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A Branching Story Game About Humans and Gatekeepers

This is a demo review.
This is a demo review which is available in 24 April 2017.

My playtime: 05:21:47 (based on internal clock)

Intro
Gatekeeper is a game about some gatekeepers, a kind of human breeds with special skills and longer lifespan, which tries to stop or join war between gatekeepers and humans. This game has a lot of features like other turn based RPG Maker games such as skills, equipments, with an addition of status enhancing items and various unusual special effects.

Music
I hate the music in main menu--the "slithering" sounds is very annoying. The in game music, however, sounds good with the theme. I'm not really sure which genre the music is (perhaps metal?) so i can't say much about it. The battle music, however, sounds annoying when you leave the game opened in other tabs (it still sounds great when you hear it while playing the game though).

Graphics
This game uses a lot of beautiful custom graphics (especially the backgrounds). The backgrounds and the character graphics match perfectly. The mapping however, looks very simple because all indoor maps are replaced by the beautiful backgrounds.

Story
To be honest, i don't really remember much of the story, which mostly because i played this game in short sessions. The story itself has a lot of serious conversation in it. The game also has multiple branching paths which will affect the story line.


Aside from the branching story line, sometimes you are given an option to do some "exploring" before continuing with the story line.


Before i forgot about it, most texts are using a gray colored font. However, there are some white colored font near the end of the demo.

The game
The game starts with battle tutorial. It explains all basic things which you mostly know if you have played a lot of RPG Maker games. The game however, uses unusual terminologies such as "gate" for skills, "get report" for status, "life line" for hp, and so on. This includes status effects. While there are some status effects such as paralysis and sleep (slumber in the game), there are status effects which i don't even know until i finished the demo such as "hushed" and "deranged".


I didn't jump.


Some enemies will give you more than one status effects in one attack and what usually happens is that the character will be unable to move. These status effects usually has a counter which will specify when the status will be "automatically" cured. However, in some occasion, status effects such as sleep will not cure itself after the counter downs to 0.

There are no random encounters in the game. Although the enemies in the first "dungeon" doesn't respawn, the enemies in the other dungeons will respawn after you reenter the area. You also can "push back" most enemies to avoid battle. The battle itself is quite difficult and you can get killed if you aren't careful. There is also no way to restore MP in game. Luckily, there is this "glittering" spot where you can restore your HP and MP after each battle. You can also save whereever you want as long as it's not in battle.

There will be boss fights in each dungeon. Some bosses like Neti (first boss) and Aevis (third before the last boss) tend to be very strong and you must use items to beat it. Neti, the boss in the first dungeon, can even one shot one of my party member and there is no way to counter it except by using items since you can't grind for levels (even if you can grind, leveling one or two more levels won't do much anyway).

Party members will come and go fast. Each party member will have their own skillset and weapons although i can't seem to find a way to switch party members when you have more than five people in your roster.

Speaking of skills, there are 2 type of skills in this game. One will use MP (called GS in the game) and the other will use something that you usually call TP in other game. The latter one, however, doesn't explained much and it's hard to tell how many TP do you have. The only thing i know is that it will mostly recharged after each turn and each battle. Strangely, there is TP cost in the skill menu which makes it look useless.

The game "lags" when you navigate through the menu. The game "lags" in an area (Dreamscape), where there are a lot of patrol bots attacking you. Speaking of patrol bots, the patrol bots scene is very annoying because the bots won't stop when you are talking to NPC and you'll guaranteed to fight them all when you accidentally touch one (there will be like 3+ other patrol bots with difficult fights waiting) and (probably) die.

Pros:
- No random encounters
- Short and simple dungeons

Cons:
- Some boss fights require items to beat
- Unusual terminology

Conclusion
This is a game which focuses in its story branching with difficult fights.

--

ps: this game has some graphic bugs.
- First tutorial enemy "floats" in the water (the "glittering" spot is also hard to see in that spot).
- Party members shown in other places in the same screen (see on the top of the house).
- "Trailing" sprites on the left part of the NPC.
- When you go up from your current position, you'll pass through the car.
- In Paolo's house (after second dungeon), inspect living room, and then inspect bathroom. The "Rest" option is gone after that and you have to reinspect living room to make it appear (and you'll get another ill guard and rechoose whether you destroy or pocket the photo). After you inspect living room, the living room option is replaced by "Rest".

Lastly, i don't know if this is intended or not, but you can't go back to check your bag for password when you're asked to input a password in Dreamscape's basement. You have to restart the game if you forgot the password.

Final rating: 3/5
This is a good game. I'm looking forward to its completion.

EDIT: i forgot that this is a demo and give a rating.. removing it now.

Posts

Pages: 1
Thanks a lot for the review! You gave me a lot to think about
author=Yeaster
Thanks a lot for the review! You gave me a lot to think about
no problem :) good luck for the game!
Pages: 1