Primeforce

Primeforce is a game sent to me for a run-through. After playing the game, I decided to write my thoughts in a review format.
Now as a note, this review will only covers Demo 06/11/2012.

♫Story & Writing-
The story follows The Skyblazer, a group of protectors who travel the world in mighty airships. Our main character, Vincent, is one such protector.
He is sent on a mission to gather one of the many divine artifacts. With this, the Skyblazers would be able to finally repair the holy weapon, Primeforce.
But something is wrong. Why would the king want to repair such an item?
And to add- why has there been a steady increase in distrust, and even betrayal among the Skyblazers?

The story shows promise, and has a very nice flow to it. I found myself enjoying the story, but not without its flaws.

First comes the text cutoffs. I see this a few times in my playthroughs, and thought it was pretty distracting to the story.

Another issue arises in multiple playthroughs. None of the dialogue can be skipped, and the creator feels compelled to put awkward pauses between dialogue boxes. While this pause can help build suspense, I feel as though it only builds a gauntlet for the uninterested.

And I also need to bring this up. It seems as though too many people can teleport.
I thought this to be a wonderful plot hole in any video game. You can have teleportation- just explain the magic. This type of thing really bothers me.

-overall, 3.5. Those cutscene pauses before bosses, and flavor text pauses were very detrimental to replay value.

♫Characters-
The main characters in the demo are Vincent, and his partners Fayne and Brutus.
Vincent is interesting. He comes off as that generic hero sometimes, but there are points in the story where you can choose to be a complete ass to a person. I thought this was interesting. In a scripted cutscene, Vincent will never lose his temper. However, he does so if the player wills it.

I feel as though there's a character arc here.

Fayne also peaked my interest. She's a Shadow Priest, and her personality definitely fits the class without making her evil.

Brutus, however, didn't really catch me like the other two. But he did have connections to the other characters. In fact, every main character seems to have some relationship with another characters that you'll meet in the demo. The game does a good job at hooking in some good character developments.

My only real problems lies within the second nature antagonists. In a fairly rich and serious storyline, I'd expect more subtle baddies. I shouldn't be able to guess your villains in the first scene they're in. That's bad writing in my book.


-overall, 3.5.

♫Aesthetics-
To sum everything up, this is very hit-and-miss.

Some maps like the first dungeon, the airship, and the forest are well designed and nicely detailed. But on the flipside, the first map, most indoor maps, and the parallax background maps leave something to be desired.

Along with this, it seems as though the creator does not know how to use "Direction Fix" for certain items so that they don't morph into something else.

But one problem plagues this entire demo. And that is the passibility issues. Every other map has an issue where something can be walked on that shouldn't be walked on. Water, trees, statues, cliffs...
It's almost a little sad how many there are in this demo, and how the creator never found them while play testing

-overall, 2.0. passibility errors like this are unacceptable.


♫Music & Sound-
Most of the music fits well with the scene it's in. And I'm almost certain there are only RTP sound effects. And I have to say that I loved are three battle themes in the demo.

My main problem lies on the fact that some songs are just not there. Twice during my playthroughs, I was forced to replace a song to continue with the game. Those issues should always be fixed before release- especially if they happen in the main story line.

-overall, 2.5.



♫Gameplay-
The game uses the ever popular Tantentai Battle System- along with the standard dungeon crawler feel. We've seen this done in many RPGs, so what stands out?
Well semi-good design is one of them.

I really enjoyed the dungeons, the bosses were all really fun, and the random battles weren't that annoying!
Unfortunately, the game suffers from lack of testing. For example, I had two crash errors on a werewolf boss. One for the graphics, and one for a corrupted "Level Up" script. This, along with the before-boss dialogue, and the chance for the boss to spam his most powerful moves- made fighting this guy painful.

Along with this, some events just won't go away. Two times, the same cutscene would start after simply walking back to the spot where it triggered. One instance had me trapped because I did not have the right items to beat the boss, nor could I go grind and buy more equipment, since the cutscene was blocking my only escape.

-overall, 3.0.



♫Overall-
3 (N/A, due to the Demo tag)
I say this once, and I'll say it again. Test, test, test, test, go to sleep, test some more~
But with that said, I hope to see a wonderful game out of this. I recommend this game after the client-crashing bugs are fixed.