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This game stands tall, and shakes the heavens

  • Marrend
  • 02/23/2016 01:47 PM
  • 1939 views
Game Title: Luxaren Allure
Status at review: Completed!

Background:
I latched onto this game pretty early in it's life. I've seen the game grow from it's humble beginnings to a regular powerhouse of gaming. As such I'll try to not gush too much about the game, and give as honest opinion of it as possible.

As a point of reference, this review is, to the best of my knowledge, based on the original completed release. I am aware of releases since then that have fixed various bugs, and various other tweaks. However, if I ran across anything that was fixed, it didn't have much impact on this review (with one possible exception).


Story:
Karuna and Aurelie are both students of the Unwavering Blade. After they rescue a child, Aurelie goes missing, only to reappear some time later as Darkloft, an evil being set out to destroy all of of Luxaren. A contingent of warriors, including Karuna, faced against Darkloft at the Rahcreon Crypt, with Karuna being the sole survivor. The question that plagues Karuna is why she didn't just finish her off? Perhaps there was a fragment of Aurelie, the woman she secretly loved, that she could save?


The Blat:
In regards to graphics, what I like (and appreciate) most are the portraits made by M-3-1 that give that extra "oomph" to the dialog. That's not to say that the battlers or mapping wasn't noticed, and deserve recognition in their own right.

As for the music selection, I'm just going to come out and say that I gave the game nominations for best music. Once when the game released as a demo, and again when the complete version came out. Special call-out goes to the title music ("Anti-Social" by Monster Cyborg), and the regular battle music ("Assault Girl" by Monster Cyborg).

With encounters, they wander on-map, and have a tendency to chase the player after reaching a certain radius. That makes them a bit hard to avoid at times! During the time I played the game on Normal difficulty (about 2/3 of it), the battles felt pretty tough, and eventually turned into something of a slog to go through. While my characters got more options/skills to deal with encounters as they leveled, I didn't get the sense that they were getting any more powerful. Though, I can understand the logic behind why encounters would be on the tough side (ie: Darkloft's power is ever-increasing). Probably the weirdest part was after I toned down the difficulty a notch. It didn't feel like things kicked in right away, but, after maybe the second boss fight, things felt about where they should be (though regular battles still felt like a chore). An odd observation, to be sure.

I'm almost positive it's been mentioned a few times, and I'd hate to beat on a dead horse, but, I have to mention the two tidal areas in the game. Battles do not occur on maps that have a timer, (which is a small blessing), but, the timer applied a certain unwelcome pressure all the same. I suppose what frustrated me most was that there was treasure on those maps, and if I couldn't get them and return to safety before time ran out, I considered that "lost progress". That might just me my kind of crazy, though.

Saying all that, I really like the characterizations in this game. The cut-scenes where you see the character's pasts really hit things home for me, and made these characters more human. Karuna might act like a stoic warrior 90% of the time, but, there's several places in-game where she has doubts about herself, and her ability to be The Hero. Chisa obviously has doubts about herself, but, it isn't just because she's adorably shy. Merel might be happy-go-lucky, but, is one of the few Naga that allows herself to accept humans (and is part of the reason she's an exile).


General Observations:
In case the gamepage doesn't make things obvious, there are romantic relationships between females in this game. I wasn't bothered by that. Actually, in my opinion, they were treated with respect and dignity.


Summary:
Despite what issues I might have had playing the game, I would be hard-pressed to not recommend it. I'll totally admit to part of my reasoning is because I'm something of a fan of it. On the other hand, it's just a really good game!


BOTTOM LINE: 4.5/5


Side note on ratings (since there is/was/will be somewhat of a spate on what rating means what between each user):
1/5 -> Terrible. Forget about hitting an audience. The game is so bug-ridden, or otherwise unplayable, that what entertainment can be found in the game has a hard time coming to the surface.

2/5 -> Bad but playable. I had a poor experience with the game. When played by a player the game actually caters to, it would serve it's purpose.

3/5 -> Average. A solid experience, but snags somewhere along the line cause it to be held back from being "good".

4/5 -> Good. I enjoyed the experience, and have no qualms supporting it if was considered for a featured game (if it wasn't featured already).

5/5 -> Excellent. Among the paragons of gaming experiences, and instant feature material in my humble opinion (if it wasn't featured already).

Posts

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unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Thanks a lot for this review and for supporting me for so long while I made this game with comments, suggestions, and helpful advice :D It really means a lot to me ^_^
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