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Challenging game - Quite fun, but has a few flaws.

  • jtrev
  • 03/25/2017 07:55 AM
  • 2323 views
Hello! Here is my review for this game! It took me roughly 28 hours to complete (without doing any of the sidequests or the extra challenging chapter at the end)
Without further ado..

Story
Arguably one of the most important parts of an RPG game. This game combines futuristic technology in a modern-day setting while also throwing elements of magic into the mix. If I understood correctly, there are multiple territories in the country of Cliva. While the country is run by a collective government, there are no actual figureheads. You start off your adventure as a gamer named Damien who agrees to test a simulation where the ultimate goal is to defeat a final boss. The simulation is made by Ravier Conner, a young scion who is in charge of one of the most powerful companies in the country (while also having other important responsibilities such as being on the board of directors of a prestigious academy). Damien and his fellow schoolmates complete the simulation, but only to learn that Ravier has bigger plans for them.

While the setting was interesting, there were too many important names and terms to remember. I honestly could not remember many of the important locations. Also, there were a few grammar mistakes that really detracted from the story. However, despite these problems, the central plot really piqued my interest from start to end.

Characters
Throughout the game you mainly play as four characters (although you will get many guest characters and a fifth permanent character as well). These four are:
Damien - a gaming enthusiast who got into a prestigious school under the recommendation of his friend Ravier. At the beginning of the game, he is seen as the dumbest student in the school (if we go by test scores, then he is), but he gradually gets a little smarter as the game progresses. He specializes in buff/debuff techniques, healing, and offensive ranged skills.
Vincent - a swordsman and Damien's best friend. Has a mysterious past that is expanded upon as you play. Uses elemental physical attacks in order to tear down the enemy.
Isabel - president of the school and daughter of a very powerful family. Her lineage is one of the only families who pass down their Spell Techs (faux-magic) from generation from generation. She specializes in offensive ranged skills and can also provide a bit of support as well.
Lyeric - vice-president of the school and seems to enjoy teasing Isabel. Born in a town where all of the denizens are his relatives. As a martial artist, he has powerful physical skills in order to compensate for his lack of spell techs.

Although the characters don't seem interesting by themselves, when they are together in groups, their likeability drastically increases. My favorite group would have to be the Royal Garden trio (the characters who are actually the star of the game).

Music
I really enjoyed the music. Most of the time, they really fit the locations. However, the one thing that felt out of place was when you reach the map before entering a city/town. The music got really loud, and then once you entered the town the volume was reduced back to normal levels.


Gameplay
The gameplay is divided into many different parts, but they were all really hard. I will attempt to try to critique all of the types.
Action Battle Phase (ATB) - Imagine a 2D Legend of Zelda game but with cooldowns so you don't spam the attack button. Some of these battles were really challenging (especially ones where you are in a cramped space), but others were easy (particularly ones where your enemy can teleport so that you can hit them through the walls without taking any damage in return). Also has an interesting "finishing move" mechanic where you hold a button to prevent taking major damage from a boss.
Turn-based Combat Although this was the majority of the gameplay, I was not that happy with some things about the turn-based combat. For example, it was impossible for you to know when you would be learning a skill after a level up. In addition, I felt the random battles were too far and few between. Even then, the only decent place to grind for experience in my opinion was
at the beginning of the game on the second floor of the Void Tower
. The other places just seemed like I was wasting potions and time (although the potions gifted to my party from NPCs were plentiful). Finally, I had hoped to see more skills on my characters that progressively got stronger like Isabel's V.Overdrive line. The guest characters also had way too few skills. Finally, it felt as if some of the buff/debuff skills ended too early. Although this did make the game challenging in a fun way, it was also hard for any of the support characters (ex: Damien) to actually do damage.
Puzzles Some of the puzzles required logical. Some required
dexterous fingers. And others depended on luck. I am not very good at all with puzzles, so I had to rely on the walkthrough quite a bit. I expect you might have to as well if you play this game.
Trials If you've ever played the Danganronpa series, then you would be very familiar with some of the clues used in this game. Basically, the point of this mechanic is to figure out who committed the crime. At the time, I don't think there was any way to look at your evidence while you were actually in the trial, so it's best to take notes on Notepad or another application while you're playing. One gripe I had about trials was that the developer threw in a mechanic that I learned in a previous trial the day before, and I forgot how to do it, so a refresher before each trial would be nice.

