Three the Hard Way

So! Three the Hard Way.

It's pretty good.

You: "The 'Duology'? Airemix, you n00b! This is one game!"

Well, no. No, it's not. Functionally speaking, this is two separate games in everything but name. As such, I'll give each game its own section in the review, and maybe by the end you'll see why I view it this way.

To start with, let's get a few things straight.

1) This game is worth your time. No matter what else I say in this review, always view it through these rose-colored glasses. Above all else, this game is worth playing.

2) This game is not actually 40 hours long. Nowhere near. To be fair, I've never seen the creator claim that length, but 40 hours seems to be a popular figure I've seen quoted more than one time, and I just thought I'd take the time to dispel that particular myth. I was curious about the length, so I timed myself quite strictly while I played the game (for the first time, I might mention), and I came out at 25 hours and 18 minutes. And guys, I am not fast. I take forever to catch onto puzzles in RPGs, if only because there are so many things you should /obviously/ be able to do, but can't because of the limitations of the engine.

Now, onto the main reviews!

THREE THE HARD WAY I

Starting out, this looks a whole lot like a first project. Mapping is inconsistent and bland, if functional enough, gameplay is grind-tastic, and in places it's got a serious case of the ol' battle-step-battle-step.

Fortunately, though, the worst of those problems ease up rapidly, and - as soon as the second hour of the game in some cases - and the game becomes a fairly enjoyable experience. The only area that really doesn't improve is music. The choice of music throughout the game is dubious at best. Even for a game as lighthearted as this one, smooth jazz is rarely a good forest theme, and certainly not when it's for every forest in the game and there's probably more forests than all other dungeon types combined. Sorry, but I'm picky about music, especially when I have to listen to the same two-minute track for probably close to six hours.

Anyway, the story here is definitely a notch above most other RPG Maker games. When you look at it under the microscope, it consists of a number of bland RPG tropes (ancient evil X that was defeated by the previous king now returns, then mysterious mage guild Y gets involved, etc), but it's all put together so well that when you look at it from far away (as in the distance from your screen to your face) it's actually quite deep and enjoyable.

Yes, the graphics have problems, but a) I don't care and b) I'd have to be a hell of a hypocrite to criticize someone else's game over graphics and c) I don't care.

The level-up system, or lack thereof, is extremely intuitive and fluid, and made gameplay a joy. There were times when I caught myself grinding just for the joy of watching my stats go up after every battle, and that shocked and embarassed me in a way usually reserved for getting caught masturbating by your grandmother.

At any rate, the game doesn't really require much grind (that I noticed), and most of the dungeons are fairly straightforward, but with enough puzzles and such that it's not just walking through a forest between battles.

Characterization of the core group is /excellent/. Watching the interaction between the little people on my screen was something that really made the game worth playing for me. So was the humor, for that matter. There are tons of fun little references to the real world, or other RPG Maker games - in one instance where you have to wait in a line for some time, a woman in the vestibule says, "I'll just sit here waiting for the line to narrow," and walking around in the next room is fucking Agent Kersh.

One odd bit about the first game was how the party fit into the story: they didn't.

Seriously, everyone kept saying, "Ahh, I hear you're really something!", or, "I can sense you have great potential!" but all the party ever did was narrowly avoid death and completely fail to ever accomplish any of their (meaningful) objectives, except for killing the bad guy at the end. When you sit down and look at it, that's the /only/ way in which they actually affect the world around them. That one event.

One thing I have to mention is that at several points, this game will take all your gold (which is very hard to get), and at one point all your stuff, period, and NEVER RETURN IT. Several more times, the game will take your gold, but you can get it back, but only if you do a fairly long, unrelated sidequest. This is one of the few Unforgivable Sins of game design and is my only major issue with the game. So as a tip, don't bother hoarding money or items; the game is gonna take it from you sooner or later anyway.

A few minor points:
-There are several minigames, most of which have horrible controls.
-Skills fail anywhere from 35-50% of the time, but enemy skills almost never do.
-You can easily run from most battles, which is awesome.
-You are healed before AND AFTER all boss battles, which is even more awesome.
-After playing this game I now have a phobia of boats.


Moving on.



THREE THE HARD WAY II

This picks up at the end of the first game, and is highly non-linear. You have six different places to go, and four different things to do in those places, which if you didn't notice means you sometimes end up checking and rechecking entire continents for story events, only to not find any because there's none there.

Graphics and music are both TONS better than in the first game, but in a weird twist, story is not quite as good. Maybe it's just that I like sharper characters and decisions over duller ones, but at the start of the game, the party rejects the advice of the person who literally knows EVERYTHING, and as a result you're forced to make one giant mistake, in the form of several smaller mistakes, for six to eight hours, and that is just not my idea of fun. This game is probably six hours of story in a twelve-hour bag; it's just stretched out for far too long.

On the plus side, like I said, the mapping is much better, the music is enjoyable (though the game still uses the same theme for every damn forest), and it's got some fucking AMAZING subversions. It's little things, like, "Oh shit I thought that was going to be a puzzle but they seriously just pwned it", and there's one big one - huge actually, it completely changes the story - that was tragic and hilarious at the same time; it's why the story in this game gets three stars instead of two. The ending is rather . . . abrupt, but still not /bad/, exactly.

And that's . . . it, really; I don't have a whole lot to say about the sequel, because there really isn't a whole lot to say about it. If you haven't realized yet, I call it the sequel because it's different in almost every respect; iishenron fixed a lot of the issues the first part had. My only real complaint, as I've said, is the story.

So, for my ratings:
First game: 3 stars
Second game: 4 stars (story got worse, but everything else was much much better)
Average: 3 1/2 stars.

Pretty good. Worth your time.

In compliance with rpgmaker.net's recommendation to 'Be as object as possible', I will now spend the rest of this review being a chair.

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