The Oneliner: Zero Reality: Shattered World by our very own FeldschlachtIV (aka Notorious M.O.G.) is a promising steampunk RPG adventure ruined, in its present incarnation, by badly balanced battles.

Critic's Note 1: An advisory/warning, I don't know if it's my mood today or what but the text of the review, especially the parenthetical bits, is very snarky, and in general is much more negative than the actual scores. Nothing personal and no offense meant to the creator, I guess I am more trying to be entertaining than anything else.
Critic's Note 2: I hope you enjoy the locking of caps this is a VERY EMPHATIC review.

Story
This game's story immediately reminded me of FF6 (FF III in AMERICALAND) because that is where this game has taken most of its graphics from and because of the inclusion of a (evil?) empire and some ancient magitechnological ruins. But then again, these elements are STAPLES of science fiction and fantasy, so one can hardly call it derivative.

Points must be given for the fact that the intro is- shocker- playable, and, sadly enough, features some of the game/demo's best-balanced and most compelling battles. The story concerns a company of mercenaries known as the Returners Ruiners Freelancers (kind of an obvious name for mercenaries who are by DEFAULT Freelancers, kind of like a group of mercenaries called "The Mercenaries" or "The Independent Contractors", but whatever) who have gotten themselves in a heap of shit (political trouble) during their latest and potentially last mission. You begin the game as one of the mercenaries, our little-explored and not too developed main character, Leo (all of the Freelancers have Zodiac-style code names, which makes one wonder why they didn't call themselves THE ZODIAC or something astrology related, but then again, why do our star signs exist in what is obviously a separate fantasy world anyway?) who is ON THE RUN FROM THE LAW. Soon, after he kills some guards and guard dogs and runs around in the rain and fights a robot, we flash back, TARANTINO-STYLE, to the beginning of the mission that landed him in this predicament.

A kingdom and empire are making peace with one another, signing a Paxus (pax being latin for peace, this is kind of redundant) treaty... of peace, and also stipulating some deproliferation of magitek Prelude relic armaments. But as the treaty is being signed, the Freelancers are undertaking one last mission (for the King of Gardia, if memory serves?) to raid the Tartaros excavation site and retrieve some kind of Prelude relic that is being dug up there...and that is as far into the story as I really got (no spoilers) before the game's horrendously annoying and unfun battles forced me to quit after my third cheap death. Also, is it just me, or should it not be POSSIBLE (let alone LIKELY) to get a total party wipe out/game over during what is ostensibly a FLASHBACK SEQUENCE??? Like, obviously Leo has to have lived long enough to be on the run in the rain during the intro....

Honestly, the story didn't really have anything that I haven't seen before a dozen times in other RPG maker games BUT IT WAS ALL VERY WELL EXECUTED and the writing was generally competent, and it scores points for that. Also the last few twists of the plot I saw (not detailed here) were interesting and made me curious where the game was going. Ultimately my advice for the story would be to SLOW DOWN A LITTLE BIT in the beginning and take some more time to develop your characters, at least if the Freelancers are indeed going to be your main characters throughout (sometimes it's hard to tell with these things), including some kind of sequence after the intro but before the first dungeon showing what they're like outside of combat. Also take more time with world building so that you have your own little steampunk setting with its unique characteristics that distinguish it from just being NOT FF6. Like for instance I am really keen to know why TECH IS KEY when apparently EVERYONE HAS FUCKING MAGIC.

Story Score: 3/5

Visuals/Audio:

This game's visuals are neither spectacular nor bad. They are more or less what you expect from an (above) average rm2k3 game nowadays. Some of the maps (especially the rainy canyon/ruins during the intro) had really great atmosphere. The combination of some resources (the fusion of RTP future and FF6 cavern maps to make the Tartaros excavation sites, the very clashy "Devator v2.0 charset) looked odd, to say the least. This game would score bonus points for its AWESOMELY SMOOTH AND CONSISTENT BATTLE ANIMATIONS and its well-rendered special effects (especially the train crash/gun-fight sequence) but unfortunately graphics are conflated with sound in my reviews, and it loses the same amount of points for the entire train sequence being MYSTERIOUSLY DEVOID OF MUSIC with the music instead being replaced by ANNOYING ALARM SOUNDS or DEAD SILENCE.