Walkthrough
The walkthrough is quite comprehensive. However, I must have been a bit too spoiled because there were some parts where I had no clue what I was doing and the walkthrough was of no help at all. For example, there was a boulder puzzle in a cave that I could not figure out and had frustrated me so much that I wanted to stop playing the game(I ended up completing it by luck after many tries). On the walkthrough, all it stated for this part in the walkthrough was "From here, there will be a small cave where there are boulder puzzles that you need to solve". Also, there was a minor mistake
On page 112, one of the 43s should be a 34 instead. I think it was #8.


Suggestions to the creator
- Perhaps a few more portrait for the "extra" characters (Ex: UN Members/trial participants) so they could be more easily distinguishable
- A bit more detail on the walkthrough
- More skills for the characters (both permanent and guest)
- Some way to see what skill is the next learned skill
- The game has a pretty good Diary system, but I feel it would also be good to implement some sort of system that keeps track of locations and events for the player to help understand the story more
- A "Look at the evidence" option during trials
- A bit more rewards for killing the late-game encounters (70 GP for killing an infantry is really low considering they do so much damage)

Conclusion
"Black Galax: Revert" is a very challenging game. Despite its problems, the (confusing) story might be just enough for you to have a good time. The sound is pretty good as well and there are some pretty funny parts. I personally can't wait for the sequel.

Posts

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Holy shit a review! Thanks a lot, you really made my day :D

I'm glad that you enjoyed the game and story overall. Looks like I have severely underestimated the play time needed to finish this game. I'm also sorry on the boulder puzzle part. As much I would like to include that in a walkthrough, its not really that easy and practical to put the entire puzzle in word form, I hope you understand.

Suggestions:
With regards to some of your suggestions, I have considered adding them, but found it impossible to do so. For example, the Trial Members and the UN Members portraits. Unfortunately free resources is kind of limited so I can't have them :( Though I might add some in the future for more important characters. Trials won't be added in the sequel so there is that.

Your suggestion on more skills... Yes. I am considering adding more skills to permanent characters as sequel's bosses are much more harder. Unfortunately adding more skills for guests isn't exactly practical as the skills themselves have to 'make sense' and not 'useless or redundant'.

Some way to see next learnt skill... I would need to use a script for that, assuming a script exist. So for now I guess the only way to see all of the characters' skill would be for me to come up with a list.

Some way to track location and events... Interesting idea. However, the only way I can think of right off the bat is something like an actual 'Diary' system where per entry is a record of a story event explained in more detail? Perhaps you can elaborate a bit?

A 'Look at Evidence Option'... Good idea, but extremely tedious for me to implement unfortunately. Might even break the flow of the trial event :(

A bit more reward... Yep, I will definitely keep that in mind!

I'll take a look at the walkthrough as well to fix the mistakes you spotted when I have time. Thanks for telling me!

Addressing some gripes you have:
Unable to remember important locations and etc - Everything will make sense in the sequel. I hope.

Lack of places to grind - Well even though this game is RPG in nature, I didn't exactly design it with grinding in mind. The only way I can see solving this issue is adding more spots with the specific intent on grinding.

Music sound level - I think I understand what you're referring too. Might have to come up with a 'QOL' update. Don't count on it though due to my lack of time :(

Buff/debuff skills ending early - Yup, fun and challenging :D

Some puzzles require luck - Interested to know which puzzle you're referring to.

