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A Game with a Great Story

Reality: a Path to a Shattered World, an interesting title, and the game definitely has its high points. Though it’s only a demo, quite a lot happens, even if it just the intro. With such an explosive intro, one can only imagine the things to come.

First a few bugs and things I noticed. There are some spelling mistakes and missing letters in some of your message boxes, I suggest you double check them. During the boss battle with the sentinels, when one is close to death or is dead, the message “remaining sentinel gets a major magic boost” keeps appearing. Also, when I entered Tomuz, I noticed Bruce joined my party before the scene, somewhere; probably a mistake event. I think I went to the bar and looked at my inventory screen, and he was suddenly in my party. Also, for some reason I can save everywhere, instead of just at the save points.

Gameplay: 3. Battles are somewhat interesting, although difficult, and there weren’t any puzzles; at least thus far into the game. Dungeons were straightforward.

I realize that the demo was really only just the introduction despite its length, but even so I’ll just criticize it the way it is now. First off the battles, since it’s the most major part of the game. In the beginning the battles were a little difficult; the enemies were fast, and struck multiple times doing moderate damage. Although the scene indicates that you’re supposed to be running away, so I thought that made sense; and yes you can easily run away. Even so, if you had to do combat, you seemed to had to rely on your skills more, which were single hit kills. But in one turn the enemies would damage you for about half your health. For healing you had a only a few healing items, and they only recovered one fourth of your health, but since you take so much damage you would feel safer healing to full, which would take multiple items.

Later on your party consists of four people. At that point I thought it would have been a little easier at that point. It wasn’t. The enemies seemed to be so fast and strike multiple times for large damage, and then the party somehow seemed very slow. (though I think that’s rpgmaker’s case in terms of its calculation crap) Someone would easily die without you being able to do anything. The battles seemed so hard and certain enemies took some so many hits before they died. You actually had to be hardcore and strategize and heal accordingly with spells and items, resulting in battles taking some time. Now, I’m actually happy there’s a game that’s forcing me to do this. I mean several rpgmaker games lack this sort of mechanic to battles. While I adore the effort you put into the combat, I have to comment that is too much for a beginning player. We only just started playing the game, and we have to do these fierce battles? We don’t even know what the game is about yet. The beginning of games are supposed to be easy, the battles just for players to start getting used to things. I think it would be best if the battles were toned down in difficulty, and then get to this level after the player levels up and gets supplies and what not. Later on I also started running out of healing items, because of their inefficiency, and the fact that I used all my magic points healing. I mean, this is the beginning of the game, I can’t get more healing items, I have to make do with what I have. Later on I just started running away from all the battles, and I couldn’t even do that with the random encounters. It wasn’t until later I found Libra’s “get away” skill. That made things easier, but having to avoid all battles… that can be a problem.

The demo seems to be really mostly just the introduction as things escalate into a problem, and then worst comes to worst. So really, since it’s just the intro, tone the battles way down, and just let your story do the work for the time being. When you got to the next ruins with just Bruce and Leo I thought that the game was “officially starting” then, because we were just at a town where we could get supplies and now were fresh off into a new monster infested area. Well the monsters were no different, no easier. The spells they cast could do at least 100 damage I believe, a whole lot. I was always on edge, I didn’t know if I should have tried to level up or not. What I would suggest about the healing items btw, is perhaps either give a lot more of them to the player, or at least increase the amount they do, this would help the difficulty a little, although I would prefer toning down the monsters. Also, in the ruins, there’s a treasure there, a broad sword, a weapon that could have been bought in the previous town. I’m not sure I understand why that weapon is there. Up to the point where you reach the town, the money you get is right in front of you, and thus, if you just explored the town a little, you would have found the shop, and if you smart you would have bought the sword since it was cheap. So maybe put a different or slightly better item in its spot? Also, when you’re in the alley and you just meet some of the new members of the group, you continue on to this area with panhandlers (or whatever they are called I forget) and the one gives you items. The message box states that he gives you small medkits, but you get tonics? Obviously I take it the tonics are the medkits, but this is confusing. Maybe you should just state tonics instead.

In terms of the puzzles, there weren’t really any. There wasn’t really anything on the field that you had to do that made you think. I understand this was the intro, so it makes sense. But hopefully there will be puzzles in the future. The areas themselves were straight forward too, with a chest in this room and one in this room etc. It was easy and basic, and I liked it.

