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Sacred Reviews: Accelerated World
thesacredlobo- 02/27/2024 07:12 PM
- 96 views
Intro
"Accelerated World" is a short turn-based RPG developed by polarcactus using RPG Maker VX that is inspired by the Phantasy Star series of games. A series I'm not that familiar with since I got into RPGs during the PS2 era of gaming and haven't looked back since. And while an entry in the series for the PS2 was released under the title "Phantasy Star Universe". I didn't play it back in the day and it was a bit of an oddity since it has a single player story mode, but was also meant to be an online game in a similar vein to "Phantasy Star Online" for Dreamcast. The game also saw an expansion released for the PS2 as well that acted as a standalone game that didn't require the original to play. Though, I suppose I'm getting off topic at this point and should focus on talking about the story of "Accelerated World".
Story
Summary
You play as Ayla and Hyke, a pair of agents, working for the Stellar Solidarity of Spheres that have been tasked to investigate why planet Sphere I's tectonic plate system is being overly active. An issue that apparently isn't that much of an issue for agent Hyke since he could sleep through a nuclear explosion.
At any rate after a short investigation the duo runs into a biological entity causing untold amounts of damage to the system by eating away at the computer in control of the tectonic plates with an unknown substance. A substance strong enough to melt reinforced glass but burns up so quickly at room temperature that it doesn't leave much of a trace behind once the entity is defeated. At any rate after completing our investigation of the plate control center were sent to check out the Thule Sattelite and learn that the biological entity eating away at the plate control center apparently infected the entire computer system in control of the planet with a computer virus and that the Thule Sattelite is going to crash in the planet if we don't redirect it. Thankfully Ayla is skilled enough to redirect the satellite to fall in the ocean, but the damage to the computer system is so extensive that it ultimately causes Sphere I to enter a new dark age. Oh well, I suppose we tried our best.
Greatest Strength/Weakness
The greatest strength this game has going it for it our the interactions between Ayla and Hyke. There's just something amusing about them giving each other crap at certain points in the game from Hyke making fun of Ayla for getting easily space sick and offering to hold her hand through the flight to the satellite to Ayla threatening to space Hyke in return for his offer. On the other hand the game's choice in font makes reading the dialogue in this game a heck of a lot harder than it needs to be in my opinion. This isn't to say it's impossible to read, but it definitely hinders the player's ability to enjoy Ayla and Hyke's banter to a certain extent.
Gameplay
On the gameplay front "Accelerated World" is a pretty basic turn-based RPG with all of your standard options. The game does try to change things up a bit by allowing the player to regain health and energy via the guard command, but this option is pretty useless in practice since most enemies in this game will smack the player for far more damage than can be recovered from this command. The only exception to this rule is the weakest enemy in the game, but even then the slow nature of recovery against this enemy will make doing so rather undesirable.
This isn't to say it can't be done since I did it a few times during my most recent Let's Play that is going to go public in April of 2024, but it definitely wasn't a fun thing to do. Though at least the game remembers your last command so you can speed through this process by just spamming enter repeatedly.
As for the energy recover. It's way to minor at it's base level of 5% to really matter since you'll only be able to recover 2 energy a turn at most by the time you reach the end of the game. So it would take at least three turns to generate enough energy to use even your weakest skills in this game.
And on a positive or negative note depending on your perspective regular enemies in this game hit pretty hard. So you'll definitely want to keep a lot of consumables on hand in order to keep your strength up since your going to be burning through a lot of basic health and energy potions if you want to stay alive in this game after every few battles. Though you definitely won't want to use the healing skill outside of combat in my opinion since the game kicks you completely out of the menu after you've used it once. So if you need to use it multiple times you'll need to open up the menu multiple times as well.
Another slight difference this game offers is that you can level up Ayla's augments by using them enough times. Unfortunately this option isn't that useful in my opinion since the amount of times you need to use them in order to level up said skill is just too high. At least if you want to progress through the game as quickly as possible. Admittedly there is a patch you can download separately that attempts to fix this issue, but you have to go digging through the blog posts for this game in order to find it. And even then it probably wouldn't help that much since the only augmented skill I used with an regularity was the healing one since you can pick up an electric sword for Ayla that can exploit the weak spot of most enemies in this game since most of your opponent's are robots that are vulnerable to electrical discharges. Thankfully the idea of skills growing more powerful upon enough uses has been done better in other games on this site. So at least this idea got put to better use in other games.
Graphics
On the graphical side of things the game is almost entirely custom with a few small exceptions such as rocks and whatnot being retained from the RTP for RPG Maker VX. On a whole the custom assets are solid, but it's obvious the two week time constraint really impacted enemy variety in this game with all of the enemies in the first area being recycled for the second area with minor tweaks such as one robot gaining wings, another robot getting a palette swap and wings, and sometimes you'll just run into groups comprised entirely of old enemies. The time constraints also seem to have killed the idea of a second boss fight. So this game lacks a final boss. The only enemies in the game's second dungeon are enemies you'll run into during random encounters which is pretty disappointing.
Sound
On the sound side of things the game relies on music pulled from other sources such as movies. On the bright side it does mean this game has a somewhat unique feel to it. Especially if you aren't familiar with the movies the music was pulled from. Though overall I find the music in this game pretty forgettable, but I'm also willing to admit that I find background music in most games forgettable.
