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Dungeons & Demons

Hello!
Today I wanted to play an old styled Rm2k or Rm2k3 classic rpg. Yes, I was a bit tired of all these new games and engines, and I wished for something old-school.
Unfortunately I already played a lots of famous old rpgmaker games, both complete and demos, and now it's rather difficult to find a game made with this engine I didn't noticed before.

And then I found Mistmoore Genesis, a game that not only is a 2008 Rm2k3 game I've never noticed before, but also a complete one! Wow! It seems that the version available is a 2010 update, but nevermind, let's start this game!
Mistmoore Genesis starts in an odd way: Marana, our protagonist, is a female warrior that lived all her life inside a cage, forced by a mad wizard to train and become strong, the strongest woman in the world... that she has never seen! So at a certain point she gets angry and decides to escape from her cell, and being she a powerful girl there is nothing that can stop her, especially because the mad wizard apparently is not around!


What? I'm not here for a lesson about old greek philosophers! I'm here to collect swords and kick evil wizards!

And this is how the adventure begins, Marana after a reckless jailbreak will travel the world to... uhm learn about her origins. Obviously during her travels she meets some people that will help and these will join her during the travels around the world. And so we got an adventuring party of vastly different people going around and performing good deeds, simple and classic. But how is the game?

Expect a classic rpg based on travelling: it's a linear adventure that brings our party from a dungeon to the next, following a linea path that occasionally let us wander on the main map (but expect a "I've no business here" and the impossibility to visit the places you aren't supposed to visit until you are forced to do that).

There are some good ideas: first is that you have no random encounters! Zero, all enemies are visible and once killed they do not respawn, so it's impossible to grind (but that creates a problem that we will see later). Another feature is that save points (represented by books on stands) not only let you save (you can do also this on the world map, of course) but they also completely heal the party, and that's pretty useful especially inside dungeons if you want to fight every single enemy, getting all experience points possible. This has the downside of making innkeepers completely useless, since they will provide a night of rest for a price... but inside each inn there is a save points, so there is no reason to waste money at all.
But this is just the first problem with the towns in this game, another issue is the total absence of consumable shops, in town you can only find weapons and armor shops but absolutely no way to replenish your potion stash, except for finding them as loot. For this reason I'm pretty sure that every player will try to exploit the save points healing power.


Let's fight... in SPAAAAAAAACE!!!

But there are a couple of problems with the dungeons too: first is the limited source of experience points, since enemies do not respawn and so it's impossible to grind. With the rarity of consumables this makes most enemy bosses rather difficult to dispatch in some cases (like the ice demoness, that starts easy, then when severely wounded she spams each round deadly ice attacks that hits all the party). Unfortunately even if the party includes a sort of healer, there are no serious healing skills (not to mention that only SOME skills actually have a description of what they do), so game is pretty difficult due to this reason, even if you can find Ambrosia scattered around the various dungeons. These are items used to improve permanently the characters' skills or letting them learn new abilities.

Another issue with the dungeons is how ugly they are. Ok, mapping is not the best I've ever seen, Three the Hard Way for example has nicer maps even if it's not exactly one of games with the best mapping, anyway the problem here is tolerable if we speak of the main map, towns (even if these aren't very good and have the nasty problem of interrupting the game each time you enter the map to show the town name, and this means EACH time you exit a building too!), boats etc. When it comes to the dungeons, well the problem is that they are really ugly... except some rare occasions. For example I found to be adequate the volcanic caves dungeon, while the neon (yes, neon) cave area is pretty bad, and the underground passages are absolutely the worst since one seem some sort of obstacle course with randomly placed items where you have to dodge enemies and obstacles to reach the end, and the other is a boring series of mazes.
Monsters are also quite generic and repetitive after a while (color-swapped versions of the same enemies do exist) and the story, while not terrible (there are some interesting elements) is bogged down by bad grammar and lots of typos. Too bad. Anyway that's enough, I guess.


Are you ready? Time to face the...

Final Verdict
Mistmoore Genesis isn't your classic boring Rtp jrpg, but unfortunately it lacks many additions (like shops with consumables, more different enemies both aestetically and for abilities, better maps etc) that would made the game more enjoyable and pleasant to play.
In any case, despite all the flaws I mentioned, I was compelled to finish it (and that's a good thing, I mean this made me curious and it wasn't exactly so bad I couldn't progress, like other games I played) but sadly I couldn't (and that's too bad) because one of the last bosses is nearly impossible to beat, despite owning the two epic swords that turn Marana into a combat monster. Sigh, I am so sad. Well, better luck next time!

Summing up

The good
+ A diverse cast of party members with different abilities
+ Ambrosia (even if sometimes the bonus indicated is not the effective one) is good
+ You get an airship
+ No random encounters and save points that heal the party

The bad
- Terrible mapping
- Almost no consumables (and no decent healing skill) is bad
- Typos, lots of them
- Story is so-so (and some parts made little sense)