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I think you'll.. *DAGREE* that this is a good game.. OHOHO.

  • Caz
  • 07/09/2012 09:50 AM
  • 5490 views
Aha.. ha.. ignore the title, I'm sorry, I had to put it in somewhere. I blame this game for filling my head with bad puns!

I started this game with mixed feelings. I had already noticed that it was made in RPG Maker 2000, and this filled me with a certain dread combined with a healthy dose of nostalgia. I hopped right in regardless, expecting the worst. I was wrong - so very, very wrong.
I firstly noticed that pictures and sound effects were being used in quite an appealing manner to display certain scenes taking place. This was definitely something I was not accustomed to seeing in much earlier RPG2K games. Later on in some towns, I was particularly wowed by some puffing chimneys made with picture effects.

At the start, I was thrown into the story immediately, being told my main character - a Mr. Dagree - was a treasure hunter out for the fattest loot he could fit in his race-stereotyped pants pockets. I thought this was the beginning of a generic story.. in ways it was, yet it caught me off guard in a very lovely way. See, this was a generic story indeed: the misunderstood hero, the party of drunken fools groping at any and all alcohol they could snatch from the hands of old men in taverns, the age old quest of fulfilling a life goal - this was all indeed very cliché. But I didn't mind it, not one bit. The characters played it out well, bringing to life real motivations and depth that showed a broad personality and likeability I find hard to grasp in other games.

In the first town I was blamed for the death of a man and his child by their wife/mother, and I recruited some party members - It was time to start fighting stuff, yeah! I won't go into much depth on the story itself here, but I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of skills my party members were getting as they leveled, the different types of equipment I was finding all over the shop, and the amount of humour that was well-placed within this game.

One glitch I did notice in Cardell was in the shop, where a man browsing over some goods spoke to me. After he was done chatting, his sprite changed into an elf of some sort from a human priest. This is easily fixed and it wasn't so bad, as I was much too focused on the fact that every NPC I met had a personality of some kind, not just the party members I had dealt with.

Moving on to the nitty-gritty, I really liked the mapping in this game. It wasn't too cluttered and it got its point across very well. My only complaint was that certain buildings looked far too small on the outside to contain the interiors that they did. I wasn't too fussed on this, as it kept the towns very small and easy to traverse in few steps. I will instead blame this on some kind of crazy 'TARDIS' effect sweeping the island's architecture!

There were optional dungeons surrounding the town where I could grind happily, but boy, was I taken aback when I found that this was a game about treasure hunting.. with SO MUCH TREASURE! I was being smacked around from left to right with healing items after equipment after chest after chest.. and I was loving it. This was an incredibly rewarding aspect of the game, to go into each dungeon and pillage the pants off of it. The most fabulous part was that these were very non-linear dungeons. I was having to explore the map from head to toe to make sure I'd reaped the lot of it.

Naturally, near the "end" (or I guess the furthest away part from the entrance) of each dungeon was some kind of boss guarding some goodies. At the beginning, I liked how well balanced the fights were with the dungeons, and how my levels went along with each without a break in the flow.

In one dungeon, I was taught a passive skill: boulder pushing. I loved this. I had already seen a boulder back in town that was blocking a treasure chest - it was calling to me. I ran back there as soon as I found it, while having a chuckle over how I'd learnt this skill - Dagree read the sign, which said something along the lines of: "How to push stones: Get in front and push." I actually laughed out loud, despite the simplicity of this joke. The game is covered in these groan-out-loud references to other games and making fun of the usual RPG features, along with a lot of humour amongst the party members and the occasional NPC saying something strange. I had a weird laugh at one NPC who told me she "liked to pee". It was.. it was a dignifying moment for me. After this, I felt that some of the humour became a little bit cringey for me. Perhaps because I slapped myself in the face too hard for laughing at that NPC and my brain was shocked into realising what I'd gotten myself into.

