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Only You Can Prevent Those From Human Combustion

  • Addit
  • 08/19/2015 05:44 PM
  • 2632 views


A Game Made By: djbeardo
Created Using: RPG Maker VX Ace
It's A: RPG Game
That Roughly Takes Around: 2 Hours To Complete
And It's A... COMPLETED GAME!!!


All right. So after undergoing a brief stint reviewing a bunch of 2k3 and 2k games there for a little while, I guess the time has finally come to head on over back to reviewing some good ol’ fashion RPG Maker VX Ace games for the next little bit. I guess it’s about time I do so…considering the last VX Ace game that I reviewed was waaaay back in December of 2014 when I reviewed Dreaming Mary out of all things. (Has it really been that long? Jesus, man.)

Luckily for me, I get to review someone’s first completed project that was requested to me via PM after the whole Destiny Quest fiasco. This man was sooooo impressed by my incredible writing abilities that he also wanted a piece of the action… And I’m still not entirely sure what types of sedatives I was on when I agreed to the job initially - but I decided to do it anyway…because reviewing games seems to be my job around here lately instead of, you know, making and getting my own damn stuff done.

Anyway, first games are usually always quite intriguing to me when dissecting it from afar. It’s somewhat of a crapshoot for the reviewer at times, because you don’t really quite expect what you’re going to get at first glance, but it also provides a bit of a future insight of what the developer could potentially bloom into with the right amount of support and training to hone his or her craft. It’s almost like developing draft picks; some pan out and some don’t. Some developers go on to only design one thing and others have a more prominent future over time. Who knows? Maybe this game could be the start of legends…

…Well I’m hyped! Let’s go!!!

The Story


I like this man, I like how he thinks.


(Wow, not even a second in and we’re already off to the war. Now that’s what I like!)

Just outside the kingdom of Moranthia on the outskirts lies a massive amount of soldiers from the opposing kingdom of Laurentide ready to bust open some doors and kick some heads in as the dashingly, narcissistic Prince Crendathien and his mistress…of evil…have kidnapped six members of the royal family and are holding them hostage deep within inside the castle grounds. (That bastard!) It seems like local diplomacy isn’t going to work this time around, as all peaceful negotiations have failed and it looks like the only thing left to do is to just break in and rescue the hostages, Mission Impossible style.

And who’s gonna rescue those said hostages - you? Pfft…!

No – of course not! It’s up to the Shatter Team (although I always got this confused with Shelter Team at times), who consist of four members led by one Calista Strelley, or Cal for short, who are tasked and have been given special permission to assist the ground troops on the ground and storm the castle in order to rescue the hostages. Cal may seem like an ordinary young woman who’s a pretty darn good swordswoman – and she mostly is – but she also comes into this mission equipped with a dog...a cool, badass for a dog named Georgie. (Now how cool is that!?)

…Oh, and there’s also two other people that are there as well, some guy and some archer woman, I dunno... But who cares!? It’s all about the dog!!!



*drools* Oh yeah…
To think that you have something like “this” on your team…


But like every other good RPG plotline, those crafty villains up there have an additional ace up their sleeve when you eventually get to them and they’re not afraid to use it! I won’t spoil the surprise here, but you’ll eventually find out why they kidnapped all those people in the first place and what they’re really using them for, and it’s not a pretty sight…

Overall, I actually really enjoyed the story and overall characters despite it being on the short side and ending it off with a cliffhanger like it did towards the end. I mean, I know that this wasn’t a fully completed narrative or anything like that, but if this was the beginning introduction to a game and it had an opening sequence like that to start things off – then this would be one of the best story introductions ever! F**k, it had everything! And anytime that you can add a ferocious beast to your party and people who can just combust into flames then you instantly win, my friend. I’m really hoping that djbeardo decides to expand upon this and add a couple of more chapters to it in the future, because I would really like to see more.

I mean, yeah, the character personas are borrowed from other popular games…and the naming scheme for some of these guys are way too long and a bit troublesome to preannounce along with most of the mythos from the plot summary coming at you during random times that I don’t think are fully explained to the best of their abilities here, but it gets the job done quite well. I think if this game was expanded upon further that all of that would be better phased out over time.

The Gameplay


- Damn timed attacks!