Also I noticed that the battle music was really low, which kind of killed the mood when the music at the beginning was playing, then I get into a battle and I hear nothing because of the volume. Volume consistency is important in a game. (In my opinion) The first boss, that Decimator thing; it looked like a robot, but in the battle screen it was a knight. I don’t know if this was intentional or not but it doesn’t quite make a lot of sense to me. Maybe change the graphic?

Graphics and Mapping: 4. The edited charactersets were good and the mapping was quite good as well. Some of the graphics were misleading, like the “elevators” but they worked well enough.

The mapping is quite good; the town looks real, although the insides of the train could have used a little more detail. The train didn’t have too much detail, but I think that was a case of resources, so I’m not too big with that. Just a few aesthetics to make the maps look a little more interesting. The maps seem to be a good enough size to fulfill the purposes, so that is good. One thing I noticed when entering Tomuz, the town, the message box would go too fast and I wouldn’t be able to read the text. But yeah, the “passageway” when you first meet the other group members and the elevator at Tartaros were kind of not very convincing. The battle animations were quite good, involving the characters themselves performing the skills or spells. They were straight to the point and were synonymous to the skill or spell name. But yeah, not a whole lot to say here.

Music and Sounds: 5. The music seemed to fit all the situations and were of fine quality. There was a great deal of sounds as well to accompany the situations.

The music seemed original to me, I think… and it fit each scene well. A lot of them seemed to almost enforce a mood. Aside from the volume issues with the battle and boss musics, I don’t think there was much of an issue with the music. There was also a variety of sounds used. A lot of the sounds also came from the scenes, like gunfire, and explosions etc. I thought this made the scenes feel more dynamic and was more than just reading the text. (Of course the custom character models helped this too) Although, the siren on the train was really annoying. Though, since you don’t hear it for long its fine with me, but personally I would have found a different noise or just made the sound play a few times then stop.

Atmosphere and Setting: 5. The atmosphere has been captured quite well; the fact that the empire is on to you, and that you are a bunch of sellswords who do a lot of fighting. Quite a good deal of info about the environment and the world is provided as well.

The game had a really good atmosphere. The fact that the group that the characters belong to are mercenaries, they see combat a lot. This is reflected in this amount of battles you face, as well as the several complications and high end action. This gave an air about you that you were constantly on edge and full of fierceness, which really held well to the story. Then there was the confusion of the characters when things seemed odd, and the questioning of many things, which made the player think about any and all possibilities about the situation as well as the environment. This gave you a more insightful look into the game as well.

You were also provided with a lot of background information about the world as well. You are informed of the empires, as well as the group that the main characters belong to, and the significance of their existence, as well as the current plot. Whenever a new subject came in to play it was defined as well as discussed about, also mentioning additional things, which can also make the player think of future events or possibilities etc. Although some things did confuse me at times.

Story: 5. The story is quite good, with high points, and interesting information always been told to you. The characters have their personalities, some of they show at least, but since they end up going away, this is fine.

I think the story was probably the best element in this game. The story led the character to each point, there was no sort of “freedom”, as it was a bunch of scenes guiding the players movement; obviously because it was the intro to the game. There was much talk, all concerning the current plot at hand; and it sort of had a linking, natural feel. It wasn’t just, “we have to go here. Okay were here! Now we need to go here…” The story consisted of “all the details” in a sense, where it wasn’t simply point A to Point B. This made the game interesting I think.

There were also several characters, some of which seemed to have personalities, although some characters were only met briefly. Though there was significance to this, because of the fact that they go away later in the game, at least some of them might, having fulfilled their purpose. The story (even though it was just the introduction) seemed to be explosive, and now the main character has settled down from the high point, and the real conflict is going to begin. Though some things I noticed with the dialogue was that most the characters, despite being mercenaries, seemed to have more mannered speech skills. They seem to talk somewhat high, and a lot of the characters used the “much less” phrase a lot. This was kind of weird when Scorpio suddenly later made a crude reference about “being caught with your pants down”. That kind of confused me a bit, but then again they swore too, so maybe I’m just misinterpreting.

What I liked: I really enjoyed the story and the fact that there was a turning point in the beginning which rather large effects. I also liked the difficulty of the battle system despite its inappropriateness.

Closing Statements: This demo is really a very, very small fraction of the game it seems. Hopefully there will be many puzzles, gameplay ideas, and uniqueness to come with the game, as well as a fixed battle system. Its still a game with a really intriguing story though. And I just want to say in advance that I apologize if this review seems to be “lacking” in some parts. It’s just that there wasn’t a whole lot of things I had issues with, and everything just seemed good the way they were, and thus I didn’t really have many comments…