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A whole barrel of FUN

Notes on the Etgoesian Crisis is a short adventure game that is about six hours long (I finished it in three days, playing about two hours each day). The game has a rather unique setting: instead of a typical fantasy, sci-fi or cyberpunk world, the game is set in a rural simil-european country where firearms are rare but still available, where there are no monsters or supernatural creatures, and there is no magic but there is science.

In this realistic and mundane setting, our hero is Orson Rockfeller, a simple man that will enter a conflict with the Mayor of his town for personal reasons. This little 'quarrel' will soon become a crusade against some bad guys and their nefarious plan that puts the entire country in danger!


What? Android? No, this isn't a sci-fi game, but our android has an interesting backstory... if you will be able to learn it!

Orson will be soon joined by some companions, some are mandatory and others are optional and require completing some little side quests (a couple are even incompatibile so you can have one or the other).
The companions provide lots of extra cutscenes (for example before boss encounters) and optional dialogues that will often explain their backstories, and let me assure that the dialogues in this game are pretty well written and entertaining.

Another nice thing is that the game seems more a small adventure game than an rpg: there are many quest and segments that requires finding items, solving puzzles or selecting the right answer to a question.


Orson and his friends are fighting some soldiers. As you can see Ted attacks bravely with a spear!

But yes, there is combat too, and unlike most games Itunes rather simple: characters get different abilities as they level up, depending on their weapon of choice (for example, I saw no difference of skills between sword users), even if they can have some extra special abilities from equipping a book (a medicine manual will add healing abilities, a tactics manual extra special attacks), but the number of extra abilities still depends from the experience level. The game is rather simple here too, there are just ten experience levels and there are many places (in which are triggered easy random encounter) where it is possible to grind. Moreover, the game lets you save anywhere and even enable an option to receive a warning before the dangerous boss fights (that are far harder, compared to the easy random enemies).

Ok, now if you are still reading you probably noticed that I said "little side quests","small adventure game", and "simple combat". Correct? Yes, because "Compact" is the word that describes this game perfectly, and mapping makes no expection: the towns are small, they often fit a single screen, and the whole world map is small and it's nearly impossible to get lost.

Despite the small setting, the style of maps and charsets is simple, but still charming and roch of details, even if the custom facesets and portraits are probably the prettiest assets.
Music is pretty good too, it's a noce selection of folk music that I liked very much, especially the combat theme (and victory tune).


This is the party screen, and you will use a lot it especially if you are trying to unlock everything. Oh and in this pic there aren't even all the playable party members!

Leaving Etgoes
Notes on the Etgoesian Crisis is a great game, one of my favourites. I love the cast of (weird and crazy) characters, the humor, the mondane original setting and many little touches. For example the merchant of the capital city that will be polite if you buy or sell something, and instead he will scold Orson if you just browse his wares! Or you can rest for free in the inn when the ex-owner is in the party! (little but clever details). But the best is probably the final section in which you have to answer to random questions about the game world, and the party members will sometimes comment if the answer is somewhat related to them.

Speaking about bugs, I only found couple of errors in the game: during the fight against the king and the bodyguard, and in one of the final bossfights, I noticed that multiple target attacks may make the game crash (a nonexistential-enemy error...happened three times to me) so it is suggested to use single attacks for that part. For the penultimate combat the author gave a special ability that istantly defeats the enemy, pity he did not do the same for the other boss encounter since it's rather annoying.

For the rest the game is well done, the strong points are probably dialogues, story and setting, while I think that combat is probably the weakest aspect due to the few equipment (just two buyable normal weapons and one unique for each weapon type) and abilities available (little to no differences between characters. Also enemies don't look so different both for aspect and behaviour).


Here's one of the deadliest enemies, but luckily the combat encounter is totally optional, and losing doesn't end the game, but instead... heh play and find out!

Despite the issues I mentioned before (that prevent me for giving a perfect score), I admit I was hooked by Orson's travels and I had fun exploring collecting the extra weapons and unlocking the optional cast members. It's a small but really great adventure with even some optional and hidden goodies.

In the end this is a rather unique game, and a great story. It gets a 4,5/5, no less. An incredibily great story from the beginning to the end, if you have few time and need a good adventure consider this game! Must play, one of the best and most original short games for sure!