Lawrence of Aragorn

Intro

"Lawrence of Aragorn" is a short turn-based RPG developed by polarcactus using RPG Maker VX that was created for the RM Venture contest. A contest that gave developers a week to make a short RPG. And oddly enough I find myself the odd one out when it comes to this game. I suppose it doesn't help that I just got off spending two weeks being sick and am apparently coming down with a new bug again already, but there are design choices in this game that just bug the shit out of me. This is especially true when it comes to combat in this game. Though I also have issues with how the game's ending as well. And while I'll try to remain as objective as possible. You might want to take my score with a grain of salt or two.

Story
Summary

While the main character is clearly meant to be Lawrence, a loyal knight of King Elizer. A king whose been driven mad with grief and has begun digging into forbidden knowledge. He also disappeared a month ago and all of a sudden a village in the kingdom has been visited by a plague and a once holy temple is now overrun by hell spawn. As such, it's hard to deny that the king is likely involved with both instances and it's up to us to bring him back to his true self by kicking the shit out of him.

The Ending


Greatest Strength/Weakness

While the game is short the playable cast definitely has more defied personalities than I've come to expect in most games this short. Though a lot of those personalities tend to be on the more annoying side with the healer loving to yell at maximum volume while the mage loves to mock others for their cowardice when it comes to dealing with giant flesh-eating birds. On the other hand the game's biggest weakness if you exclude my distaste for the game's ending is confined to some spelling errors.

Gameplay

On the positive side of the scale the game does feature a turn-based combat system with a few tweaks on the standard formula. For starters the playable cast can equip runes which grant them anything from stat boosts, to new abilities such as health regeneration, to access to new skills. This really does help open up options for customizing your party. And while equipment in this game is scarce almost all of it impacts your ability to resist certain status effects or helps the player resist certain types of magic. So making sure your party is properly equipped for a fight is also important. And most fights in this game are rather challenging as well.

On the other hand the reason fights are pretty challenging in this game is because most of your party is rather useless. For starters your healer has a bigger glass jaw than Glass Joe from "Punch-Out!!". As a result it's pretty hard to keep your healer alive in this game since he tends to get knocked out every time an enemy looks in his direction. Another problematic character is Alice, the mage, a character whose spells are almost utterly useless since almost every enemy in the game you run across is highly resistant to fire, ice, and electric spells. As a result it's hard for Alice to inflict any sort of meaningful damage in my experience. And this same issue plagues the final character to join your party as well since his best skill is based on delivering multiple elemental strikes. Thankfully his regular attack is still useful against most of the trash mobs you'll come across when he joins the party, but even he gets stone-walled by the pink slimes.

Another design choice that gets in the way in my opinion is the fact you can't save in the game's final dungeon. This is an issue since the game suffers from a few potentially game breaking bugs in this area. For starters it's possible to jump onto a platform that is impossible to get back off of.


The jump of doom!!!!!

Another issue is that the pressure plates in one of the other rooms don't always activate when you place a statue on them. Thankfully you can enter and exit that room in order to get around this issue, but I almost gave up on this game when I realized the triggers for the pressure plates in that area are finicky.

And finally the game starts off with touch encounters, but the game's final dungeon includes random encounters along with traps that are impossible to avoid as far as I can tell. Add in the fact enemies in this game tend to be reluctant when it comes to letting you run away and your left with a final dungeon that can be way more annoying than you want it to be. Thankfully you can make Lawrence almost impossible to kill if you give him the regeneration ability. So you can try to run away as many times as you want. As long as you aren't dealing with the snake ladies and their dark spells.

Graphics and Sound

As far as I can tell the game relies on the RTP for both of these aspects. As such, I don't have a lot to say about them. After all, the default assets are serviceable and considering this game was part of a week long contest I'm guessing developers were probably restricted to the RTP for the most part to begin with. And even if they weren't the RTP assets are used competently here with most of the maps being pretty good. The only real exception to that rule being one of the maps on the way to the game's second village where there's a super narrow spot in the road you need to cross due to an ill-placed rock. Other wise I don't have any complaints about the look or feel of the game.

Conclusion

"Lawrence of Aragorn" does have some positives going for it such as it's characters and utilization of the resources found within the RTP. On the other hand the game is bogged down by an ending that may not be everyone's cup of tea, a game breaking bug that can set you back quite a bit if you haven't saved in a while, and combat that is difficult because most of the party couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag. At the same time this game was made in a week so I'm willing to cut it a bit of slack in terms of overall rating, but I still feel like this game needs a bit more time in the oven.