So the story ended up being pretty good – so how about that gameplay? Well…

At Last Alone – Rescue At Moranthia does play pretty traditionally to most common RPG’s with a few twists thrown in for good measure…namely in the battle department. For you see, this game uses something along the lines similar to Super Mario RPG and Legend Of Dragoon’s “timed attack” system that allow you to press a key in a certain situation to either do more damage than a normal attack or take less damage when an enemy is attacking you compared to even greater damage. Basically, if you want to succeed even faster in this game, you gotta master those timed hits. They can be a bit bothersome at first to know when you have the press the button at the correct time to perform them, but with a little practice you’ll eventually get the hang of it. Even though that you’ll still miss sometimes - it’s okay, as you’ll still cause quite a fair amount of damage regardless and you have so many HP that you can afford to take the extra hits.

I like the mechanic, but I really wish that the key inputs were mapped to the Z or X key instead of having to press the A and D key instead. The main problem is that whenever it’s time to perform a timed attack that you have to almost spend an extra second or two to familiarize and prepare yourself to hit those two extra keys since you’re probably used to just using the two basic default keys for everything else. It’s almost like it slows the pace of battles down quite a bit, and it adds a lot more unnecessary wasted time trying to perform this mechanic with the new layout. I mean, you can get by without using any timed attacks and all, but still…you kinda wanna do it… I mean - at least it works, I can give it that. At least I can manage to almost flawlessly hit anything with it with a little bit of practice.

I also thought that how special moves were displayed was kind of odd, too. Instead of having one group pool such it as under “Abilities” or “Specials,” each character has three different groups of these types of attacks listed under “Power Move,” “Fall Back” and “Close Quarters”. There are a lot of different moves here, and some of them are generally pretty useful to use at times, but there are also a lot of unnecessary ones that I didn’t bother to use since they’re not really that necessary, especially any of the close quarter combat ones. And some of the moves, like any of the status buffs, only buff your character for a very short matter of time and just aren’t that useful to use when your normal stats are just as good enough to get the job done. I think they should all be listed under one group next time to avoid confusion. Or, another idea, especially in regards to any of the close quarter moves, could be to have them listed if your character is fighting in a certain terrain type, like in a cave or outside on the field. This would make throwing rocks and sand at your enemies make a lot more sense than always having that ability constantly around.

But I do appreciate how this game doesn’t use a traditional MP system and instead has all of its special moves fall under the TP stat. Not only does this give the player great incentive to use more special attacks without much consequence, but it’s also nice and comforting to know that I can just simply charge the TP meter by using the defend command or one of your special techniques to charge it, giving a viable purpose for using the defend command. Now that’s great design.

Now what’s NOT great design is how much this game lagggggggs like crazy during some areas, especially in regards to inside the castle. Like, holy shit, I don’t mind experiencing some slow down here or there, but when it crawls as hard as Super Smash Bros. Brawl did – holy shit!

I originally thought it might have been just my computer that’s having the issue and being in full screen might be causing the problem here, but the same issue still resides even if I put it in windowed mode or just saved and quit and then restarted my computer and tried again. All the menus and battles seemed to flow rather smoothly, so why are some of the areas in the game like this? Like I said, I don’t mind a bit of lag here or there, but tons of it and I start to see red.

As for the castle itself, it’s not entirely interesting to explore…but maaaaan is it huge! This place is a f**king nightmare to navigate through and it’s just crawling full of guards and special member elites. Despite the fact that you can run away from these guys and avoid encounters all together, considering this game doesn’t use traditional random encounters, you’ll still be fighting a lot of these guys to the point where you’ll eventually feel that this is a bit too overkill and samey. Luckily, the enemies themselves, including the final boss, aren’t that tough to take down - but watch out for those blasted Clerics and Ritualists, as they have a status aliment spell that can inflict sleep and poison on all of your party members and it does a ton of damage over time. Since the only character who can heal status aliments is just Georgie, you’ll be relying on him to remove this nasty shit off you before you die. There are no Antidote related items here, so you’ll have to be extra careful when fighting against these guys.

The Soundtrack


Sometimes the best treasures are always the ones on the highest places that you look.


The soundtrack for this game is actually quite fitting and I found it rather enjoyable to listen to and it provided the additional atmosphere to what was going on during certain situations that helped it. It has a sort of cross between Silent Hill and Vagrant Story, if that makes much sense, as it’s quite fearfully intense in some spots while other tracks are more on the mysterious, brooding sort of side with some pretty good instrumental battle music to go along with it. What I like is that this game’s battle music changes depending on where you are. So if you’re in the castle you’ll hear one track and if you’re outside you’ll hear another. That’s a great idea.

However, and the downside to some of these tracks are that a lot of these songs are only around 90 seconds long and they loop quite often. And since some of these songs don’t necessarily loop very well when they repeat themselves, you can definitely tell the difference when you can hear it and it can get very noticeable at times when it decides to loop. It’s not too bad…but you can definitely hear and tell the difference that might annoy some.