Presentation Score: 3.5/5

Gameplay:

Hoo boy. I can't go in depth with this as I'd like to because I've already been working on this review for like an hour, but...

As Feld himself has acknowledged, the battles in this game are fucking terrible. And since this game offers very little gameplay outside of battle (which is itself a problem, dude, your dungeons need puzzles or minigames or SOMETHING to break up the monotony, even if the battles were excellent, and they're horrible) it was not possible for me to finish the demo.

Most of the issues are balanced issues that make the game impossible. Healing items don't heal enough and are far too rare. Stealing never fucking works. Your most useful characters (especially Libra, who is 1000x cooler than any of the other characters because he is a DUAL PISTOL WIELDING BLACK MAGE HOW FUCKING METAL IS THAT ARRRGH SWAGGER) are your most fragile, and hence are always fucking dead. Healing skills don't heal enough and damage dealing skills definitely don't deal enough damage considering how restrictive their In (MP) costs are. Stealing never fucking works. Seriously, I only had it work once the whole game. I tried it at least 10 or 20 combats.

(Oh, by the way, so you know, INANE means: 1 : empty , insubstantial 2 : lacking significance, meaning, or point : silly synonyms see insipid which is what INANNIUM SHARD and INNANT connote. I think you were probably going for things that resemble the word INNATE, meaning OF THE SELF, but if you were THOU HAVE FAILED.)

The only thing that even made the game bearable for as long as it was bearable was the fact that in spite of their being save points you could save anywhere, but even that seemed more like an accident than a design feature.

You have also failed to cater to the innate flaw of the rm2k3 DBS, namely the SPEED IS KING principle. As a result, 1. Saggitarius is a badly broken character, because his attacks would literally need to do 10 x more damage to make up for how rarely he gets to go in combat. He was basically useless to me due to his low speed, low accuracy, inadequate damage, and pathetic MP. 2. Because for some reason the bad guys are ALWAYS FUCKING FASTER than you in this game, it's not just that you get killed every fight but...you have to wait FOREVER to get killed.

In the end, the only skill that ever mattered was Libra's GETAWAY battle command, again making him 100x better than all the other characters.

Outside of combat I had no problem except a bug or two:


In short, nothing, nothing, nothing, can ruin a good RPG faster than bad battles. Ultimately, I quit after meeting the archmagister, since my entire party was at <100 HP and basically no MP after the Devastator battle and I was completely out of healing items and forced to fight MORE SOLDIERS, i.e., I was FUCKED. I have no idea how much more of the game there was after that or how it would have effected this review.

Strongly Suggested Balance Fixes:
Spoiler (click to toggle)

1. Increase every PC's speed.
2. Drop more more more more healing items.
2a. Make healing items better.
3. Techs, especially Libra's, should deal more damage. And give monsters elemental weaknesses or something, I wasn't noticing any.
4. MAKE STEAL ACTUALLY WORK SOMETIMES OR GET RID OF IT.
5. The Devastator fight was ridiculously unfair. The guy needs 400 less HP. I'm not kidding.
6. Increase Saggitarius's strength tenfold or double his speed. I actually suggest the former, it would make him more like the character you want him to be, but in the rm2k3 DBS Agility is 10x more important than anything else and you need to account for that by giving him at least 10 points of attack for every point of speed you take away.
7. Give everyone more MP or increase the effectiveness of Healing Breeze and Bubble


Gameplay Score: 1.5/5
Explanation: Was 2.5/5 but I took away a full star because I had to cheat (author's recommendation) to get out of an impossible situation.

Final Thoughts
This probably reads like a REALLY NEGATIVE REVIEW. That wasn't how I meant it at all. If I sounded angry it was because I saw GREAT PROMISE being squandered, so I hope the author won't be defensive and I really hope he won't be discouraged.

While Zero Reality: Shattered World is not yet a good game, it is right now an interesting story and some fairly pretty graphics that are being dragged down by bad battles likes some ball and chain. In spite of that it is still, ultimately, worth a look.

As a matter of fact, I hope more than anything that this review will encourage Feld and give him the kick in the pants he needs to bring this game to that ultimate pinnacle of indie games...ACTUAL COMPLETION.

OVERALL SCORE (NOT AN AVERAGE): 2.5/5 Stars