Illusions of Loyalty

Rather recently, Square Enix have announced the long-awaited remake of Final Fantasy VII. JRPG fans around the world have gone crazy, and over on RMN, it has also started the argument about whether or not our own games ought to be remade. I was always on the “update until truly complete” side, believing that a considerable array of changes is worthwhile in order to let the game achieve the maximum impact on the player intended. Of course, plenty of good arguments were made for leaving games as they are, and not getting mired in the past too much. However, Illusions of Loyalty is proof that the approach I’ve championed can in fact bring results, for as long as the creator is capable and knows what they’re doing.

Having read through the earlier reviews, it’s almost incredible how has apparently changed between the original contest build, the 2014 game, and the version 2.6 I played (which is the second-final one: I wasn’t aware of 2.7’s existence until I finished this review). As of now, Illusions of Loyalty is excellent, and exactly the kind of a game I wish we would be getting more often. Form follows function, and the excellent storyline is paired with truly challenging, yet fair and interesting, combat system. The limitations of RTP resources, an occasional lack of variety, and some questionable storytelling choices at the end are the only things keeping it from a perfect score.

Aesthetics (art, design and sound)

Since the game was originally made for an two-week event to celebrate the initial release of VX Ace, nearly all of the resources used are Ace RTP, from the title screen and down to every tile. In the time since original release, they’ve been complemented by other publicly available resources, and they’re all used very, very well on the whole. All of the combat ability effects and sounds fit very well, and if I haven’t already seen some of them in Incitement and Direvil Darkfort, I might not have even suspected they’re default. Default battlers also all fit: I do wish the Eutorian Shieldmaidens didn’t have such brightly coloured armour in comparison to the plainer Soldiers, Captains and Mages, but that’s about it. The chibi sprites and lack of blood effects and such on the bodies might be sub-optimal, but they ultimately don’t hinder immersion all that much. The RTP faces are also well-used, though there’s the problem of sheer quantity: minor characters are all given faces too, and while it mostly works, seeing some faces get inevitably repeated, sometimes a short distance from each other, is a little disquieting.

Mapping is generally pretty good, and everything looks the way it’s supposed to. The environmental description is not as frequent as in, say, A Blurred Line or Guild Raider!, but this entirely fits the single-minded character of Logan. When it is present, it’s always done at a high level, typically involving short conversations with your party members, or otherwise revealing more about them, or the world. I do wish the settlements you get to visit on your way were larger, or at least hinted at being much larger than what you get to explore directly, the “hidden” areas inaccessible due to the urgency of your mission. The cliff maps of Robin’s Pass are fine, although the Forest of Woe is just a bit too much of a narrow maze for my liking. Making it into a maze is a good idea on its own, and fits the spirit of the place, but it’s often too narrow for a real forest corridor. The free-standing blocky Ace ladders can also look quite weird at times.



Granted, OFF had that too, but it was set in a bleakly surreal world, likely stemming from someone’s subconscious.

The sound effects are fine, while the RTP/publicly available soundtrack is also used very, very well. I didn’t really think hearing that default theme during the most tragic moments would’ve been that effective, and yet, it was, so well done, Aegix_Drakan. There's also the way the game now always switches randomly between its combat themes during the normal encounters: a change that apparently happened after an earlier review, and one certainly helps make the game a lot better.

Oh, and since this section is short, here are the spelling errors I managed to catch, addressed to the creator under the spoiler tag, in case some of them still persist in version 2.7:



Storyline

The plotline of Illusions of Loyalty is about as good as a mostly linear (save for the ending choice), relatively short RPG can get. It begins with Julius Logan, a Captain in the army of Styx, putting down the violent rebellion against the ruling Queen Sophie, not faltering even when it pits him into conflict with his own brother. In fact, he volunteers to lead his brother’s firing squad, just so that he can prove his loyalty to the Queen. Even that, however, is not enough, and he’s tasked with performing a mission no-one else can do, the Queen knowing he's too loyal to reject or to falter along the way. Said mission is to assassinate the Queen Anne of neighbouring Eutoria, and to do so in a way that incriminates the rebels, and, by extension, the warring nation of Gaius that sponsors them. If everything goes to plan, Eutoria abandons its long-standing neutrality and joins the war on Gaius on Styx’s side. It’s a desperate gamble, but it’s also the only thing that can save Styx from drawn-out military defeat, and likely absorption by Gaius.

This premise is already refreshingly down-to-earth in the world where too many RPGs still recycle the same fantasy clichés time and time again, but it’s just the beginning of the gripping story. In the 4-6 hours it’ll take you to finish it, Illusions of Loyalty masterfully establishes its world, with enough world-building to make the three nations feel like real places, rather than spaces on the map, and it’s all done through the character dialogue with very few outright exposition. All around, the people you talk to have real stories relevant to the game’s world, and their tone is well-balanced, with the uplifting and cheerful events (a girl longing to get back to repairing Golems in spite of her wounds, a Eutorian mother scolding her boy to come down from the tree) contrasting with the dark material and making it all the more effective. This is not even getting into some of the more complex literary techniques on display: the way Golems are not just a steampunk invention, for instance, but a recurring motif, the meaning of which changes over time. Then, Illusions of Loyalty goes to the trouble of squeezing a parallel Vanguard storyline into its slender running time: it never has any direct bearing on your quest, and instead provides an intriguing foil to your party and mission. And of course, one cannot forget the devastating call-back to the events of the prologue near the very end.



