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A game full of charm.

  • boos405
  • 01/27/2020 05:15 PM
  • 860 views
The game overall mood and feel is quite light-hearted and I feel it's got a nice charm to it, it's funny since I'm assuming the game is a bit more spontaneous than games normally are because it is a chain game and each chapter is done by a different person. So it looks and feels a bit more spontaneous, but I actually think each different developer did a good job taking over it and they all added some nice surprises here and there, giving it that charm I feel it has.

Let's start reviewing the game as a whole properly.

Story & Characters

I will start with a quick warning. The ending also suggests the hint of a sequel introducing a new problem for Gita. I don't believe that sequel is going to be made so a warning that the plot ends on a cliffhanger.

Saying that it is not the type of game where the story matters so much you must see how this cliffhanger will play out. So I think you are super safe playing this game knowing about the cliffhanger anyway. I still will try not to spoil too much of anything.

Alright, so the main character Gita is a treasure hunter. While exploring some ruins she comes across a shadowy being that tells her she is Eric The Silver Reaper and she must go on a quest to collect memory songs. She is told something like this from a mysterious bard guy first as well. It's pretty vague and unclearly and it's a very airy type of plot to describe it in a word. But it worked for me. Gita, the main character, does agree with this and agrees that this is all absurd to her, so there's no problem agreeing with our main character and we do have a mystery question of a sort to get the plot going.

However, the whole game quickly changes when each chapter provides its own subplot adventure that Gita goes along with. We meet new characters in each chapter, many of which become party members, to a total of eight I think?

Their interactions, while the usually minimum amount of dialogue possible, is quite humorous and charming. It's handled lightly but made me laugh. You have a maid who is obsessed with cleaning but she is a battle maid and happy to fight besides Gita even insisting on it. You have much other originality ideas like this in the other party members too.

It is all quite messy in some ways when thinking about the plot events, but I didn't feel that mess was a bad thing while playing it. Sure each developer would have different thoughts on how to make their chapter, but I felt each chapter did collide together well and continued this very strange but fun to go along with adventure.

The surprises were nice. There were a few small twists and then the reveal to the mystery question at the end. Most of the time there are surprises but not twists and these little surprises are a nice addition to the plot and characters you meet. It works for comedy and humour.

One thing I liked about each character is that it felt like the developers wanted to put some originality with each one, they all felt interesting in some way, and they all get enough screen time in dialogue, although at some point certain character feels a bit more left out then should be.

While many of our character motives did feel quite random, as probably expected for the nature of the game, they did have motives and reasons, as random as may be, still fitted in this odd party bunch on the different subplot adventures and this main adventure to collect the memory songs and treasure.

I only have two real two complaints when it comes to the story. The first is how the main plot was a little crazy, to begin with, but I was happy enough with the characters to play the game to the end anyway.

The only huge complaint is that it, the plot, felt very rushed at the end, and I think each developer had a deadline date so that was no fault of any person involved in the creation of the game, but I think each developer should've been allowed to go back to there chapter and adjust or make amends afterwards, even if there was another deadline. I just think that would've worked better, even if some developers wanted to leave it as it is and they could do that too.

I can tell the last chapter had to be rushed but it also had a lot of plot ends to explain or satisfy a story ending with.

The humour is the strongest point of the story and characters and it's well-handled.

Gameplay

The dungeons feel very well thought-out. A lot of them are puzzling in a satisfying to resolve way, and simple/easy enough to not get frustrated. For me, I prefer an easy puzzle, so I was happy with how they all played out.

There is a very funny dungeon near the start where things can flip upwards on you, it stands out but they're all fun in their own ways.

They also have very good mapping and look visually appealing, well not quite all but most do.

Either each or most dungeons also had their own gimmicks, as Zelda games do. It was fun finding some object to change what you can do in the dungeons, and definitely a good idea for each developer to have done so. I can't remember for certain now if every single dungeon had something, but most did.

I did get stuck on the game twice but quickly found solutions not long after.

