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More Weird than Wild... and in a negative sense

Welcome ti another review of another old game: Wild Universe, a complete medium lenght game with some nice features and pretty animations that in beginning attracted me. But beyond the pretty appearance there are some interesting ideas and unfortunately a subpar execution. But let's start the adventure with...

... a terrible menu screen: ow yes, there is a cyan background, the title written on the sides in bright red and some guys fighting a sort of Hydra. Flames. Other guys fighting. All somehow random BUT let's not judge the book by the cover!

The Good...
Ok ok many games I already reviewed looked bad, and this one looked better than them. While mapping for the dungeons is just ok (they are a bit empty but come on...these are dungeons!), I liked how the town and other locations were made (ok these places are sometimes barren and too large, still they are coherent and not too terrible), and I approved the chipsets and charsets used by the dev. I also liked the monsters and the battle animations: except for a couple of badly resized enemy sprites (ALWAYS resize a percentage value multiple of 100% to avoid ugly results) monsters look good. Characters perform various flashy attacks and these battlers (like the corresponding charsets) looks custom made. Neat!

Another thing I liked a lot is that there is a different reproach to combat: unlike most games you don't need to stock potions and other consumables (well, you cannot even do that since there are no shops or lootable chests lying around) but you are automatically healed after each combat! Even dead characters are revived.
Unfortunately the good things end here...


That Blop is the only bad golden thing I have ever seen!

... the Bad & the Ugly
Let's talk about the story: in this game we play as Allen, a spear wielding (ok that's original) strong (and rather dumb) hero that is going to fight (and win) in a martial arts tournament. Then we have Haze the thief, a guy that he's here just for the money. And then the only real big hero, “4100” or Jin, a weird cross between a green haired Benimaru Nikaido and Android 16 from Dragonball Z: a unarmed specialist sent by some scientists in the intro to recover the "Anti-Matter"! What is this? Well... erm it's complicated, let's say that it's something reeeeeally important, but the most important thing is that Jin has to save the world from the bad guys. Well, he probably should be the hero of the story since he's the only one doing something useful and not just tagging along for kicking monsters' asses!

Hmmm yes, the story is not so original or exciting, nor it is well written: there are many typos and many things make little sense. It's not particularly interesting and in the end it's just the excuse to explore some dungeons with many RANDOM encounters and some obscure and unexplained quests (like defeating some visible opponents to unluck a sort of boss enemy that if killed destroys an invisible force field that separates the party from the next zone, pity that no one explains anything). This would not be too bad if there wasn't TWO little problems: save points that are sometimes distant, especially from some hard boss fights, and crashes. Lots of them. So yeah, save everytime you make someting worthwile but prepare to serveral crashes.
Some example? There are some scenes like the one in the inn that repeats and the second time they are triggered freeze the game, or in other cases force you to repeat a certain section. Then I had some crashes when I was levelling up the characters, and this was rather annoying since I was in the middle of a dungeon.


Here... take one step forward and the protagonist will say he will rest a bit, but he's lying! Game will freeze and he'll rest forever!

And then there was the worst problem: the levelling system isn't bad, in fact there are some interesting ideas like the three switchable classes (fighter, rogue and alchemist), the points you can spend after you level up to improve the characters and the different modes of attacking, but it's everything unexplained! The only possibility is to try and experiment, but this isn't a simple system so, even if I find some concepts clever and interesting, the implementation and the lack of explanations ruin an otherwise nice experience.

I did not touch the music but it's for the most part ok, even if there are some great moments (like the final boss theme) and other that are not so great (I don't think that the music of the first dungeon was appropriated, it's too calm and relaxing, it doesn't match the mood of that part).

Verdict
Here's an important lesson from this game: there are some games that are nearly unplayable, bugged and with a badly written story that have some really clever and nice features hidden under a bad presentation and execution. I could say that this could have been a really good and interesting game, since the concept of a game with no consumables or equipment management and based around combat and levelling isn't bad. Difficulty is for the most part balanced. This is clearly an experiment gone wrong, but at least there was the bravery to experiment, anyway the game should have been tested more AND there should have been some kind of tutorial to explain the (quite complex) mechanisms. I could have accepted the shallow story and lack of characterization of the protagonists (they have no story, they are just involved in a power struggle and that's it!), but not the (many) game breaking bugs in a complete game.
Sorry. I saw what this game would have been in the mind of its creator, but unfortunately the result isn't what was expected.

So this was Wild Universe, a game that make me swear and curse like no other.
For some weird reason I played it anyway, still it gets a 2. Despite the buggyness it could be interesting to check for the combat system and some design choices, but you are warned!

Posts

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lol, thank you for the review. I created this game by exploring some random ideas that were different from a standard RPG layout. I may have been a little half-hearted who creating this game as well, due to who I was dating at the time. A total psycho, so I did lose focus alot. But Thank you for taking the time to review it!
author=Holydragoon
lol, thank you for the review. I created this game by exploring some random ideas that were different from a standard RPG layout. I may have been a little half-hearted who creating this game as well, due to who I was dating at the time. A total psycho, so I did lose focus alot. But Thank you for taking the time to review it!


Hey! Some ideas were cool indeed and I loved the charsets and battles. These were custom, weren't them? Not bad!
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
You've apparently never encountered the gold golem in Dragon Warrior (Quest).
author=pianotm
You've apparently never encountered the gold golem in Dragon Warrior (Quest).


I am almost sure I never played that.
Naw, they were all downloaded from charaproject.net
author=Holydragoon
Naw, they were all downloaded from charaproject.net


ow that site is dead, that's why I wasn't able to find the sources! ^^'
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