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A Short Game About A Skydweller's Revenge

My playtime: 57m 44s (based on in-game "clock" item)

Intro
Mystic Dawn is a RPG game about a skydweller, the ones who live in a floating island, who is trying to get revenge against the dragon who destroy his hometown.

Music
At first i was wondering why the game doesn't have any bgm in it. The bgm ended up playing later on. I love the bgms which are used in this game though. All of them are pleasant and they blend well with the environment.

Graphics
FYI, you have to install a font which comes with RPG Maker 2000 separately which can be found here. The font will becomes sort of unreadable if you didn't install it. Although i'm not used with the font, i think that the font matches well with the sprites. However, some dialogue text seems to be shown at a different speed and a delay between hypens make me took longer to read as i prefer to wait the sentence to be typed out before reading.

The mappings are awesome. The buildings and the surroundings are mapped beautifully. However, because of the lack of residents, the town feels more like a dead town.

The mappings are also done too tight, which makes it hard to find a gap between each building. The exit in Feline Fortress made it worse as you have to go through invisible passage because the vision was blocked by other building.

Finding the door of a house also becomes difficult as there is almost no marking for the entrance. Luckily, almost all doors are locked.


Guess! Where is the exit?


Story
The story starts with an intro in which you'll actively participating. The story doesn't really focus too much in the main objective though, as you'll get your focus shifted twice before finishing your business. Although the dialogue are interesting and enjoyable, the story lacks conclusion (including the conclusion when the story focus was shifted to somewhere else) or maybe it's just me who doesn't really understand the story very well.


Umm.. What?


The controls also lack a proper tutorial. I don't know that you can jump before i spammed action button when the main character stuck in the tower. Saying that you can jump through the gap might help a lot.


Since you are a skydweller, you can.. fly.. right?


Battle
The battle is a turn based JRPG style with a mix of random encounter and no-random encounter in a specific area. The main character levels up fast and able to learn a lot of spells. There is only 1 inn in the whole game, which make me have to stock up on potions before reaching the inn.

You'll change your equipment more or less twice in the whole game, because there are only two different equipment shops. The last equipment shop, however, has some status which i don't really get very well. I bought the vampiric sword in hope of draining enemies' HP with my normal attack, and it doesn't seem to do anything.

The last equipment shop is also quite expensive which will make you have to grind several times in order to buy the equipment. Because there is a gap between the "boss" battle with the previous battle later on, you'll need to grind some money to buy the equipment and raise your level.

Pros:
- No battle driven.

Cons:
- The story lacks conclusion.

Conclusion
A great RPG Maker which mainly focuses on the story. Battling monsters is not quite necessary in this game, unless you want to farm money or level up for the last boss.

Posts

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Corfaisus
"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats
7874
I'm actually a bit surprised to hear that neither you nor Liberty seemed to care much for how the game ended when - in terms of my own take on the game - the ending was probably my favorite part. And I do suppose more could be said for the way the game breeds a sense of disconnect between the humanity of the people and the hero's quest*, but I do appreciate that you saw it through to the end, though.

*Hidden for spoilers:
Everyone you meet in the world has their own take on life and motivations for what they do, but regardless of who they are and what going down one path would mean for your relationships to them, the hero's sole motivation is vengeance, which leaves him with nothing to live for when he finally "returns home". This is why the symbolism of rain and shadow is replaced with clarity during the ending and the hero assumes the throne, reflects on life before slowly closing his eyes and the world pans out to him surrounded by silent ruins.

The use of the standard Game Over being a representation of death and failure, which is to say that a life devoted to revenge has no purpose.
i'll just put this in a spoiler in case i'm spoiling something without realizing it.
it's not like i didn't care about the game ending, i just don't get the meaning (it could be me who's slow in understanding things though).
all i could say was ..huh? after i see the ending. i even thought that i have to lose to the last boss on purpose to get the "real ending" because i think that the last screen is similar with the one when i lost to the hatchlings.

i also don't really took the "everyone you meet in the world has their own take on life and motivations for what they do" very well in the story. it could be because it didn't take too long for me to part with them (if you meant it for the bandits and the feline-canine, of course).

but at least i understand the ending now. thanks for explaining it! :)
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