Don't worry, Eric, the world is fine. She follows it with "Captain, you can't think for yourself enough to betray your country."

Then, the characterisation is about on par with the best ensemble cast films. All of the people under Logan’s command feel real, and they have various shades to them that go beyond archetypes. While there obviously isn’t as much dialogue as in a 20+ hour RPG, what is there is all excellently written, and gets you to care about all of them, even while acknowledging their flaws and the dirty nature of the mission they’re doing. Humour and drama are mixed together really well, the former providing contrast to ensure the latter is only strengthened by it. One example of many is the time you can approach Eric Wilder (person in the screenshot above) and he'll mention his fears of dying on the mission and leaving his daughter an orphan. Logan tries to reassure him and says that growing up in the barracks made him the man he is now: Eric can only mutter under his breath that it's exactly what he's afraid of. I do wish the characterisation of Logan himself went even further, however, so that we would get to know more about how the titular loyalty came to dominate his character, and see more of the doubts and such along the way. This kind of extended development of the lead character is what makes Apocalypse Now superior to Saving Private Ryan, for instance, though both are obviously great war films. As it is, we only learn the part about him being an orphan raised in the barracks, which is a little too clear-cut, and doesn’t really explain what made Bruce different from him.

Here, one must also commend the way IoL effortlessly handles moral ambiguity. In all the conflicts at hand, no side is purely good or evil, even though the individual characters may be more clear-cut. For instance, the end of the prologue will likely leave plenty of doubt about whether Logan’s actions at the end of the prologue were right, as the individual rebels you’ve fought were often quite sympathetic, while Queen Sophie is the most negative character by far. However, the game then lets you visit an infirmary and chat with the wounded from the rebellion, and you’re left to realise that without his actions, those people would’ve been dead, and there would have been a lot more people left in their place. Out in the Dariel City, you see people thank Logan and bemoan the cost of the rebellion: yet, you also see a family arrested on the suspicion of murdering a soldier. They’re almost certainly going to be executed, but you’re also reminded the dead soldier was a conscript, and had no say in the events. You’ll see similar sights throughout your journey, which confirm the fact that for every conflict, good people will die regardless of which side wins. In this way, Illusions of Loyalty becomes a look on the futility of war from the perspective of those not currently on the frontlines, and it shows that what is really needed is peace, even as your own actions are likely to push it away even further.

Unfortunately, the storyline does stumble a bit in the final sections, and it’s a testament to its overall strength that they only slightly mar the experience instead of outright ruining it. Firstly, a certain cutscene at Robin’s Pass is disappointingly predictable, especially in the light of the preceding events. The follow-up, though, outright makes no sense, unless you choose the “right” ending (more on that in a minute). I understand why the creator opted for it, but I do think it would’ve been a lot better to go against the grain and let Logan show more emotion there than before, especially as there was enough story to allow for it, and it would’ve made his development more gradual, and less reliant on a single, final choice. Like in the last year’s Remnants of Isolation, it also leads to three endings, where two are the secondary ones, with Game Over screen still shown at the end, while the last one is the True Ending, and the only one that shows you the credits. Unfortunately, that ending is also the worst one by far, and while it does justify the title, it also goes against many of the themes, and provides closure and happy ending in a way that feels utterly false, a storytelling equivalent of empty calories. It’s especially disheartening because just this year, I also played Standstill Girl, which also had 3 endings, and a true one diverged from others in the same way. Yet, it worked very well because it was entirely consistent with the game’s internal logic, while in IoL, all the gameplay rules are forced to bend over backwards to accommodate it. I have no doubt that once Illusions of Loyalty finds the popularity it deserves, fans online will be arguing whether or not that ending is a dream: it’s that far out of whack. Thankfully, the other two endings are very good and fit perfectly, so just choose one of them instead.

Gameplay

Illusions of Loyalty begins with the choice between the three difficulties, and plenty of warnings about how difficult the game is in relation to an average JRPG. I’ve still chosen Legend, the highest difficulty mode, and I wasn’t disappointed. Battles were certainly challenging, and I had to regularly plan and think through my moves, but they were never insurmountable, and there were always plenty of options to choose from. In fact, I haven’t actually gotten a Game Over throughout, although I did reload during fights a fair number of times.

