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A short quirky game packed with charm and fun

  • unity
  • 12/26/2014 06:05 PM
  • 1875 views
Razed Are The Powerful is a game about Ulrika, a coliseum gladiator who has come down with a strange sickness, one that, to quote the gamepage, "can raze even the most powerful of wills." Ullie's not one to let that stop her, and she can't bring herself to miss more than a day of fighting, so it's back to the coliseum to fight to her heart's content, her health be damned.

This game was created by Gourd_Clae and Minnow for the RM Venture event, and finished for the Revive the Dead event.

The first thing that jumps out at you when you play is the gorgeous and unique art style, with the awesome retro redesigns of all the RTP RPG Maker characters, and background art that just looks really damn cool. The second thing you'll notice is the snappy and funny dialog, which really adds to this game's quirky charm.



The story is told in-between (and partially during) days of fighting at the coliseum, where Ulrika has to sneak out of bed and leave her worried husband Brian behind. He wants her to rest up, but she's got different ideas. The story itself isn't overly complex, but is both humorous and serious, and I don't often see a story revolving around a characters' marriage in an RPG, giving it a very fresh feeling. This is a small game, so don't go in expecting a big epic storyline. What we got instead was a funny and even a bit dark tale of marriage and battle, and I loved it.



The game really rewards you for searching everywhere and talking to everyone. Seriously, looking at bookshelves and stuff in Ulrika's house on a new day still gives you new dialog prompts and chances to find loot. It's really well done, and the other characters you encounter have fun personalities that make for good banter (and some rather clever insults).

These carry over even into matches, as before the start of the match, you get some good verbal sparring going on, and many times you can decide just how Ullie mocks her opponents (or just chews the fat with them or give them a wing-massage if you're feeling friendly).



The battle system is very clever as well. Each character has either a physical, ranged, or magic role, and they have advantages over each other in a rock-paper-scissors fashion. Your skills also aren't always available to you, as some are only available when you are "unwarped" (your default state), while others you can only use when you are "warped," a state achieved by using certain moves or having certain moves used on you.

This and the fact that spamming "attack" isn't useful unless you've buffed yourself makes the battles require a little bit of thinking and playing around with abilities. You can also scan each fighter for not only their stats, but a cool blurb about them!



The game centers around character recruitment. If you beat a character, they join you, no questions asked, and the same skills that were giving you a headache are now at your disposal. Given the huge cast, and the fact that by the end of the game, you'll be getting four new characters a battle with the 4v4 fights, and you'll have a gigantic party in no time. This allows a lot of room to play around, but by this point, you'll probably have found a good combo of four characters that you might not feel like experimenting with all the new characters.

The game isn't without its flaws, though. Not all characters are of equal usefulness, and some skills definitely felt more useful than others. As much as I loved the dialog, there were times when conversations carried on for too long for even me (though that was pretty rare), and the game has had its share of bugs (most of which Gourde seems to have stamped out).

Even given all of that, I found myself enjoying the game all over again on my second playthrough, and I can heartily recommend it to anyone who likes character humor and a different sort of RPG Maker experience!

Posts

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Yay, it's here! Minnow will be pleased when she gets back~<3 Thanks a ton, Unity!
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
You're very welcome! :DDDD Thanks for making such a fun game!
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