Remnants of Isolation

Remnants of Isolation was one of the entries for the IGMC (Indie Game Making Contest) for 2014. As one of the judges for the RPG portion of the competition it is my pleasure to share my thoughts on the game. This review will basically just be the notes I took cleaned up. It will be based on the competition version of the game, so certain aspects of the game may have been changed.

Presentation
Graphics were a mix of custom, RTP and edits. That is not a bad thing, as they mixed well together and the slight style clash was offset due to it all looking so gosh darn pretty.

Maps were well-constructed for the most part (there were a few niggly bits here and there) and added to the general atmosphere of the game.

Music is very well done, too, and helped increase the atmosphere. Most of it is, I believe, custom and it's very haunting. The theme tune, which appears a few times, was very sweet and emotional. Sound effects were also used to great effect and the atmosphere was great.

The writing was very solid. If there were any errors I was either sufficiently distracted from them by the great characterisation or they didn't exist. The story is bitter-sweet and quite well presented. The characters - for all that one of them doesn't talk - are nicely presented as well. The facial expressions in the custom facesets shows a lot of emotion for them and frankly, I cared about what happened to them. I may have shed a tear... maybe.

Gameplay
Battles were on-map enemies, one-time encounters for the most part, until a certain point. They were decent speed-wise, easy enough to avoid if you wished, but placed with some strategy if you wanted to grab the treasures lying around.

Battles themselves were, in a word, great. They were fast-paced and challenging - it is easy to die if you aren't paying attention, but not so bad that you'll die if you drop your guard for a second. Skills play a huge part in battles - in fact, attacking is generally the worst thing you can do, even with the best weapons of the game.

Indeed, the skill system is where it's at. You learn two kinds of skills - one type is special, in that it enhances the power of the other skill type - magic. Magic can be either straight-up elemental attacking of one enemy and requires MP to use - which you restore a bit of each turn (or can gain more of if you guard). Magic cannot be learned - you equip cards you find to temporarily learn it. Each gives a certain element of magic and you can have about 5 cards at a time equipped.

Now, the enhancement skills add a lot of strategy to battles. Magic by itself will cast a single-target elemental spell, but if cast after one of the enhancement skills, they will gain different abilities, whether it be multiple casts, area of effect, power up or inflicting elemental weaknesses. The last one, coupled with a souped-up elemental spell of the now-weakness on the next turn, is a boss killer and should not be ignored.

The enhancement skills can only be learned by either character. One gets the multi-cast and aoe, the other gets the weakness and power up. Each enhancement also has effects of their own without the use of magic. One, for example, will drain HP from enemies. Another will decrease enemy Attack and Defence. Yet another will increase ally Magic Defence and Attack and normal defence and the last will deal just normal magical damage.

Items are handled interestingly, too. Enemies drop souls (think of it as money, I guess) that you can use to 'craft' items, if you have enough. You can also disassemble items to gain more souls - there are some items that exist just for this purpose. This is the way to gain better armour and weapons, as well as items that come in quite useful during certain areas. They can also be found in treasure chests.

Boss fights aren't hard, but there's one that is quite tricky, using the skill system to it's utmost.

There aren't puzzles, really, though there are certain areas where you must use a musical skill to progress with the plot and unlock the next areas.

There are also three different endings, which is nice.

Fun factor
This game was pretty fun. The characters, the story... both were great and kept you invested in the game, wanting to know more. I played this game over the hour limit - hell, I got all three endings (mainly because I missed the best one and hell no I wasn't gonna miss out on that cuteness!)

Battles were great fun. I never really ran from any monsters because it was pretty fun to beat them, gather their souls and make items from them~

There were certain strategies that could be used in battle that negated the use of items (until a certain part of the game) but that wasn't a huge deal-breaker. That said, while they were rather fun, I didn't really relish grinding too much. Some of the enemies were annoying in certain areas where they couldn't be avoided and I just wanted to get on with the story, especially past a certain point where I needed to backtrack and kept getting attacked by rather weak enemies.

Some floors were a little windy - not a big deal but just something I noticed. I did like that each area had a different aesthetic, though.


Overall, there's a reason this game won the IGMC - it's a gem and a half and well worth a play. For the IGMC I scored it a 54 out of 60 - one of the highest scores I gave. On RMN I'm giving it 5 stars. Yes, five. I never give five - and understand, this is not a perfect game, but it was highly enjoyable and hit all the right notes to me so I'm giving it an extra half-star.