The Four Spirits

Game Title: The Four Spirits
Engine: RPG Maker VX Ace
Status at review: Complete? (In progress/demo on the game-page)


Background:
Of late, I only seem to play games that come from contests that I participate in. I can't really say why, but there it is. As for this game, it was made for the VX Ace Nugget Crash Course. I played the version that was associated with the event, but did play later versions of the game. This review is based on the most recent version I played, which the creator told me was complete up to the final boss. Sure enough, I got to the final boss, and even got an ending.


Graphics:
All the games I played in the Crash Course used RTP graphics to some extent. This game is nothing but RTP. Which is fine by me. The mapping? I suppose I shouldn't be one to judge, but with this game, the towns seemed fairly bare. The walls of "internal" maps tended to be one-tile high, but this was not always the case. The castle comes to mind. In any event, the auto-tiling function made some walls look a bit jarring at times. If the game is supposed to have one-tile high walls, I would suggest to the maker to use the "Shift" key as tiles are placed. I'm pretty sure that technique from XP and VX is retained in Ace.


Audio:
This game uses the music found within Ace's RTP. Which is to say that I didn't hear anything truly awesome. I suppose I could at least say that the soundtrack was used effectively enough.


Story:
Players enter the shoes of the Shaman, Jacaranda. She is tasked by her mother to go on a journey to find the titular four spirits. Shamanistic training, and all that.

Players then go to a bandit tower to rescue a princess. Actually, players may not necessarily know that a princess is to be rescued at the bandit tower, but the tower is definitely a point of plot. At the top, you fight a bandit lord, and rescue the princess. Go figure! Returning the princess to her father will net players access to a new area, new baddies, and, eventually, the first spirit: the Spirit of Fire. You'd think taking to the Spirit of Fire would grant Jacaranda some sweet fire-based abilities. It doesn't happen. What does happen, though, is that the Fire Spirit joins your party.

The cycle of getting to a new town, getting access to a new dungeon, and getting a new character at the end of said dungeon, continues until you hit five characters. Then, the final dungeon becomes accessible via a hot-air balloon.

As far as characters go, Jacaranda comes off to me as a person who knows what she has to do, though sometimes, she comes off on the stale side. I attribute that to the infamous developer knowledge vs. player knowledge conundrum. Hey, it gets the best of us, sometimes. The princess joins the party for a moment, but she's little more than an extra body that the enemies can attack. Which is fine, as players have no control over her whatsoever. The bandit lord that you meet repeatedly speaks in all caps, especially when he's angry, just felt like a generic baddy to me. Though, the way he becomes an ally later is kinda disappointing. Most of the spirit allies have some personality, but they rarely display them at full force outside of their introductory sequence. Of all the characters in the game, the character with the most character is Din, the Fire Spirit. It's playful, spirited, and quite easy-going. This mesh of traits works well for a Fire Spirit. It even has random lines when you talk to teachers! So, yeah, a bit more of Din's personality shows than, really, anybody else in the game.


Gameplay:
I think I might have skewed my experience a bit by deciding to avoid using items as much as possible, and live off of the regenerating MP that the characters have. Regenerating MP is pretty darn good ability to have, but the characters of this game only ever have 100 MP at maximum to their name. Which can be aggravating at times, but workable. Perhaps because of the regenerating MP.

Outside of combat, MP regenerates every so many steps. No, I never really bothered to count, but I know it happens. Anyway, I guess it should have come to no surprise that this game does not utilize on-touch encounters. It uses random encounters. I'm not sure what the rate was, nor am I saying that having random encounters was a deal-breaker for me, though it was tedious at times. However, it's certainly a deal-breaker for some.

There's status conditions that are linked to the various elements. It's a little bit of flavor I can appreciate, but I didn't necessarily know what the status conditions did. "Burning", the fire-elemental status, was pretty self-explanatory. The others I had to guess, or figure out by observation. I observed that earth's "Constricted" status was similar to "Stun". I figured out that water's "Swamped" was a type of "Blind". However, I haven't the slightest clue what wind's "Whiplashed" does.

