Master of the Wind

I will start off this review by saying that this is a long game. Very long for an RPG Maker game, I believe I clocked roughly 20 hours and the game is still in production. As a result this will be one of my most detailed reviews, as I have plenty to say about this game.

Battle System- 1/5
I loathe combat in this game. I sighed every time I saw that screen transition which informed me I was going to be wasting a few minutes of my life. The game uses the traditional RMXP battle system, which is not a horrible thing in of itself. I think my main problem with the battle system is how deeply it relies on recovery. You are pretty much expected to go into every battle in perfect condition, and fortunately the game does not make this a difficult thing. Healing items for HP/SP are both effective and cheap, and there's even a dirt cheap full recovery item that you can use from the menu absolutely anywhere. The main character learns a healing spell almost immediately, and not far into the game you have a party healing spell that nearly restores everyone to full. In pretty much every battle the healers will be healing, and the other characters will be attacking, that's about as complicated as things get. The real problem is that there's no sense of risk, unless you get unlucky and something goes horribly wrong. It takes no effort to fully heal yourself after every battle, and the rewards for combat are so small you wonder why you're fighting in the first place.

Another problem stems from the fact that your characters don't really have enough hp to deal with what they are fighting. If at any time several enemies decide to gang up on one character, that person is going to die. There are dirt cheap items that restore any character to 50% hp after death, but it's still annoying to have to bring a character back to life just because you were unlucky. Hit a string of bad luck and it's game over right there, completely out of your hands. The bosses are the worst offender in this category because they have such a wide range of skills. Some of which are nearly useless, some of which cause slight discomfort, and usually one attack that leaves your entire party half dead. If the boss uses their good attack twice in a row and your characters fail to recover in time, you're going to die right there. Characters only gain 1-2 in every stat per level and a handful of HP/SP, and since the leveling curve is horrendously slow it means you won't be leaving any areas feeling any stronger than when you came in.

The encounter rate is horrendously high, and since the numbers in this game are extremely small it means there is very little agility disparity between your party and the enemy. Which of course means that you're going to have a rough time escaping, and due to some issues I have described above a failed escape may mean the death of a character. Even though the stat increases are quite small you will learn new skills as you level up. Unfortunately, 90% of these are useless, and the ones that are not useless will instantly be eclipsed by the next useful skill. Towards the end I was annoyed at having to sort through so many useless skills to reach the one I wanted to cast.

The game does attempt to make things interesting by giving bosses a few gimmicks, but they do nothing to ultimately change the core battle system. There's also a few nice additions such as a working counterattack skill and a few scripts to make the battles look a bit better, but since everything is such a mess to begin with these small touches do nothing to save it. The bottom line is that this is the weakest element of the game and you'll be spending at least half of your playtime in it.

Storyline- 3/5
Finally on to a more pleasant subject. You begin the game as two superheroes known as Shroud and Stoic, living in a typical fantasy setting. They fight villainy in their spare time, and maintain their secret identities by working at the local armor shop. The real trouble begins when a Walmart like corporation known as Equipment King moves into town and starts destroying their business with low low prices. Thus our heroes embark on a quest to destroy big business. I've got to say that I love the premise of this game, it has a lot going for it. Unfortunately the further along you get into the game the more it downplays the superhero angle for a more traditional fantasy epic. One part that bothered me as the game progresses is that the story became more and more preachy. It appears to be very anti religion, and very anti big business, but there isn't a lot of justification behind either message since rather than attacking any core belief systems it settles by revealing the people behind these organizations to be pure evil. The script itself is superbly written, but I never found myself interested in where the story was going. There is definitely a pacing problem here, and no matter how many adventures your heroes are put through you never feel like you're any closer to accomplishing your goal.