After returning from a good hunt, I was greeted by a town overrun by guards who wanted to kill me. I liked this effect of how it seemed like the town continued to exist even though I was out killing monsters, and it felt to be very human and "alive".

I carried on with this game for quite some time, and despite having the best armour and having grinded on almost every single monster in the game by this point, I was having immense difficulty surviving even regular monster battles at times. It would take me about 8 times of dying to get past certain bosses. I gave up on the game in a cave when a monster called 'Knightmare' started kicking my ass from every direction, and I saw no way of killing it. I even specially installed RPG Maker 2000 to try and fiddle with some of the monsters in the database myself, but this was a daunting task that seemed much too time-consuming. I've been informed that Spirit intends to make a new release of the game with much less difficult monsters, so I hope everyone will try out that version. It really is a good game, it's just the insane difficulty that lets it down at times. All the frequent dying really breaks the game up and diverts your attention onto other things.

I wanted to give this game a 4.5/5. I took 0.5 off because I thought that, although the RTP graphics brought back a lot of nostalgia and they were well-placed, original graphics might have looked a bit nicer. I'm also going to take off 0.5 for the difficulty of the game, so it ends up with a 4. This is still a rating to be proud of, but I may go back and change this if the difficulty settings are improved.

Posts

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Lol! It seems we both agree on the difficulty Caz~ (Though Knightmare was actually pretty weak for me, and I beat him with a low leveled party! o_o)
Say whaaaaaaat? What was your miraculous ploy to do this?
author=Roy
Say whaaaaaaat? What was your miraculous ploy to do this?
Uhm..beat the hell out of it 'til it dies? xD
Ha ...ha...ha. No seriously. That guy is a real beyatch to beat.
Thanks for the feedback! I am going to have release the less stressfull version out because going back through the game I did notice how hard some enemies are. I looved the title pun by the way! My kind 'o slap stick humor! Nicew review by the way! Glad you found the atmosphere enjoyable! I'll give everyone a post when the fixed version comes out (and you will be able to use your old save files).
Caz
LET'SBIAN DO THIS.
6813
Despite some of my issues with the game like the difficulty, it was really enjoyable to play when I wasn't getting my ass handed to me. XD

When you upload the newer version, give me a bell and I'll update my review!

@Sana - then you must be crazy cool at this game, because pretty much every boss punched me in the face so bad. I resorted to spamming healing with every character bar two who would repeat an elemental weakness move..
author=Caz
@Sana - then you must be crazy cool at this game, because pretty much every boss punched me in the face so bad. I resorted to spamming healing with every character bar two who would repeat an elemental weakness move..
Lol, not really, though I did manage to make it to the final battle(I think?) where you fight both the king and queen together, and then get your ass handed to you when stilmonkey shows up out of nowhere! Now THAT is one insane battle which I couldn't beat even by spamming heals~ xD

I admit, I may have been a little underleveled with a team of lv35-37's~ B3
The secret to that fight is if you get yor dragon to level 40 he learns one of those "Make Entire Party Buff" spells!
Caz
LET'SBIAN DO THIS.
6813
I uhh.. I was still about level 20 when I was fighting Knightmare.. My bad..
author=spirit_young
The secret to that fight is if you get yor dragon to level 40 he learns one of those "Make Entire Party Buff" spells!
How to train your dragon, lol!
Level 20?! I didn't even think anyone could make it to the Knightmare with that level!

And yes, a trained dragon is a happy dragon.
author=spirit_young
Level 20?! I didn't even think anyone could make it to the Knightmare with that level!
Lol, well I beat it with a lv22 party, so 20 is certainly possible~ :)
Caz
LET'SBIAN DO THIS.
6813
Like I said, I was dying against regular monsters, soooo.. XD Level 20 is pretty pathetic.
Gotcha! I always tested the Kinghtmare area around level 26 or higher. I'm scared of my own games!! Aragh!!! Oh, I uploaded some pics of my next quest. They should be comming along any time!
I still like reading these reviews every once in awhile!
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