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Dancing with the D'Vil


First Impressions: RPG game centred on a subverted cliché storyline with pretty, custom art.


Disclaimer: This review outlines my own views based on my experiences with the game. Individual player experiences may differ.


Gameplay
Not really sure how to approach this section… Is this a game? It plays out more like a visual novel spliced with a turn battle minigame. Aspects like exploration and such for the most part don’t exist or when they do, are integrated in a more –choose which NPC to talk to- way.


All of them!


Uh… maybe not ALL of them…


I’ve done this sort of thing before on my iphone but it was labelled as an “Interactive Comic”. If you’ve played these before you’ll be getting a very similar experience.

The game progresses by switching between dialogue portions – interspersed with the occasional player choice – and ATB battles.

First I’ll review the dialogue portions. There are two main areas you can actually choose who to talk to, your actor hideout and some random town. The beginning of the game really interested me so I was disappointed by what came from the dialogue opportunities in the hideout. There was nothing particularly bad about them but in my opinion it was a missed opportunity to add depth and characterisation to the players/setting. The town was even worse… most dialogue options were just standard RPG fare.




Combat and Related Systems:
The turn battle system! These play out pretty much how every ATB battle you’ve ever played plays out. Grind attacks, heal, rinse and repeat. Again this is not particularly bad, but it’s not particularly great either.

One thing I liked was that in the game you had to choose your own skills as you progressed along the story path. This added some diversity, and with the limited skill set made battles a touch more strategic. I really liked this skill system; where one reward came at the cost of another and I’d like to see it in more games.


Final Boss Spoilers:


Can’t I just have both?! Spoiler: Yes,Yes, you can.


Ultimately what happened to this skill system though… it ended up being completely unnecessary! In the final boss battle you just get to use all your skills again… boring. And you can’t even defeat the boss yourself, various NPC’s have to come and help you?! You could say that with the final skill you defeat the boss yourself but that was just a completely unnecessary Deus ex Machina. And why does this skill which uses less TP than other skills do 99,999 damage? This final battle just felt like a grindfest and a letdown.



Overpowered, much?


I get that the theme here is that what defeats the boss is friendship, so there were other ways of including this without making the battle feel ultra bland. To amp up the challenge maybe D’Vil could’ve lost access to his regular skills instead and have to rely ONLY on the friendship skill to defeat the boss. Maybe instead he can only attack, with the NPC’s and Ralph backing him up and get the friendship skill later in the fight, at which point he has to charge it and the NPC’s and Ralph attack until he can use it? I’d rather not have the NPC’s fighting at all, but this way you still get your power of friendship theme. And, minor gripe, but the ultimate skill should’ve cost all his TP. Another complaint, I didn’t want to be able to control Ralph. Not knowing what he was going to do made the battles more fun for me and helped with the immersion. Apparently that was a bug though so I can’t complain about the idea itself, but it did make the final battle even more easy.


So, all in all, most battles were neither particularly bad or good, but they were somewhat enjoyable. The final boss was just bad. If the battle had progressed with some changes like I mentioned then I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more.

More complaints: Something I didn’t like about the game was the static levelling system. Because levels were just another part of the story progression, this lead to them feeling like an unnecessary and superfluous addition. I think there’s some potential for a system that uses controlled experience gain but it was not used to its full potential here. Hopefully this could be honed and refined into a selling point for a future game :)

And another thing I couldn’t figure out… Why are there tabs for equipment when there is none?! This made shopping feel like a really incomplete experience… as well as the fact that currency gain was also static. I usually have lots of fun shopping in RPG’s (cause I’m a collectionist) so this read loudly as a missed opportunity to me.



Don’t I at least some bravery points for walking around naked?


Story
The initial concept was unique and I loved the idea of a company that acts out video game cutscenes. I got the idea from the start that the heroes in these cutscenes were also actors, but narcisstic and egotistical to the point that they took their character rivalries seriously. That would’ve been fun.

Story Spoiler:

Turns out the heroes are real heroes and the only actors are the bad guys, a.k.a you. You see the errors of your ways, team up etc.
This game had humour and seriousness; I think it would’ve been better to stick more adamantly to one dominant tone. The humour is you know, humorous but it distracts from the serious handling of the storyline. That aside, the story itself is pretty predictable after the flashy intro and winds up being less subversive than you are originally led to believe.



Beep! Beep! Internet joke detected!


The main character D’Vil (He’s based on Laharl, right? Right?!) is a pretty laidback guy despite his appearances. We don’t learn much about him and during the course of the game he doesn’t really grow as a character or show deeper emotional depth than from his first appearance. That said, I still enjoyed his character and found him a likeable guy.

Ralph I initially liked, but despite my expectations he didn’t grow in any way since his first appearance so as a typical hero character he was a little dull. I was really hoping for an epic broship between him and D’Vil but they end up as more ‘sort of friends’, despite not having anything in common or any reasons to form emotional attachments to each other.

All the other characters didn’t really stand out that much. Teeth was D’Vil’s best friend but we don’t learn much about her so I couldn’t get emotionally invested in her character. Chephiroth was kinda amusing and the guy that sits on ledges… is a guy that sits on ledges. Final Boss Spoiler:
The director had an interesting villain motivation but other than learning that he’s overly hammy and employs robots he’s another character you don’t learn much about. Which gives me no reason to care when he dies, as all the evil things he’s done were off camera and never expanded upon.




So, that’s why we’re friends!


The story is a series of clichés but it shows promise. I believe the issues with characterisation and tone were partially caused by pacing, as the game makers tried to condense what felt like a larger story into a shorter playtime.


Art
The art was all custom and it was nice. Some slight anatomical issues, but it didn’t really take away from the game. Apart from me always focusing on Ralph’s arms!

But I’m a little bit detail focused so it’s not really a big deal at all. I liked the visual references in the character designs and outfits and I really liked D’Vil’s design. The colours were great and so were Mr. Director’s glasses. There was sooo much custom art in this game and I’m looking forward to seeing the art in future games :)



Link, Cloud and… um… a Transformer in an apron?


Music
It didn’t really stand out to me which in my opinion is a good thing as it doesn’t break the experience. I’d say it does what it’s meant to do but then again game music isn’t my field of expertise.


Overall
It’s not without its flaws but for a playtime of one hour I think it shows enough polish and promise to make the experience worthwhile. There were lots of little things I liked, like the in-battle animations and the constricted saves which made me stick to my decisions a lot more and will doubtless do the same for other players. I think the scope of this project for a first project was also pretty good as it wasn’t overly ambitious and you can see that reflected in the end product. I’d love to see the next projects from this maker, having learnt from this experience and moving forward.

Posts

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I assume that trio is Cloud, Samus, Master Chief. The reason why Master Chief wears that apron is... well you can imagine some pun.
Ah, that would be my ignorance speaking then... but the transformer in the apron thing was still just too good to pass up :)
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