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Breaking clichés to reinforce clichés

  • Kylaila
  • 08/05/2014 03:29 PM
  • 1869 views
"Antagonist" is an action visual novel made for the IGMC 2014 and can be beaten in a little more than half an hour. You are D'vil (no pun intended) and take on the glorious role of Dark Lord in the next RPG to pay your bills and gain fame - but it comes with a twist when he falls off the set and comes into direct contact with the mighty hero Ralph.

You basically talk to some people, get a few lines, battle, talk some more, battle, then rinse and repeat until you reach the archvillain pulling the strings.
While it twists the usual hero and villain trope, and attempts to escape from the cliché, it eventually winds up to be even more clichéd than the story they were acting out initially. Still, it has some obvious references, some humour and a beautiful frame.

The first thing you will notice is that everything - characters, cutscenes, backgrounds - is beautifully drawn. Sure, Ralph looks both stale and disproportioned, but hey, it suits him.
The second thing you will notice is that you have some very decent villanous music. A few tunes such as the battle theme and the "danger!"-music is rather repetitive and bland, but the general music is very good.


Isn't that the best plan ever..

There's some humour in here as well. It's packed with it, rather. Although it evokes a smile now and then, and a facepalm inbetween, it didn't make me laugh nor did it carry the tone of this game - the atmosphere soon turns rather serious.

Which brings us to the story - as you do not access any maps (visual novel, remember?) you get to have the choice of different answers which all result in the same action and have the option to talk to a few villagers/mates while you wait around. There are only two occasions where you can do that and even then there is only very generetic lines to be had. There are a couple of typos and text spilling out of the text boxes, but nothing major. (well, a "not" was left out once .. but you add that one automatically)

The text to battle proportion is rather slim. You have very little dialogue. And 70% of this dialogue is there solely to introduce the next foes to fight.
As such, the story progression as well as the characterization aren't subtle at all. The characters themselves are extremely stale, the only character developing at all is your main character D'vil, and even then, this is gaining knowledge rather than gaining any character development (not to mention that in this department, your obsolete choices may reflect no real development as well).



You sure you don't remember burning villages to cinders?

You start out as an actor and must realize that not everything was acted. So it is your task to find out why and to face the malice a Dark Lord would encounter in the human world, well, from the heroes of the human world.
Alongside the righteous and slowly confused hero Ralph. Righteous says it all. He's got the usual revenge, loss issues and all and fights because of that. To slay evil. Yes, that's all you get to know about him apart from him being slow and a bad actor. Sorry to spoil all those unique character traits.

You wander around until you can convince the great hero to follow your directions for a bit and then locate the root of evil. You probably would've guessed it after playing two minutes, but still.

Really, the director does look like the most evil of all. And while that was just an amusing thought it soon became quite apparant that he indeed is..


You've got a couple of plot-twists, a horde of "a wild hero/villain appears!" encounter and finally create world peace. Not to mention the obligatory foes turn to friends trope and the needlessly long battle in which all friends help out.

And dead coming back to life as well. Yep, we ticked 'em all off



We've seen too many of them .. sorry.

Now, this in itself is nice parody and all. But there is no catch in it. It's not amusing. It is either serious and blatantly boring and predictable, or it is meant to be humorous through and through which then missed the spot, as the kind of humour is predictable and repetitive as well. Sending in one rip-off after another will not keep you amused. Chefiroth is cool and all, but I want to have more than a character name and portrait to create comedy. The dialogue lessens towards the end as well.
Some will certainly find it incredibly funny, but I certainly do not belong into that group.

Okay, story slim and predictable, humour follows the same principle. Choices do not matter at all. Yes, they do amount to a "villain-rating" at the end of the game, but they don't have any impact on the game.
And that is quite sad, even the illusion of change like changing the sequence of foes by choosing different paths would be appreciated. Visual novels benefit from these choices and will feel less restricted. You could have Ralph develop a different relationship to D'vil, for example, which wouldn't have influenced the progression at all.

Except him not joining the actors or veery reluctantly joining them or having male hero #2 jump in instead


Which leaves us with the other portion of the game - the battles.
You can only control D'vil (and Ralph in the last fight, unless that was a bug. He actually died on me once and was available after the revival)
You can choose between two or three skills for D'vil to learn inbetween, okay. They don't affect too much, though, as you will learn new ones soon after and will not have the fury to use many of them infight, as buffs and single-nukes are very strong. Fury builds up by attacking normally or taking hits. Ralph has mana - well, his skills don't use any, but he still has it.

Counter uses too much fury to be used at all, in addition to not getting hit often enough for it to pay off. Ralph takes hits as well, better use fury for direct offense or buffs. Heal is pretty much meaningless as Ralph heals you. Potions are pretty much meaningless because of that as well, not that I mind. You might want to have some items to be able to revive someone in a pinch, but you can avoid that scenario just the same.
Why use weak attacks that don't deal much more dmg than normal attacks but use up fury instead of building more up? You'll use only a few of the many skills you have.

Generally, the battles were too easy. You have (potentially) infinite heal, no death risk and well .. keep spamming attack. That'd be fine, if only you didn't spend more than half of the entire game infight. It is a little disappointing that there is no challange to be had in this department, either.
The last fight drags on and on and on until every character had played his part - it wasn't difficult, nor did you need to do anything to win the battle, it was just a waiting game.

"Antagonist" certainly had some very nice ideas - including the RPG making (filming) in a RPG, as well as teaming up villains with heros. The first discovery is quite interesting, but this curiosity goes slowly downhill.
It generally would benefit from more focus on dialogue and text instead of mediocre battles.
It's been an okay play nonetheless, but it could've been much much more.

Posts

Pages: 1
Thanks for the review, Kylaila!
There's a lot of good points, I gotta take note XD
The reason for all the parody characters was because we were trying to build the image that the acting was happening in even famous games that we know.
I guess it didn't come across as we expected ^^;

I'll try to kick up the writing a notch next time. Thanks again!
I'm glad you can take something from it!

Hmm, that's a nice idea, but that would have needed more meat to actually come through. There are so many parodies (especially with our good old Chefiroth), it will be noted as just another one if not specified otherwise.
You could have added that as a few scenes before you fell off the cliff - seeing Chefiroth or others act out their role would've done the trick. Would be really nice to stay longer with the evil cast anyway, you don't care about them one bit, because you feel you only had two lines of dialogue.
Pages: 1