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Needs Improvement

  • Novalux
  • 08/06/2014 06:37 AM
  • 2308 views
At a glance:
About an hour in length.
No player movement.
Game plays as a progression of battles, dialogue.
Levels, shopkeepers, items- all but absent.
Lots of custom artwork.

Gameplay:
After the intro you get the chance to speak to various members of your hideout in what was a missed opportunity. This sort of town environment was utilized only twice, and the characters didn't talk much. All I'm saying is that if you're going to include custom, full-size characters with emotions, use them. Speaking of which, there is a lot of art in this game- custom backgrounds, enemies, actors, and even some cut-scenes. About all I can say about it is that it looks good to me and preserves its own style, you can tell nothing was ripped (Hey, I'm not an art critic). Sound is from the RMN OGG pack and fits fairly well with the scenes, though there were some choices I personally found confusing (enspiron, for example).

The whole game is made through events and script, which means no map movement. The game knows what it should be focusing on, and deals away with leveling (it has levels, but only to match your strength to enemies), equipment, and all items but potion and revive. This is good because it allows you to focus on the important thing- battles and skill choice.

Unfortunately, battles amount to little more than spamming attack and an occasional heavy hit or buff. Enemies will follow standard attack patterns save the final boss, which wasn't very satisfying (see final boss gripes). As you learn better skills, old skills will become irrelevant through their similarity, making for stale combat (Sure, I could spend 60 tp and do more damage in one hit, but why should I if two 30 tp will end up doing the same?). I found myself lacking multiple ways to tackle a foe, and some skills were OP(phantom drive). The way in which you learn skills is unique though, and works well within the story arc and arena type progression. It's a system I'd like to see more in standard rpgs- after each battle, you get a choice of two skills to learn from (think Cthulu saves the world) that will end up shaping your character. Skills were learned based off of things the character does, events in the actual game world, not a point system. It became a reward for completing a battle to unlock a new skill, though it's too bad your the choice ultimately didn't matter.


Storyline:
"aAARGH! yOUR sAPPY sPEECHES rUIN mY eARS! yOU aLL nEED bETTER sCRIPTS, aND i aM hAPPY tO pROVIDE!"


I was genuinely intrigued by the opening cut-scenes. The premise is something interesting, and talking to locals in the first area, I was excited to start off. The story generally goes downhill from there, with a slew of disappointing cliches at the end, or really anywhere past the cave.
Tv tropes: true final boss and dead sidekick, "Nobody understands me, villain thinks he is a savior, etc. Just thank god his reasoning wasn't "I wanted more money", his motivation is rather unique and would be interesting with further development.


It definitely has potential to be a longer game, and if there were more to it, we might get to know the characters better. Unfortunately, the characters all fall flat, literally. There's not much to each character. This makes sense for people like the "guy on ledge", and each has a recognizable, if one-dimensional, style. But most importantly, I didn't care much about the main characters. D'vil is your typical first person narrator throughout, trying to explain himself away as most players would envision themselves doing, his only other degree of personality coming from his friend (though he has a hint of bombastic, and there are dialogue choices). Ralph is understandably confused at first, but not much time is devoted to how Ralph deals with his entire world being turned upside down (just one scene, even a flashback?).
His personality shift consists of "But you're the villain" >> "I guess you couldn't be" which is obvious from the beginning, but not "What does this mean for me, everything I've believed? Who did this?" When he gets to the final hideout, he becomes more cautious, when he should be in righteous fury when faced with the true dark lord.


Your characters only have one objective to work for and you don't have to go anywhere first, just make a beeline to the goal. Once I completed the game, I was shocked at how little I could say I'd actually done besides battle whoever sprung out at me. There aren't many scenes for character development, and the game missed a tremendous opportunity in between battles. As you go on, the time between battles is almost instantaneous, with no good explanation as to where the enemies came from, nor any exposition/events.
Killing off Teeth and D'vil yelling does not count as character development. It has to clearly reveal something about D'vil.


The pacing snowballs until you're suddenly at the end, wondering what just happened, and this is Antagonist's crucial error. It squeezes too much into not enough time- on looking back at the script it wasn't nearly as bad as the impression I got while playing it. The game tackles some mature themes (fate, genocide, fixation) but they feel stale from overemphasis and lack of meaningful examination.

"I'm the boss's left hand man. Nobody gets past me!"
That being said, the game does have a great sense of humor.
The game's premise gives it the opportunity to introduce all sorts of parody elements, but luckily it doesn't go overboard.
There are many good lines scattered throughout, but it doesn't try to bludgeon you with it. In fact, I would say this is the game's redeeming quality along with its artwork. It helps to lessen the blow from some of the more cringe-inducing lines.
Ralph: I'VE LOST PEOPLE IMPORTANT TO ME TOO!! I KNOW
EXACTLY HOW YOU FEEL!
D'vil: !!
Me: Ugghhh...



Final battle gripes:
I appreciate the ability to control Ralph, but his skills need work. They cost nothing (acceptable, reminds me of Adv. Batt. 2 Space showdown), but Ralph has an apparently superfluous MP gauge. He has a heal skill and party heal, but the party heal does 50% for each member, while single heal only bumps it to 60%, rendering it useless. His two attack skills are exactly the same, essentially higher power attacks with no drawbacks. Spamming party heal each turn guarantees a player win. The boss was too easy and drags on longer than it has to.


Final Verdict: The battle system was uninspiring, the pacing terrible, and cliches annoying. The characters fell short, but weren't entirely drab either, with some interesting conflict before the rushed second half. Good humor and custom art are a plus, and the premise has potential. Not the traditional feel of an rpg, the game needs a stronger, more detailed narrative aspect and a fix for a broken combat system. Still, it's only an hour in length (should be longer), so you're not loosing much if you try it out.

The Pros:
Humor
Premise
Skill learning system
Simple mechanics
Arena-Style battling, unique enemy graphics
Art

The Cons:
Characters
Pacing
Lack of Strategy, Battling
The ending

Posts

Pages: 1
Thanks for the review, Novalux!
The game was made for Indie Game Contest 2014, which had a one hour time limit, so the content ended up kinda cramped in, hahaha ^^;
Well, games could very well be longer, but the judges were only obliged to play 1 hour of it. But that as a sidenote.
It does explain the cramped feeling, though!
Hahaha, we were juggling the contest between school assignments, and rushed work on the contest within 1-2 weeks. We barely finished what we could of the game, I couldn't even get rid of all the bugs (Karmic Retribution's crash bug, learning 2 skills at once and Ralph being controllable at the end were a few to name). I was really dejected once I found out.

The fact that you guys could find things to like about it at all was really heartening. This was our first game that we completed. Once we're more free, we'll try again, maybe with a much longer game without limits :D
author=Nivlacart
This was our first game that we completed. Once we're more free, we'll try again, maybe with a much longer game without limits :D
Well you're one-up on me, still working on my first. I wasn't aware of the one-hour time limit for the contest, which would explain a lot.

author=Nivlacart
(Karmic Retribution's crash bug, learning 2 skills at once and Ralph being controllable at the end were a few to name).
That was a bug 0_0? I think it works well, shows that Ralph trusts D'vil more, you should keep it. There's some fundamental issues with the story, but also a lot of minor fixes which would go a long way towards polishing off the game (skill trade-offs, for instance). Good luck going forward.
I didn't know controlling Ralph was a bug. Keep it! I had the same impression as Novalux in regards to trust. Since it felt like the entire point of the game.
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