Intro

"Halloween Wars" is a turn-based RPG developed by Avee using RPG Maker 2003 that is meant to celebrate the spookiest time of the years. Though oddly enough this game has been a source of some contention when it comes to it's review score. While pianotm loves this game, a lot of other people like myself are a lot less fond of it. Even if the developer is aware this is a highly flawed game.

Avee
Halloween Wars has its flaws but I am very fond of its core concept, its setting and, most of all, its characters.

To be fair, the core concept does work, but one of the enemies throws such a massive wrench into this game that it kind of sucks all of the fun out of it. At least if your playing as Flora. Though, I'll explain that more when I get to the gameplay section. For now I'd like to focus on the narrative.

Story
Summary

The game beings with our heroes gathering in preparation for a battle that takes place every Halloween. Apparently every tear in this world a portal opens up on Halloween that unleashes "them" upon the world and it's up to our heroes to save the day by beating the forces of evil and once more sealing them away. Of course, this process happens every year, but those years are their own tales. Suffice to say we can choose to play as the swashbuckling piper, the floral fairy Flora, a kid whose ghost costume has to come from "Charlie Brown" or "Beetlejuice", and an always hungry knight and his trusty 'steed'.



Of course even daring heroes have other responsibilities. So expect to suffer a long sleepless night to be followed up with a full day of classes.

Strengths/Weaknesses

While the opening tries to be a bit comedic and succeeds at being mildly amusing. It's also one of the few times the game includes any notable cut scenes beyond the grand finale. As a result the comedic flavor of this game gets lost a bit over the course of the game in my opinion. Especially if your playing on normal difficulty since your probably going to have to do some major grinding in order to get through certain sections depending on which character you selected. And since we only really see the kids interact with each other near the start and end of the game the playable cast doesn't feel as developed as they should for a game that takes a couple of hours to beat.

Gameplay

"Halloween Wars" central gameplay loop revolves around it's rock paper scissors combat system. This system relies on enemies being semi-predictable. For example the TV Creep in the image shown below has six unique attack patterns.

PPPS	PPRS	PRRS
RPPS	RRPS	RRRS

As you can see all of these attack patterns begin with a combination of rock and paper with the final move always being scissors. This means you can always just toss up paper for your first three moves when fighting this enemy in order to ensure you either score a hit or the turn results in a draw and neither side takes damage. While the final move ensures you can always score a hit by casting rock on your 4th, 8th and etc. turns.

The problem is that one of the enemies has such a diverse set of patterns that countering it's attacks effectively is next to impossible. This of course is the Caznivore which has at least a dozen different patterns it can deploy and the sheer amount of patterns means that this creature can cast just about any move on a given turn. About the only thing that makes this creature somewhat beatable at all is that it tends to spam patterns that use paper a lot the most. A factoid that is only of mild use to FLora at times since it's rock attacks will usually put her in a near death state with a single strike. And if she gets hit by it's magical attack her damage output will drop so much it'll take you several minutes to win the fight assuming you don't make any other mistakes while guessing it's next move. And while most enemies are more like the TV Ceep including the bosses. There are a couple of enemies like the Caznivore that just wreck the core loop of this game in my opinion. After all, that loop as far as I'm concerned centers around mapping out your enemies patterns and finding a pattern of your own that will ensure you win every single time they pop up on screen.

Outside of engaging randomly chosen enemies in combat the player will also pick up random candies off the ground which offer various effects from restoring health to boosting your stats. Of course, if you don't use these candies they'll be turned into points when you pick up another candy or reach the end of the level which ever comes first. These points can be spent while in the area select portion of the game on upgrades to further boost your stats.

Though on a more mixed note in my opinion the game seems to scale enemies based on your level. At least it felt that way during my most recent run through the game on normal difficulty with Flora. And if that is the case it basically serves as an explanation for why Flora is the worst character in the game in my opinion. This is because she suffers from both a lack of attack strength as well as defensive bulk to fall back on in order to endure long enough for the player to map out multiple patterns during a single engagement. I suppose she was meant to be a mage like character, but that really doesn't work when her magic is about as devastating as her physical strikes in this game. As a result we have a character that is about as durable as glass while having about as much hitting power as wet tissue paper.

Graphics

On the graphics front the game is entirely custom. Though it's pretty obvious the monsters are inspired by various horror films such as "The Ring" and "Friday the 13th". It's also hard to deny that these are good movies to take inspiration from when it comes to enemies for a game set around Halloween.

Sound

The game utilizes music from a few different sources. And it's this music that usually gets my Let's Plays for this game banned in multiple countries due to copyright claims on the music. At any rate the music selections are pretty solid though the best pick is probably "Thriller" which is used against a boss inspired by Michael Jackson.

Conclusion

"Halloween Wars" has some really good aspects going for it in my opinion when it comes to it's custom assets and music selection. I also think the core gameplay loop works, but some of the enemies having massive amounts of patterns assigned to them is what kills this game in my opinion. After all, this can all but ensure that picking a safe move in certain fights is impossible. There are just moves that are less risky to play in those situations, but playing the odds only works if your character can either defeat enemies quickly and thus ensure they won't take a lot of hits or if they have enough defensive bulk to ensure they can shrug off multiple blows. Oh well, I suppose if normal proves to much of a challenge the player can always start a new game on easy.