something about an incident: something really bad happened at the A.E.S. Lab downtown, and a spokesman for the corporation claims that the incident has been contained... but we know that these corporations claim to control the things they cannot hold! Anyway the area is evacuated...
Then the game moved to Lucas Kessler, our hero protagonist and alter ego, a highschool student that for some reason wakes up inside a cell of what seems and underground complex (that reminds to me of The Hive from the Resident Evil series). It's clear that some organization wants to make some experiments on him and on the person of the next cell, the only other individual he can speak to... suddenly the door opens due to a fluke power surge, and Lucas can exit the cell, but what's going ok?


Whoa! I expected to talk with some npcs, but not to talk with ghosts! But who are "THEY"???

This is the beginning of Breach: Awakening, a first person rpgmaker adventure. The game uses a fux first person perspective and a movement over tiles like in the good old games set in fantasy dungeons, such as the Eye of the Beholder and Ishar series, all derivated from Dungeon Master. This means that you move forward with the up arrow, while left and right let you turn around. Enter/z is used to interact with the surroundings, and Esc instead opens a series of other options: search the zone (useful in some quests), open the menu (to manage party, items and heal), rest when in safe areas, and save (do that often, because it costs nothing!).
Unfortunately there is a little problem here: to move around you have to keep the keys pressed, and that's probably because that's handy when walking through a long hallway, but I wish there was a sensitivity control since this is really a pain when turning around.

Exiting the cell begins our dungeron crawling adventure, and I admit I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that we won't meet just hostile monsters (like zombies, ghosts and faeries) but also some Npcs that will give us quests and companions that will join the party. In the beginning in fact Lucas is pretty weak, and alone he won't last long (he's just a highschool student!) especially when outnumbered, but luckily he can find some help... from some bizarre creatures! Like in Shin Megami Tensei there are some peculiar beings with different abilities that can be added to the party providing assistances in battles.

Oh yes, the battles! The game uses a classic rpgmaker random encounter battle system (the rate is quite high in my opinion) even if there are some places that provide obligatory encounters again special monsters (sometimes optional) and also some instances in which you can make an area secure, allowing the party to rest and restore all HP, while only Lucas can recover MP, for the companions that is a little more complex.

Unfortunately, since this is a demo, there are some glitches and bugs: for example you can be trapped in a dialogue loop with the ghost if you talk without the needed item, and you can get some dalogues with the guardian even if you still have to add him to the party! So my advice is to save often and in different positons, especially when exploring the labyrinthine complex: the game is about exploring, finding codes and keycards to proceed through locked doors and shafts, so it's pretty boring walking and fighting a lot of time to find a locked door and understand that you took the wrong turn before and you have to go back and search for that key! Better reloading (even if consumables and experience points are a good reward!). I also did not like the absence of vending machines... I mean a mail in a computer of the complex mentiones these, and they would have been a valuable source of healing items, instead you have to HOPE to encounter the enemy type that drops them! Siiiigh. It's a hard life!


This game includes classic battles! The Megaten/Persona feel is great here!

Final Verdict
Breach: Awakening is a good looking game that's unfortunately a bit rough and quite unpolished, but with some little improvements it could have become a real classic. The plot isn't really original and combat is the usual rpgmaker 2k/2k3 system with also the much hated infinite and frequent random encounters, still it's a visually charming game (even if the hi-tech dungeon does not provides a lot of variety of locations, of course) with a powerful, evocative atmosphere of isolation and dread well complemented by a sounds and music. If only the input system was smoothed and some bugs ironed out, this would have been a really better experience from the gameplay point of view (it's clunky, still many good ideas here!), and for this reason I am not confortable with leaving a rating.
After all this is a demo, but in any case if really I had to it would not be less than 3.5/4 for me. Pretty cool!