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Everyone and everything is a teleporter. A teleporter full of potions.

  • Caz
  • 07/10/2012 10:26 AM
  • 2919 views
I began this game with dread, considering I'm not overly fond of XP as an engine and I had noticed that nothing about the title screen had been changed. It was the same background, music and windowskin - I think the wording might have been changed so instead of "load game" it just says "load". That's about it. Titles aren't gameplay, but they're good eye-candy to draw people in with. Even a picture of a character or something edited into the original stuff would have been better.

Anyway, pressing 'new game' I was plonked onto a map with no introduction. I was the RTP character 'Aluxes' with two other RTP party members 'Gloria' and 'Hilda'. I have no problem with using the RTP characters if it's done nicely, especially considering they started with skills and equipment. However, I'm unsure as to how those people started to follow me.. or even who I am!

The map I'm in is fairly empty. There's detail here and there - enough, I suppose - but it's still pretty bland and typically XP in nature. As I walk downwards away from the tent, I'm told I have no memories, except that I need to kill the King. Oh, and that two other people decided to come out of the tent and help. Well, at least Aluxes is grateful about it.. I'm asked if I want to take a pet with me. Huh, that's a nice touch.. I guess I'll choose 'hound'. So now I have a fourth party member - a doggy.

"Hm, what a nice tent," I think to myself, "I ought to check it out for goodies!" So I step inside the tent and.. HOLY MONKEYS! There's a friggin' mansion in here! A big, empty mansion.. with three beds slapped together. I-I can only imagine the goings on that occurred before this game began.. Uh, more seriously, this needs to look more like a "tent" instead of a regal house. Try making it much smaller first, as houses aren't really that big. It just makes them appear vast and lonely. Also, the tent is made of cloth on the outside, but inside it's got a laminated wood flooring, nice wallpaper, chests of drawers.. It's not very tent-like, that's all I'm saying.

By the table, I could constantly abuse the potions by picking up infinite amounts of them. This needs to be changed with a switch so people aren't uber-powered, and they can only have one potion from the table.

I stepped back outside. Two steps from the tent entrance, I was attacked by bats. I had fears of an abusive encounter rate, but thankfully I made it to the end of the map without being attacked again. On the next map I was immediately in a town. The transition from campsite to town was a bit jumpy, but I had no real issues there.

In the town there were a LOT of people. I thought it was pretty nice seeing lots of people in a bustling town, but they started to get in the way quite a bit.. Eh? There's even a baby crawling around.. no one is watching it?! Um, anyway, the beggar who wanted 1 gold gave me a potion every single time I gave him money. This can easily be abused as well, only this time it's slightly more expensive than the tent.

The mapping here was glitchy with borders of black, and once again it was very empty and vast. Going south, even without stepping into a building, I'm already in a manor house of some sort. And offered more free potions. I speak to the Queen, asking her where the King is. She doesn't know, but she's offering to help me?! How does she want her own husband dead?! And she's putting her best soldier on the job! "To get your party member back, just talk to 'that guy' next to me." Yeah, she actually says 'that guy'. 'That guy' who is allowed near the Queen, who - I assume - does a lot of personal work around the manor involving various buttling duties. He's just 'that guy', whatever-his-name-is, Eric.. 'you there!'

The best soldier is level 20, whereas my characters are only level, let's see.. 4. Oh boy, this is going to be very, very imbalanced. So now I don't know what I'm doing. Where do I go? Where's the King? I figure he's probably on some magical continent far away, so I head to the port. I stepped near a boat and was instantly teleported away to some island.. where I'm now apparently trapped. To get out, I must venture into the cave and touch the orb.. So I step in the cave. And there's the orb. Right there. That wasn't very challenging.. So I'm home again, not that I know where I'm going..

Back in the manor, I stepped downstairs and was warned that I needed to be over level 10 to fight in that place. I looked around and found no way out, so I walked around the edges a bit. At the bottom edge, I was teleported away again into a throne room. Lo and behold, there was the King! I saved my game, naturally, and wandered right up to him. He yelled a bit and teleported me away AGAIN. How does everyone keep doing that? Anyway, I ran up to the crystal and was thrown into a boss fight with the King. Needless to say, he was pretty pathetic, and mashing the attack button killed him in very few turns. Oh, and at the end I got 99999 EXP, 99999G and the 'Ultimate Ring of Nobbies'.. erm..

I stepped forward to investigate the crystal again, but there was nothing so I stepped back.. only to be entered into the fight with the King yet again? Huh?! I think there needs to be a switch to turn that off completely..

When I left the room, I had a flash forward to ten years later.. but my main characters weren't there. I was the dog. On further inspection, I have a completely new party member called "Jarrod".. I'm not sure I really understand what's going on here. At this point, the townspeople were really starting to tick me off by getting in my way all the time..

At the King, he tells me his 'Best Man' has gone missing. Well? What am I meant to do about it? I've been given no direction once again.. I wasn't really sure where to go after this, so I actually had to stop playing.

In all, I had a lot of issues with this game. A lot of glitchy-looking maps, vast and empty mapping, poor dialogue, a lack of switches.. There's certainly a lot of room for improvement. If this is a first game, then I can completely understand. I think it would be wise if you were to start learning about switches and variables, however.

I'm going to give this game a 0.5 because it mainly used RTP characters and the mapping wasn't up to scratch. The lack of direction made it really difficult to play - impossible at times, in fact. I hope you'll continue to work on it, though.

Posts

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.5? Huh, your review style makes me feel like a care bear x-D
Caz
LET'SBIAN DO THIS.
6813
Yeah, I'm pretty damn harsh when it comes to games. I think telling someone something they've done is good when it's not means they'll never improve, so.. if I give a bad score and ask for improvements, the only way is up, really.

But I was pretty harsh here. I gave myself a break between reviews because I thought I was just getting more and more mean as they went along. XD I didn't know how long it'd be before I ended up not giving scores.
This review was hilarious and has improved, whats left of, my pretty sh*tty day. XD
Im trying to do my best so please put the fact that its my first game into account
sorry bout the mess. I've made a new project if you wanna shed some of your wisdom on that once it is accepted
Some tips to improve this (if ever you decide):

-Everytime I come back to the tent, I am greeted with the same opening over and over again (choosing pet)

-The beggar should have a switch event so he only steals from you one time and thats it. Seriously, he's annoying, and he's bumping into me constantly without me even talking to him!

-The houses and buildings look like they belong in Minecraft...seriously, they look terrible, no doors, no nothing except a weird square trying to be a building but failing miserably.

-The people don't even talk to you if you try to talk to them. The town must be pretty unfriendly.

-Speaking of the town, what kind of name is 'castle town' anyway?

-What little dialogue you have in there is filled with grammatical errors. It feels like an eight or thirteen year old wrote it.

Seriously, I could go on and on. I had to stop playing, because I didn't know where to go! I'm hoping you're improving or have. And I'm hoping you were at the most thirteen when you made this.
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