Characters- 4/5
At any point where the story itself falters, the characters pick up the slack. Most of them are charming, full of wit, and generally likeable. In particular Stoic is a fascinating character, as aside from being a superhero is also a thousand year old undead skeleton who has lived through countless wars. Not exactly someone you'd expect to grab a cape and fight crime, but he works very well. The story itself is very serious business, but the characters still find plenty of time to bring some much needed humor in order to break the tension. A comic relief sidekick joins the party early into the game, and you'll probably be smiling nearly every time he opens his mouth. The villains get plenty of screen time, which I greatly appreciated, and there are plenty of them to go around. If there's any problem here it's that the game has so many characters that not all of them receive equal attention. It's nearly impossible to keep track of everyone and even worse to try and fathom the relationships between everyone. At some points it feels as though the author himself became disinterested with a character and just threw them aside in order to bring someone more interesting in.

Level Design- 4/5
There are plenty of dungeons in this game, and they are all fun. Puzzles are frequent, challenging, and often innovative. You'll probably become stuck at various points, but for the most part there are always enough hints lying around My only complaint in this category is that in certain dungeons you'll be introduced to a new exploration mechanic, and will be forced to use it to solve every single puzzle for the next twenty minutes (more than anything else I speak of a rock jumping sequence near the end of Arc V). I would have liked to see a lot more variety towards the end of the game, in particular building on previous systems and combining them in interesting ways. There is certainly a lot of potential for that sort of thing. Town design also deserves a nod in this category. Everything is vibrant and well placed.

Graphics- 4/5
The game sticks mostly to the RTP, except for the main cast and several of the monster battlers. The custom artwork is superbly done and helps the game define its own unique style. Aside from that it is probably the best use of the RTP in a game I have ever seen. There are some problems in regards to facesets, where they are frequently inconsistent and at worst just plain ugly.

Music/Sound- 4.5/5
Music selection is excellent, pulled from a large variety of sources. Although you will probably recognize the odd song here or there, there is so much variety that you'll often encounter something new. Each song has been carefully inserted to set the tone of each scene, and more often than not everything matches up perfectly. There is an odd song choice here or there, one that comes to mind is an epic Nightwish song that plays during a rather unremarkable battle.

Random stuff I liked-
Every character has some special power that will assist you when exploring dungeons. These abilities are well defined within the limits of the character, and it really makes you feel as though every party member exists for a reason.

Throughout every dungeon you will find a fairy. These fairies serve as save points, free healing, and even basic shops. Prior to any difficult boss battle you'll also be taken to a black screen where a fairy will tend to your needs prior to the conflict. Aside from being a nice and consistent gameplay mechanic, there's an amusing surprise involving them a ways into the game.

At one point your party crashes a rock concert, at which point the lead vocalist summons a squad of angels to provide some backup to his singing, and of course destroy you. Set to a Masterplan song, it is one of the more epic moments in the game.

Random stuff I hated-
Nobody ever dies. The game contains enough to villains to fill a stadium and even though you're constantly fighting them with sharp bladed weapons and explosive guns nobody ever stays down. The only times that anyone actually does get killed it occurs because of some other reason not related to your party. Like getting crushed by a cave in or having a stroke while screaming at an incompetent underling.

There is a puzzle in the very first dungeon which requires you to understand a series of events in the game's history, and put them in order. By the time you reach this puzzle you are suffering from information overload, and even if you have discovered every hint involving this barrier they come off as more confusing than helpful. There is a logical order to things that makes a whole lot more sense once you've been playing 10 hours into the game, but I felt the inclusion of this puzzle so early in the experience was a poor design choice. Although it could be remedied by making the hints much clearer and easier to understand, I feel like this puzzle would serve far better at a later stage in the game.

In a handful of story sequences control is completely wrested from the player. You can no longer fast forward dialogue, and from then on you will be force fed speech at a crawling pace. I imagine these scenes were done so that the song playing in the background could sync up perfectly with the action on screen, but even so I found this design choice to be far more annoying than engaging.

Final Thoughts-
I really wanted to give this game a better score, as I frequently found myself enjoying it. Unfortunately the broken battle system is so deeply embedded into the core gameplay that it drags the experience down at every turn. I fully recommend playing this game, but be warned of its glaring flaw.