The game does use the default RTP sound effects for its ambience and menu scrolling – and that’s just fine. It even uses one of the victory themes straight out of the RTP, so not everything is custom here, I’m afraid. But then again, it does just fine in this sort of situation, and I don’t see much of a problem with it.

The Aesthetics


Cal: “Georgie! No standing on the table! What have I told you from before!? Bad dog!”


I think for a first time game, the game is presented relativity nicely. The mapping, while a bit too spaceish and a bit lacking in detail at times, does a nice enough job not to be too empty enough where there’s literally nothing there on the screen but it’s not like it’s filled to the brim with stuff just to add it in there for the sake of completeness and to just look pretty that’s just plain ol’ distracting to navigate through. It’s kind of a nice happy medium. There’s at least enough there to at least present itself rather well in this area.

Portraits and character sprites are definitely ripped, and the menus and the text design are pretty generic looking, but it’s all not that bad overall as a package. I think mainly for an RTP centric title, it looks pretty good and does a fairly decent job. I know there’s probably some room for complaints to improve on this a little, but I seriously can’t think of much to make it look better other than cutting down some of the open space, like in the castle interior, and focus a bit more on adding some more fine detail to it.

The only weird thing that I encountered with the mapping is that some of the tilesets, such as the tables and chairs, you can actually walk on them when you’re not supposed to walk on them. There’s even the entrance to the town where there’s this strange error when you walk underneath the arch that makes it look like the characters are sort of hovering underneath it. It’s a bit odd, but nothing that a little additional silver polish can’t fix up.

The End Result


J-J-Jesus!!!


I actually really enjoyed this game despite some of the problems that it had going for it. For a first time game, I say it did awfully well for itself. The cliffhanger towards the end definitely wanted me to see a lot more of it, and I really thought that the overall musical score really helped amplify what was going on with the theme. Combine that with a decently made battle system and not too shabby looking graphics and mapping prowess, and I say that this game is worth a shot for anyone that’s interested. It’s not the greatest thing in the world and it has its problems, sure, but I can definitely tell that this djbeardo dude is a prospect in the making that RMN shouldn’t just nonchalantly toss away in the wind for an additional 7th round pick and a box of half eaten donuts. (Although if it was two whole boxes, maybe…)





OVERALL GRADE:
3 / 5 - C ~ Just Makes The Cut.

Posts

Pages: 1
djbeardo
1834
08/21/2015 04:35 AM
This was such a blast to read!!

I'm so glad you enjoyed it. The flaws you've found in it are the ones that I myself see (and am trying to fix in the sequel) and the parts I'm most proud of are things that you enjoyed!

Sorry about the lagging - that's terrible! I have only myself to blame for making large-ass maps and putting lots of lamps in them. That dynamic lighting script is a memory hog...

You'll be interested/happy to know that there is a continuation of this story in the works. Cal, Garrard, and Georgie are all back with some extra friends. And a few characters with cameos in this game return as major characters!

Thanks again for the review! Here's hoping my next entry is better than 2 boxes of donuts... :D
Addit
6394
08/22/2015 08:21 AM
author=djbeardo
That dynamic lighting script is a memory hog...

- So that’s what that was! I was wondering why it was lagging up like crazy! I mean, the maps were pretty big in itself but it wasn’t like there were a lot of events on display that was causing it to slowdown like that, so it had to be another reason. Now I know why… (Damn dynamic lighting script!)

And you’re welcome about the review! I’m glad that you enjoyed it. And it’s nice to know that you’re planning on continuing the story sometime down the road, so that’s awesome! I really want to find out what happens after that last battle and see some of the changes that you're planning on implementing in the future. (Besides, I hate cliffhangers.)

author=djbeardo
Here's hoping my next entry is better than 2 boxes of donuts... :D

Well, we do get quite hungry here at RMN. :D

(Blame Ocean.)
NTC3
5625
08/29/2015 11:28 AM
Awesome review! And reading about the timed attacks in here reminded me of Dreams of a Hero, which used the same (or very similar) system. In fact, would you consider trying to review that one next? It's a very nice game, and normally I would just review it myself. However, I just can't get through the Medusa fight there, so it would be interesting to see if you can make it, and what you think of it afterwards.
Addit
6394
09/01/2015 01:33 PM
As of right now, I’m currently in the process of finishing up and reviewing Hero’s Preface and then for review milestone #50 is going to be the Last King Of Hyrule, since I’ve been looking forward to playing that for so, so long and I wanna do something “big”.

I’ll keep Dreams of a Hero in mind for maybe a possible review #51 or #52 - but we’ll see. :)
Pages: 1