The lynchpin of Illusions of Loyalty is the two-tier combat system, which fully takes advantage of one of the main features of VX Ace - the 2 charge gauges. SP, the equivalent of traditional mana, recharges by 10 points each turn, but is only sufficient for basic skills. Intermediate and Advanced require both SP and Aggression, which is charged by Basic Skills and regular attacks. It all follows clear numerical ratios: + 20 AGR after basic skill/attack, -20 for Intermediate skill and - 40 for Advanced, so if you want to use one, you need to wait two turns at most, assuming there’s enough SP. Notably, Aggression is partially carried over from fight to fight (in fact, it seems to decrease with every step taken on-map), which is in between fully-remaining FP in OMNIS: Erias Line and unlike Dreams of a Hero, which annulled it every turn.

It’s a good system, but it wouldn’t have made much difference if there weren’t many skills in the first place. Luckily, Logan and the other three characters have 6 skills each from the very start of the game, and while that number doesn’t increase throughout the game, it really doesn’t need to. You get the hang of the system quite quickly, and then the important thing is to know which skills are best employed in a given encounter. Sure, using some is likely unavoidable (it’s tough to last a fight without First Aid or Defensive Orders, for instance), but there are no silver bullets to endlessly spam here, and no useless skills either. Wilder’s Silencer does not do a lot at first, but then the mage enemies and bosses appear, and it makes the battles significantly. Noisemaker Shot might appear to be a disposable basic attack only needed to build Sarah’s Aggression until you encounter Dire Wolves in the Forest of Woe, and its Agility debuff becomes crucial to avoid them gaining double attack and using it before you can do anything about it. And of course, some are just very satisfying to use: my favourite is Hawke’s Quick Draw, which always goes first and lowers accuracy for a single turn (practically invaluable against enemies that buffed themselves or got ready to use their strongest attack just earlier), although Wilder’s all-enemy Glory of the Hunt (also a defence debuff) and Baroque’s Bleed-inflicting …. are close, too.

Like I’ve said before, the enemy encounters are good: they always include 2 or more different enemy types, these enemies fight quite differently, and have a fair share of skills more often than not (even otherwise basic Rebels can occasionally surprise you and heal up with potions). All three areas (Robin’s Pass, Forest of Woe, and the castle) have very specific enemies that are only fought through touch encounters. These can also be escaped from, (except in the castle, where it’s more of a stealth sequence and you cannot afford to be detected), which causes the enemy to fade from map for a few seconds to let you escape, before reappearing. The encounters also respawn in you happen to leave the map, which is fitting for Robin’s Pass and the Forest of Woe, but doesn’t really work with the stealth-like atmosphere in the palace, and I suggest removing the respawn there. There are some issues with quantity here, especially early in the Robin’s Pass: there, the first four encounters with human enemies were all the same: 2 Rebels & a Brigand. I do hope the creator can add another enemy type for more varied encounters; even a color-swap would be preferable.

The boss battles of course, are also truly excellent, and are some of the best I ever encountered. There 4/5 story bosses and 3 optional ones in total, and of those, only the spider boss of Robin’s Pass disappoints somewhat relative to the rest. The best battle in all is probably still the Archmage one, though the battle at the end of the Forest of Woe is about as good, and both feature plenty of moves that can keep the player on their toes, but still leave them the room to adapt. The way Archmage could heal back Silencer was a bit unexpected, for instance, and yet I still found using it preferable, just so that he could be kept busy and not cast/summon too much. The way I brought down Laughing Red (one of the three plants that serve as forest’s bosses) only for Weeping Blue to revive it two turns later (though, thankfully, at only about 25% health) was also memorable.



The plant battle, right after I brought Blue down. Notice that status effects like Bleed here all work on bosses, as they should.

Besides combat, it’s also possible to buy some equipment and supplies at a couple points in the game. The overall weapon variety is just right: there are not a whole lot of them, but they’re usually distinct, rather than straight upgrades: a Half-Stop Gearbox, for instance, gives Hawke two shots at the expense of considerably reduced power, while a Duellist’s Sword for Logan raises both attack and defence, so I never swapped it out for technically superior Serpent’s Sword. Your funds are always quite tight, but if you manage wisely, you have enough to buy the stuff that matters. There are also the traditional inns/places to lay low that restore the party for a price, although I never really used them. After all, it’s simply possible to use Hawke’s First Aid to heal the party on field as often as needed, since the SP is restored by walking around. In fact, that seems to be the intended use, and the inn stay is more of a symbolic thing, a way to mark the difference between peaceful areas and the places where your life is constantly in danger. It would also fit with how you get a choice between saving everywhere and checkpoints at the start of the game: I chose the latter, and found they’re integrated into the lore: your party is essentially looking to the will-o-wisp for reassurance of safety when they approach it to save. Early on in Styx, you can even find a soldier complaining about one following him around for seemingly no reason.

Conclusion

All in all, Illusions of Loyalty might still stumble in a few places at this stage, but it is still one of the best games I've played on here, a very good game that has obviously received a lot of polish over time. I strongly recommend playing it, and on the difficulty intended, since the challenge is never unfair and only serves to enhance the immersion into the difficulties our characters face.