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Martians from Jupiter attack grammar!

Gourd Clae Reviews
~Pre-note~ Feel free to skip this)
Wraith is very entertaining and enjoyable, but it suffers from its various grammatical and spelling errors. Yes, I AM a grammar Nazi.[ This hopefully equally entertaining review will contain spoilers. To what degree, I'm uncertain. I'll also be basing the names of the music pieces off of their name in the music file. So, enjoy as I take this game apart(in a good way).

~Gameplay~
Seperated in several categories for your annoyance enjoyment.

Battles: For a majority of the game you'll have Kana in your party with various "Guest" members--the only of which that are useful are Cyrus and *Bites tongue* The Mutant. You'll eventually have 5 options: Lightstones, Flashlight, Hand, Run Away, and Gun. Gun is your primary way of dealing damage... and you don't get it until slightly after the halfway-point of the game has passed. So, you might be wondering: "Well, what do you DO in fights until then?" Well, you can stun the Wraith with your flashlight allowing you to run away. Or, use a lightstone to eject yourself out of the battle and temporarily spirit away the Wraith.
Personally, I think this is a GOOD design choice for the game (Though, I did find myself reeling around way too often to find the enemy). This leaves you running from the Wraith for a good amount of the game and creates a FEAR of it--ultimately making you think of it as some unbeatable entity. I felt jittery and excited when facing it for the last time lifting the weight of fear off my shoulders allowing me to feel relief. And you know what? It feels GOOD! My only other complaint is the "Hp" system. I could barely tell how much life I had, and when I could, the Wraith killed me with high health anyway.
4/5
Exploration: You've got a mansion, a lighthouse, a hedge maze, a mausoleum, and underground labs all on this itty bitty island. It definitely sucks you in and you feel like you're running around blind in a maze or fighting mutants in an infested laboratory. I very rarely found myself lost or not inquisitive about what's ahead and enjoying the things that I had found. Items on the map are represented with a shimmering light. This kind of got me when looking for the matches--they looked like the wardrobe doorknob! Not too much to say about this since you go everywhere naturally in the game. Though, I DID like how most old areas were reused.
3.5\5

Yes, it IS the second floor, isn't it?
~Graphics\Mapping~
Wraith obviously had a competent mapper. Most--if not all-- areas are mapped suitably and are nice to look at. ALl of the faces are drawn by NeoK and look great! ...Except for people with glasses, they look pretty strange. Also, Wraith is creepy in its first form--it looks like a spider! The cutscene pictures are helped to immerse you into the game's cruel world and they were well put together.
I could also see that you intentionally drew your scenes so you had to draw eyes as little as possible, but just enough that they didn't LOOK conspicuous. *Scrunches up face* I caught you! Also, the main character, Kana, and everyone else for that matter look like they're bouncing up and down rather than walking. Another GOOD thing( a few before this were bad things. Duh.) is that the manor is proportional to its outside, and floors. I definitely laughed reading about NeoK's "chimney" problems. All in all, this is a good looking game with only MINOR flaws, but flaws none-the-less.
4.5\5

YEAH! That bitch BOUNCED! But, is this really the time for a cat fight?
~Music\Sounds~
THIS is where Wraith really shines! They were all amazing and fitting. "Alchemist" during the reading of what's a the haunting poem created by Victor(or, at least in the story). Nightmare during the mutants' fights encouraged me to try my best(and has a great beat). Every piece is distinguishable and just has its own sense of " Hey, I'm a good song!". The only one I didn't like was the 2nd floor of the mansion's BG music--and that's because it scared the shit out of me every time I went there, so basically, for being TOO good! Koufuku no Zouhei (which is played during the intro) was my personal favorite- really made me feel like a great game was ahead and I was right!
As for the sounds, they were pretty good. I was kind of annoyed by the crackling fire sound for reasons I've yet to understand. And the Crickets annoyed me but that's because they're crickets- they're naturally annoying. All the other sounds fit perfectly, but there was nothing special about them. And why WOULD there be? They are just sound effects after all.
5\5

This is Kana being blonde. Why would you step into a lab with toxic looking gas around?
Oh? Plot convience you say? That explains EVERYTHING!

~Plot\Characters~
The plot is fine up until you get to the poison labs and then comes back after the octopus segment. Basically, Kana follows Cyrus and Mr.Valhallas to the labs. (So, Kana is nosy...) Then, the lab blows up and the Wraith comes after Kana. Mr. Valhallas saves Kana and blesses her(ONLY PART WAY! See second line of caption from above image) and doesn't finish completely until she desperately needs it. Good job. I see why you're dead. Kana goes back to get Lily and decides she won't believe her. Kana takes her to the lab, gets attacked by the Wraith, fends it off, and gets slapped by Lily who proceeds to have a retrospective moment(I would too after my "friend" led me to my imminent doom not telling me ANYTHING). Then, Lily forgives her. Period. They find their friends and the servants and lead them to the Living Room where they then become useless(other than some quite useful information and interesting backstory) until the end of the game. Let's skip ahead a little to Cyrus's death. He talks for 10 minutes and THEN he dies. That is after being revived by the dead guy. But, HEY it's a cool way to end Snyder. One last thing is that Kana stops to read Victor's diary before leaving the island due to blow up (I think?) in 20 minutes!
Despite my sarcasm and my focus on the BAD things, I enjoyed this game's plot.
4\5

Run! The Wraith-looking Martians from Jupiter are invading!
Possibly the best scene in the game. This scene alone is worth a 5\5

~Prelude~]
Wraith is a great game that I'd reccomend to anyone with a spine. Unfortunately, its score suffers from the aforementioned errors in grammar and spelling which made me laugh when I wasn't supposed to... But, I did enjoy this game. 4 just seems a little high, but 3.5 a little low. Too bad I can't give it a 3.8, because I would.
3.8\5
OFFICIALLY
3.5\5

Posts

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Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
This is a good review, it looks like the RMN submission form messed with your formatting a bit (It does that occasionally if you copy/paste) so you may want to go back in and edit the spacing for your paragraphs. Also, I'm not sure what the point of spoiling the entire plot was in your synopsis so you might consider using Hide tags.
Yeah, it did mess with my format...
I'll try to fix that and use some hide tags, but I DID try to leave out some of the best parts(like the mutant's name) and tried to focus on the beginning and end.
Thanks for the advice, though. Much appreciated!

Edit: I can't seem to get rid of those brackets next to my titles for the last few categories, so this'll have to do, and I'll try to do a little better next time I write a review.
Oh wow, first review of Wraith ever! Thanks a lot :).

I will forever be completely and utterly embarrassed by that martian cutscene.
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