Adding a refresher for trial mechanics - Well, Trials wouldn't exist in the sequel :(

Grammar - Kind of a recurring thing XD Yep, my grammar isn't exactly top notch. I tend to slip when writing long chunks of dialogue when I'm tired from school/work. I'm sorry.

And... that's about it? Do tell me if I forget to catch something you wrote here that you think it's important. Yeah, thank you very much for taking the time to write the review and enjoyed the game! I'm glad you enjoyed the characters (Surprised you enjoyed the Royal Garden Trio), story, jokes and story as well, was afraid people wouldn't like them :p

Just one thing though. As much as I personally can't wait to finish the sequel, this game took me about 5 years to finish. So you can expect about the same length for the sequel. Though I MIGHT (Emphasis on might) post an intermission sequel. With my schedule these days, it's really difficult for me to fulfill promises, I hope you understand.
Thanks for the reply! I'm fine with waiting five (or more years) for the next release of the series. Let's see if I am able to answer the questions/comments you may have regarding my review. Oh! I must note that I'm not suggesting you implement the harder ideas into this game, but perhaps hopefully an implementation or two into the sequel would be great.

Ways to distinguish generic NPCs: I completely understand the hassle of trying to find free portraits for games. I guess a suggestion I could throw out here is if, instead of using "????" as the name, you can describe them as "Blue-haired girl", "Mysterious Male Voice", or such for their title before they reveal their name. Or for like UN members, "UN Leader XXX" after they are introduced or something so that players don't forget who is who so easily.

Diary system: I was thinking something along the lines of that your E-diary system that you implemented into the game. Sort of like a history of the major events happening during the game after it is done. Sort of like short clips in a newspaper or something.
Example: XX/XX/XXXX - XX/XX/XXXX: Athena Ray, the only child of the prominent Ray family, was kidnapped. There were no witnesses and detectives have had no clues in solving the case. Athena's parents had committed suicide a few days later. In addition, ... and you can also do something like:
XX/XX/XXXX: The entire populace of the town of Iphreon mysteriously vanished. There were no reported survivors of this odd event.
As for the locations, an example would be like:
Iphreon Town: A quiet town whose residents mysteriously vanished on XX/XX/XXXX. and then after you finish the trial of the missing doctor, A survivor of Iphreon Town was taken to the hospital on XX/XX/XXXX. Shortly after an operation to remove a brain tumor, she was discovered dead. It is believed that the death was accidental (you don't have to tell the whole truth, it would be more like a newspaper found in a collective government/dictatorship in order to fit the game better or you could put REDACTED in some parts that are meant to be super secretive that the ordinary citizens of Cliva shouldn't know about).

Grind: The game doesn't have to be super grind-heavy if that is not your intent, but if you could make the experience progress more smoothly as the game progresses so that those who like grinding could do so, that would be great. For example, I found that the second floor of Void Tower was a great place to farm exp. But once you got to the fourth floor, the monsters were much harder, and you received only 200 exp (which I think was like 25% more) in exchange for using up even more skills to try to kill the monsters. So maybe a little more linear progression (like more experience for the fourth floor monsters or less stats on the monsters) would be good.

Skills: That sounds great that you are planning to add more skills to permanent members, thanks. For the skill list, instead of lcoding it into the game, you could just put it into your game's website (in which case you can easily do something like this.

And if you need to hide a character for spoiler reasons, you can simply do something like this
"CHAPTER 3 MAJOR SPOILERS
"
Either that or you can put it in your walkthrough in a separate page. Either implementation can get rid of having to script the "Next skill learned" thing as well.

Puzzle that needs luck: The heads/tails one involving Lily Amethyst is the only one I can think of right now, although similar puzzles would be fun as well (as long as they don't end in game-overs, that is!)

I think that's about it. Have a pleasant day!
Interesting ideas. Will take your ideas into consideration :D
Thanks for taking the time to explain!
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