I suppose there is a bit of treasure hunting in this game. There's hidden treasures, and, of course, the barrels. I'm not sure what the deal is with Jacaranda randomly saying "Barrel!" when she searches barrels, but I'm figuring it's something I missed, something that the creator totally forgot about, or something completely different.

Since Jacaranda doesn't learn spells via leveling, the player has to rely on various people to teach her new stuff, or reading books and/or bookshelves. Boss fights sometimes give her skills. If Jarcanada doesn't learn a skill from a boss, that's when certain teachers fill in the learning gap. I'm not 100% sure why Jacaranda couldn't just learn the skill right then and there, but there you have it.


Overall entertainment:
The most fun I had with this game was after Jarcanda got the fire-all ability from a bookshelf. Sure. it took half her MP to perform the skill, but it was usually my best option to clear out the more annoying crowds of enemies.

The elemental spirits that join Jarcanda along the way are decent party members, but the strategy behind their use is something I don't particularly enjoy. Players can choose to have a spirit use a skill that uses half it's MP, a skill that uses all of it's MP, or use a regular attack. That the spirits also regenerate MP helps things a bit. I think what I don't like about it is that they have no low-end abilities at all. I could be totally wrong, but the abilities themselves don't seem to have much more effect than similar abilities that Jarcanda learns, and her versions cost less. So, I suppose that I'm complaining that they are over-costed?

I don't think I can stress enough how much having the characters regenerate MP helps this game, and generally makes it more playable than it would be without it. Also, the statues that heal were also quite the boon.

Maybe it's just me, but the number of enemies that appear in random encounters after getting Din is absolutely insane. I recall a fight against, like, five gargoyles. That would be in Dungeon 4 (earth dungeon), I think. Dungeon number 3 (water/ice dungeon) was just as crazy, with fights of up to five dudes, but at least four. I'm the absolutely last person to talk about game balance, but those fights always managed to get me to want to board-wipe as soon as it was conceivable to do so. On the opposite side of the spectrum is the boss fights. I must have killed the boss of Dungeon 3, or maybe it was Dungeon 4, before the boss acted twice. That has something to do with the CTB-ish system this game uses, but it's still pretty silly.

Saying that, my overall strategy to use as few items as possible generally worked! I think I used seven revive items and maybe five Potions. Was it fun to do that? It kinda was! I'm not sure how much gold I amassed by the end of the game, but I know I had Din with the money doubler accessory since it joined the party. I don't want to say that items can be cut entirely. Mostly because none of the characters have revival, though that could easily be fixed. I suppose I want items to be more useful, I guess? I dunno. By-the-by, why doesn't the water spirit have healing?


Bug Check:
I only really found two things that are bugs, but they are worth mentioning.

I looked in the database to confirm my suspicions, but the Turquoise Necklace does not have an "Armor Type". Thus, it cannot be equipped by anyone in the game. Presumably, it would be "Accessories".

The game crashed on me with this error:

Because of the context of the situation, I knew it was about Din, and counter-attacking. I looked in the database to figure out which piece of equipment was granting Din the counter ability. It's the Magma Cloak. While this bug is obviously more a scripting issue than an issue with the equipment, still, the fact that it can crash the game is of note! Saying that, I haven't the foggiest idea how to go about fixing this bug.


Summary:
Encounter rates might get in the way, and some of the later boss fights are actually easier than the regular encounters that were fought before them. And then there's the counter-attack bug. Otherwise, the game stands fairly well.


BOTTOM LINE: 3/5


Side note on ratings (since there is/was/will be somewhat of a spate on what rating means what between each user):
1/5 -> Terrible. Forget about hitting an audience. The game is so bug-ridden, or otherwise unplayable, that what entertainment can be found in the game has a hard time coming to the surface.

2/5 -> Bad but playable. I had a poor experience with the game. When played by a player the game actually caters to, it would serve it's purpose.

3/5 -> Average. A solid experience, but snags somewhere along the line cause it to be held back from being "good".

4/5 -> Good. I enjoyed the experience, and have no qualms supporting it if was considered for a featured game (if it wasn't featured already).

5/5 -> Excellent. Among the paragons of gaming experiences, and instant feature material in my humble opinion (if it wasn't featured already).