The Adventure

The game began with a bit of a jolt. The introduction was placed into a map where a cutscene would take place, so the game started with a "BLARGH!" of music before quickly being turned off. This can be fixed by making a separate map for the introductory prologue and then teleporting the hero to the next scene as required.

The introduction itself was a scrolling wall of text which described some countries within the world. I felt that this was perhaps a little unnecessary, and maybe the player can learn about those countries later by visiting them instead. This is a much more interactive way of learning which allows people to retain more information. Also, giant walls of text do not usually constitute gameplay. At the beginning of anything - be it a novel, TV show or a game in this case - the author should aim to begin their piece with something gripping such as an intriguing question, or an action scene.

Moving on, I was next shown a cutscene of a guy training against some dummies when his Master arrives. He makes my reluctant main character go on a simple quest to fetch some supplies. He then spends a very long time walking away.. I feel this could have been reduced to get the player into the action sooner.

The mapping here was pretty nice - nothing too fancy, but it got the point across and it gave a nice theme to everything. The interior mapping was a bit empty and could have either been made smaller to make it seem fuller, or even spiced up with a few more items/rugs. The world map, however, was really quite empty and lacking. Also, as I was wandering around, I had no skills to begin with so each battle was essentially a button mash before more walking happened.

Entering the village, I felt that it was possibly a sample map. I'm not too knowledgeable on VX Ace presets, but I'm certain the the interiors were samples. I don't think it's too difficult to make your own shops and pubs, so this should definitely needs to be improved. And when I stepped into the pub.. I'm.. I'm pretty sure DarrellChan must've made this game, because some irritating pop song started to play. I found the source and tried to stop it to no avail, so I decided to leave instead which THANKFULLY worked. What amazed me most was that this pop song with a beat, guitars and synth effects was being created by just a guy with a piano and a singing girl. Is there anything they can't do these days? (Protip: music should be a subtle way of enhancing the atmosphere of a place, and not everyone likes pop songs. I advise getting a simple, non-disturbing song with no voices in to do its thing quietly in the background. This will improve the environment you're trying to create tenfold.)

In town, a very young girl was stood at the pier. She told me what a "crappy, boring life" she had. Uh.. what? What?! That's.. that's pretty depressing! It's not that bad! I'm sure children can find plenty to do even in the worst, most boring places! Gosh, that's put a real downer on all this..

I won't go into too much detail about the story, but it was quite the cliché tale of "go here, do this, go here, get that, go here.." kind of thing. The NPCs I met along the way were.. confusing. I sometimes got hints of a humble fantasy RPG, and other times they'd tell me about certain "measurements" or make Jesus references.. I was rather confused by the theme of it all.

Moving on, in the dungeon there were a lot of chests that were out of reach. The trouble was, it was a very expansive dungeon that was just far too huge to remember anything of or to get any sense of bearing. There were far too many puzzles jammed onto one floor that led me to become quite confused and just move on with the story instead.

In the next section of story in the dungeon, events got a bit jammed up and I couldn't progress any further as everything just froze. I think I got a decent enough analysis from what I saw, however, and I've come to my conclusions:

* Good use of sound effects and, apart from one instance, music.
* Good use of character sprites.
* Story flowed well, nothing broke it up too badly.
* Battles weren't too complex, although some more skills might have been nice.
- Disappointed that the maps were pretty much all sample maps, could've been done by hand in very little time.
- Don't play pop music. Seriously. Unless you're certain it has a place.
- Fix the bug where it freezes and it's impossible to continue to storyline.

In all, I'd say it was a pretty good attempt at a game. I wasn't horrified by what I saw, nor was I amazed. It was so-so. There was a mishmash of themes going on which needed to be ironed out and made into one, easy to experience feeling from the game. In total I'd say this game gets a 2/5, mainly due to gamebreaking bugs and sample maps.