Outside of dungeons, there is one town called Market Town, which acts as a hub area. Well done and developed actually. However there is this strange minigame feature thing where you have to do a side-quest to get the shop owners to agree to sell stuff to you, there is always a plot reason as to why they can't until you do the sidequest which is fine it's the fact that you definitely want to be able to buy from these shops and perhaps they could have had different optional sidequests with a simple reward instead of forcing them to buy from the shops, or in the magic shop case buy better tombs for your characters.

I think sidequest is a good thing to add in the game, the minigames as well are fun ideas, but one of the minigames from the magic shop was difficult to do right and I think it's unfair to prevent the player buying more powerful magic tombs without clearing that minigame.

This is one of the few biggest issues I had with the game.

Every character can also learn magic, some have higher magic attack stats than others, but yes every character can learn stuff so long as you have the gold to buy the tombs. Eventually, you get some tombs as monster drops too. I had mixed views on this system, I liked it but wish there was more thought behind the magic skillsets from the tombs, and perhaps having different skills better used on the different party members, or limiting some of the tombs to certain characters, as it was since they were pretty basic.

Same with the other classes skillsets. I think most characters didn't gain many skills from memory and my playthrough I can't remember many skills at all per character, but that was ok in some ways because weapons would give skills and sometimes other equipment or accessories would too. The weapons that gave skills did feel they were thought out more, and I enjoyed deciding which weapon to equip each character with. I liked how many of the characters could equip more than one weapon type and felt it suited the flow of this game.

However, the balance of the game was extremely super easy. I don't mind super easy if there is a difficulty option, and I think a difficulty script to add at least a normal mode on top of the super-easy mode would've worked with the setup, in fact, I think just plugging in a normal mode may be enough to balance the game against this super easy mode, but as it is the game is almost never challenging.

It is better for a game to be super easy than super difficult, and for that reason, I still reward this game some points for doing that, but I found myself enjoying wanting to fight battles and everything being way too easy for me.

I think the length of battles was still good however and fair for most of the game. I enjoyed the lengths.

I can't remember for certain if there were any random battles, but most battles were on-screen encounters that you really could avoid if you choose too, and that is excellently done in this game.

There was also an optional dungeon and optional rewards that you could miss, but if you explored the game further you'd find, and it really works well.

Treasure chests are around but I did feel the game could've had more equipment rewards in certain chapters from treasure chests then they did. It was either they didn't have much or there was already better equipment then what was given, I can't remember which of the two.

Overall I did enjoy the gameplay a lot, and each developer clearly put a lot of effort into their dungeons and puzzles for their chapter.

I also enjoyed the beginning of the game before battle encounters were introduced and how you'd hit switches and run or avoid monsters stuff like that was fun and while I am glad they had battle encounters too, more of that stuff continuing at times would've been nice.

Edit: I'd like to add, I think it was all, all/most items and equipment had appealing descriptions and I really appreciated and loved that in this game.

Mapping & Graphics

All the mapping is RTP, but I think overall it's quite well done. Loved most of the mapping, visually looked appealing and good for game design. It does change from this style a little at times, but not often. Some people would say more detail could be done in certain parts, but I really didn't mind.

Audio/Music

As far as I can tell all the music was the default RPG Maker VX Ace RTP, but I enjoy the RTP music so I enjoyed it all. It fitted the game and its mood. Everything from my memory felt fitting for each map and each of the cutscenes.

Originality

This is probably where the game grows it's biggest points. All the developers found ways to add originality to the game. Through the party members you gain, through the surprises of the story and characters, the subplots added, the dungeons and their design, etc. The whole adventure felt it had many original points.

Since I talked about most of it above I'll leave it there.

Conclusion

So overall the game is very charming, for a game that got passed on to different developers with deadlines for there chapters, it's really done well.

Not without any faults as stated above, but still nicely handled.

Posts

Pages: 1
Decky
I'm a dog pirate
19645
Thanks for the review! Still kinda sad the final chapter never got to pan out as it should have, mostly because of time constraints.
author=Deckiller
Thanks for the review! Still kinda sad the final chapter never got to pan out as it should have, mostly because of time constraints.


It's understandable, but it was still an enjoyable game!
Pages: 1