(game completed, all extra bosses killed. i don't remember the playtime though since i played it in short sessions, but i think it's more than 12h.)

Intro
Chronicles of Tsufanubra is a RPG game where you'll play as a savior to save the world from the kjrns (the term of demons used in the game). There will be 4 playable party members which will be obtained as the story progress, each with different learnable abilities and equips.

Music
This game uses some old game musics and it matches with the environments very well.

Graphics
The mappings are great. I especially love the dungeon designs since they're so beautifully made. Although this might sound not important, you can't enter to most houses, including the shops. I also find the space in mayor's house in Ziazu to be very big.

There are also times when the exit or passage on the map aren't clear. I had a hard time locating some of the area's exit in Mountain Pass and this passage in Old Yurudos.



Story
To be honest, i have trouble in following up the first part of the story, mostly due to me being sleepy while playing the game and the game having long dialogues with some difficult words that's hard to grasp for non native english speakers (or perhaps it's just me?). Luckily, it becomes easier to understand later on since the characters are speaking in casual tone halfway through the story.

The characters also love to use mood bubbles. These mood bubbles animations (and all of the animations in the cutscene, actually) take a lot of time in the cutscenes, especially since the characters don't share the same bubble; they will execute the bubble animations in turn and.. there will be around 4 of them, more if one of the characters uses more than one mood bubble.

There are also some occasions where there are too many unnecessary commas in one dialogue that makes me have to pause a little just to understand the sentences.



Actually, i find it hard to relate to the characters. The savior and the healer are just too stiff when talking to each other while the royal guardian and the princess are just trying to joke around. However, it's quite good that the game spend some time in the interaction between characters, trying to address their concerns (they even have backstories!). The story also have some good plot twist and although the game has two endings, both endings are executed greatly. In fact, i actually like the bad ending more than the good one. The last cutscene is very long though. I wish i can skip it just to see the other ending.

The game
The first thing that i have to point out is about the downloaded file that gives a .lzh file inside the .rar file. If i didn't instinctively open it with winrar i won't be able to figure out how to open it. I'm wondering why there are double compressed file though since both of them have the same size.

The second thing is the game's title. RMN page says that the game's name is Chronicles of Tsufanubra, although the downloaded game has Dragon Fantasy as its title. I even have to go back to the download page just to make sure that i'm downloading the right game.



Moving on to the game, the game is just like your ordinary RPG Maker game; there are cutscenes, dungeons, and battles. However, i find that the game doesn't really balance them out - the cutscenes are way too long (mostly because of the animations) while the dungeons have too many enemies to be killed. There isn't random encounter in dungeons (although there is one in the world map) although it'll be better if you kill all enemies in the dungeon since you'll unlock a special chest by doing that. The enemies are also hard to kill - it might take some turn to finish the battle and you have to remember the weakness of each enemies in order to make your INT based party member deal some damage. I even have to write them down in notepad just to make it easier.

Speaking of INT based party members, you might learn some spells either by purchasing them in the shop or levelling up. You'll have to spend some MP to cast it and there's no way you can recover your MP except by going to a pentagram(?) circle , resting at the inn, or using items. Luckily, the dungeons don't have random encounters so you can dodge all enemies until you find a circle to heal (or just return to the entrance since most of the dungeons have it there). You might have to backtrack a lot because of this though, and it will take time if the circle is quite far (like the one in Mountain Tower, for example).

There are also some extra bosses that you can beat after you progress through some part of the game. These extra bosses are actually harder than the final boss itself and give better item or equip.

Since there are a lot of dungeons and you have to backtrack a lot, it's quite important to know the name of the places you've been to. However, the game doesn't really let you know the area's name unless from the cutscenes so you might have a hard time to figure out which is which.

There are also some equipments that you can wear which is specific to the characters. Some characters can use a lot of equipment types while the other can only wear one or two equipment types. However, i find it hard to see whether the equipment is better than the one in store because the arrows are quite hard to see.

As for weapons, there are a lot of weapons that the party member can wear and these weapons actually have their own weakness and resistances. These weakness and resistances matters in early game, although i find it to be quite useless in late game. The weapon itself also have their own properties which might be effective against certain types. It might be quite confusing to grasp them all. Plus, it'll be costly to invest in all weapon types.

Since you have to buy most of the available spells, you need to save a lot of gold. This actually quite works since you need to grind a little before advancing to each city.

To be honest, i got stuck a lot while i played this game. The backtracking between Borez and Yurudos and the last dungeon's "puzzle" (the one where you find the first orb) got me hard.

Pros:
- 2 endings
- A lot of different weapon types and weakness
- Extra boss fights

Cons:
- Slow animations in cutscenes
- The cutscenes are too long, the enemies in the dungeon are too many
- There's no way of knowing area name except from the cutscenes

Conclusion
This is turn based RPG game with long cutscenes and a lot of dungeons with non random encounters in it. There are also some character development in the story and challenging extra boss fights.