I had a feeling this game would be put together well from the outlook. The title screen and the music were really nice, the windowskin had been changed - you know, signs of effort being put in to make a game 'different' that so many people never bother with. But as always, I won't judge this book by its cover and will instead dive straight in..

It began with a short description of my character 'Cleve', with a spelling error here and a grammar mistake there. Nothing I'm too picky about, but these are the first words of the whole game, so they really need to make a lasting impression.

After this description, I was thrown in with no real direction. I was just told that Cleve wanted to make his father proud by studying.. or something. Anyway, I immediately opened the menu upon being freed. The custom menu was really, really nice and whoever put it together certainly knew what they were doing. The windowskin met it fairly well too, despite big chunky borders being a bit of an eyesore. I could already see that I had no skills or equipment to begin with, so I was hoping there wouldn't be too many battles..

Without direction, I spoke to the NPCs - I assume Cleve's parents - but they said nothing that would clarify much. I looked around at some of the furnishings and headed straight for the front door.. again, nothing happened. So now I'm stuck in this mystery house where there must be just ONE item in this map that will trigger the next set of events. And Cleve wanted to study, so I guess I'll find some books?

... okay, nope. I even explored the big room FULL of various artifacts, but nothing happened. I started running around, mashing buttons. I ran to the door and mashed some buttons and--oh! Hey, something happened! A flash forward event.. well uhh, that was a climactic journey? And now he wants to investigate the school.. This is jumping around quite a lot. I'm really not sure what's going on here, nor do I have any sense of location or characters.

Anyway, the mapping in both this place and the main character's house is very empty. It could have been much smaller or made to seem a lot fuller with more rooms, maybe.

So anyhow, the story progresses and I.. I get sucked into a hole. And now I'm the chosen one. And now I'm in a village where at least an NPC gave me some equipment! And some random lady joins me with no real motivation.. I--ha, wha?! I got attacked by monsters IN THE TOWN! Does no one else see these monsters running around?! And ah.. a high encounter rate..

Usually, monsters do not appear in residential areas. This is because it throws the theme off entirely, where everyone ought to be relaxing, and makes everyone in that town seem crazy for not noticing. Or maybe they're all warrior masters who can kill all the monsters just by blinking at them. And high encounter rates also really bother people. No one wants to walk to the shop and have to fight 10 battles on their way there.

Once again I'm given very little direction on where to go.. No one told me if I had to go someplace or talk to someone. Instead I'm left to slowly wander around, get attacked by monsters every two seconds and try desperately to find somewhere I'm meant to be. And it's not outside the town apparently.. okay.. obviously gotta find someone inside this place. *monster encounter* AGH! I'm just escaping from these at this point, really. Now I'm in some guy's house, and he gives me a wall of text explaining something about exams.. okay, but where do I take this exam? Oh, more monsters. IN his house.

Alright, let's check this house out.. oh now there's a chicken trapped in the door.. come on, hurry up.. Nope, she wasn't helpful either. I honestly can't see where I'm meant to go in this place. Well, as I can't find it, I can't really play much further.

This was a pretty typical 'demo' (that's what I'm gonna call it). One of those run-of-the-mill, first time in VX Ace games where the mapping is huge and empty, the storyline is disjointed and difficult to follow, none of the NPCs are any help at all, nor do they say anything that is particularly realistic. Don't get me started on high encounter rates or not being able to find where to go next.. Overall this game was okay. If it's not your first game, I'm a bit concerned. I think you need to work at mapping and developing your storylines, as well as getting people to playtest it for you and make sure that if they can't play it, you have to fix something. Like I don't think leaving the house was done in a particularly clear way.

I'm gonna score this game really lowly, so that you'll have something to work towards. If you improve this game, I will come back and amend my score. I mean, I think that if I give you a 0.5/5 simply for the fact you bothered to change the title screen and window skin, that seems pretty fair. And then if you choose to update mapping, I might give you more points, or if you fix certain story-breaking elements.. Well, good luck with it anyway!