Conclusion
As a whole "Accelerated World" has a decent amount going for it from fun characters to a custom look and feel. On the other hand it's bogged down by a combat system whose few changes to the standard turn-based combat formula feel pointless to a story that ends on a sad note. And that sad note doesn't even include a difficult final boss battle to at least give the player one final high before the game is over. And while I realize this game was put together in two weeks. I'm also not aware of any reason for this time constraint beyond the developer setting it for themselves. So I'm a lot less willing to look past this game's weaknesses than those found in event games. As such I'm only willing to give this game an average score.
"Accelerated World" is a short turn-based RPG developed by polarcactus using RPG Maker VX that is inspired by the Phantasy Star series of games. A series I'm not that familiar with since I got into RPGs during the PS2 era of gaming and haven't looked back since. And while an entry in the series for the PS2 was released under the title "Phantasy Star Universe". I didn't play it back in the day and it was a bit of an oddity since it has a single player story mode, but was also meant to be an online game in a similar vein to "Phantasy Star Online" for Dreamcast. The game also saw an expansion released for the PS2 as well that acted as a standalone game that didn't require the original to play. Though, I suppose I'm getting off topic at this point and should focus on talking about the story of "Accelerated World".
Story
Summary
You play as Ayla and Hyke, a pair of agents, working for the Stellar Solidarity of Spheres that have been tasked to investigate why planet Sphere I's tectonic plate system is being overly active. An issue that apparently isn't that much of an issue for agent Hyke since he could sleep through a nuclear explosion.
At any rate after a short investigation the duo runs into a biological entity causing untold amounts of damage to the system by eating away at the computer in control of the tectonic plates with an unknown substance. A substance strong enough to melt reinforced glass but burns up so quickly at room temperature that it doesn't leave much of a trace behind once the entity is defeated. At any rate after completing our investigation of the plate control center were sent to check out the Thule Sattelite and learn that the biological entity eating away at the plate control center apparently infected the entire computer system in control of the planet with a computer virus and that the Thule Sattelite is going to crash in the planet if we don't redirect it. Thankfully Ayla is skilled enough to redirect the satellite to fall in the ocean, but the damage to the computer system is so extensive that it ultimately causes Sphere I to enter a new dark age. Oh well, I suppose we tried our best.
Greatest Strength/Weakness
The greatest strength this game has going it for it our the interactions between Ayla and Hyke. There's just something amusing about them giving each other crap at certain points in the game from Hyke making fun of Ayla for getting easily space sick and offering to hold her hand through the flight to the satellite to Ayla threatening to space Hyke in return for his offer. On the other hand the game's choice in font makes reading the dialogue in this game a heck of a lot harder than it needs to be in my opinion. This isn't to say it's impossible to read, but it definitely hinders the player's ability to enjoy Ayla and Hyke's banter to a certain extent.
Gameplay
On the gameplay front "Accelerated World" is a pretty basic turn-based RPG with all of your standard options. The game does try to change things up a bit by allowing the player to regain health and energy via the guard command, but this option is pretty useless in practice since most enemies in this game will smack the player for far more damage than can be recovered from this command. The only exception to this rule is the weakest enemy in the game, but even then the slow nature of recovery against this enemy will make doing so rather undesirable.
This isn't to say it can't be done since I did it a few times during my most recent Let's Play that is going to go public in April of 2024, but it definitely wasn't a fun thing to do. Though at least the game remembers your last command so you can speed through this process by just spamming enter repeatedly.
As for the energy recover. It's way to minor at it's base level of 5% to really matter since you'll only be able to recover 2 energy a turn at most by the time you reach the end of the game. So it would take at least three turns to generate enough energy to use even your weakest skills in this game.
And on a positive or negative note depending on your perspective regular enemies in this game hit pretty hard. So you'll definitely want to keep a lot of consumables on hand in order to keep your strength up since your going to be burning through a lot of basic health and energy potions if you want to stay alive in this game after every few battles. Though you definitely won't want to use the healing skill outside of combat in my opinion since the game kicks you completely out of the menu after you've used it once. So if you need to use it multiple times you'll need to open up the menu multiple times as well.
Another slight difference this game offers is that you can level up Ayla's augments by using them enough times. Unfortunately this option isn't that useful in my opinion since the amount of times you need to use them in order to level up said skill is just too high. At least if you want to progress through the game as quickly as possible. Admittedly there is a patch you can download separately that attempts to fix this issue, but you have to go digging through the blog posts for this game in order to find it. And even then it probably wouldn't help that much since the only augmented skill I used with an regularity was the healing one since you can pick up an electric sword for Ayla that can exploit the weak spot of most enemies in this game since most of your opponent's are robots that are vulnerable to electrical discharges. Thankfully the idea of skills growing more powerful upon enough uses has been done better in other games on this site. So at least this idea got put to better use in other games.
Graphics
On the graphical side of things the game is almost entirely custom with a few small exceptions such as rocks and whatnot being retained from the RTP for RPG Maker VX. On a whole the custom assets are solid, but it's obvious the two week time constraint really impacted enemy variety in this game with all of the enemies in the first area being recycled for the second area with minor tweaks such as one robot gaining wings, another robot getting a palette swap and wings, and sometimes you'll just run into groups comprised entirely of old enemies. The time constraints also seem to have killed the idea of a second boss fight. So this game lacks a final boss. The only enemies in the game's second dungeon are enemies you'll run into during random encounters which is pretty disappointing.
Sound
On the sound side of things the game relies on music pulled from other sources such as movies. On the bright side it does mean this game has a somewhat unique feel to it. Especially if you aren't familiar with the movies the music was pulled from. