Vae Turpis Eons

Last week I reviewed Tears of the Sword (HERE!), an incomplete, but pretty good demo by SquishyWizard, the same author of Vae Turpis Eons (woe to the ugly aeons?), that was a demo of a real time combat system made with RPG Tsukuru 2003. Later it became a prequel for Lacrimae Ferrii, the first demo of Tears of the Sword (whose title is practically the english translation of Lacrimae Ferris). It's worth mentioning that the original Lacrimae Ferris demo is still available, I also mentioned it in the previous revies, but I decided to review only the more recent version.

Since I played Tears of the Sword, I knew the setting, but here's a recap: this fantasy world is ravaged by the Ethran Civil War, a clash between the humans and the Croixian, a race of powerful humanoids probably from another dimension or world. In Tears of the Sword we witness the end of the war and its aftermath, here, being a prequel, we see what happens during the war.

This time we play as Seth, a seer that has the power to control the bodies of some important humans taking part in the war against the Croixian, while his rival does the same for the opposite side, and they play a sort of game of chess to determine the winner of the war.
While apparently this power sounds cool, this is just a trick to play a series of separated scenarios: a young man lost in a dark gloomyforest and destinated to fight a friend, a captain who has to defend his ship from pirates, a scholar who has to catch the thief who stole a prized book. And then there is an arena for some extra combat encounters where you can play as one of the protagonist of the scenarios, or one of the characters unlocked playing them.


I didn't know any Geneos, but Hayatou was the protagonist of the prologue in Tears of the Sword, and the king npc for the rest of the game! Then who's Geneos? This will be soon revelated...

If you played the demo of Tears of the Sword, you will probably recognized half of the characters that you will see (and in some case) here: Hayatou, here a young lad, but the one who will become first a veteran and then a king, playable in the prologue of Tears of the Sword, then Omen, the protagonist of Tears of the Sword, Lance, one of the evil Croixian leaders, and so on. Mechanically there is unfortunately no difference, aside for the facesets and charsets, all characters feel the same, except for two of them that possess a healing skill, but that's it.
But how does this game play?
Well... bady, very badly! Yes it's quite terrible.

I wonder WHY making an action game with Rpgmaker2003, when Lacrimae Ferrii/Tears of the Sword had such a pretty good and classic combat system? Here you have to press the key to attack once you are in front of the enemy, at the right time or you'll be hit. I noticed that the best strategy is waiting for the opponent to arrive in front of you and strike. If successful he will jump one tile back and them come again. Strike again and repeat. Easy? Not at all!


The first bossfight: a young Hayatou faces someone from his past, a man he knew well. Pity that we don't, for us it will just be a Setzer Gabbiani lookalike!

First because you'll be often outnumbered, second because the hit detection is so bad. Having some sort of power, special move, or ranged attack would have made this game at least a bit enjoyable, but no! It's like playing the old 1985 arcade Gauntlet all alone and with a character that can only hit in melee. And badly due to the terrible hit detection. And there is no interface that indicates the hitpoint left, you have to enter the classic Rm2k3 menu and check, even if the screen will flash a red color when you're nearly dead.
The only good thing is that you may find healing items here and there, and even a shop in one level (I also learned later that you can rest on some beds but I totally missed this feature the first time... later it will be necessary to exploit that to survive), but with outrageous prices, considering that money is scarce, normal enemies do not give you gold and even if they did you cannot grind! Every battle is obligatory but can be done only once. And yes, there are no levels no upgrades, no equipment, nothing... it's unfortunately so sad and bad!

Mapping is adequate, as it's the rest of the graphics: the style if the same of Tears of the Sword (and I mean that not even the locations are similar, but they even use the same assets), of course, and it's good since you'll immediately recognize the familiar characters from the other game.
Unfortunately the maps are sometimes really small and temporarily limited even more by some sparkles, making combat against group of enemies really difficult. Especially in the ship it's possible to be locked between various combatants, meaning defeat, and with the presence of rare save points (that are just use to save and they do not heal the characters of a single hitpoint) means that the player will surely hate those parts! Pity, because I liked other aspects like music and sounds, like the disturbing laugh of some enemies as they die (others, more humans, just scream in pain).


Ok, thanks to what I call the "sandwich manouvre" I'm defeated! Sigh. See that green thing? This was a save point, but now it does not matter, it's too late for me!

Final Verdict
I admit that the only appeal of the game and the reason why I tried it was to learn more about Tears of the Sword and Omen and Hayatou's past. Unfortunately this game is incomplete as the other, so I guess that some characters would have been (probably) present in both games (like Navinel e Uven, for example), but for the most part these looks like a couple of unrelated stories that it's also hard to connect to the whole war against the Croixian.

But again, it's not one but two incomplete games. Sadly, unlike the demo of Tears of the Sword this demo lacks both an intriguing story and a decent combat system (that were the strong points or at least the more likeable parts of that game). This was probably an experiment, for what I can see it's a mess.
With an awful gameplay and an almost non-existent story that is just an excuse for a series of battles (a pity, some parts could have improved a lot with more dialogues, exploration and adventure) I cannot recommend this demo at all. Well better luck next time, then!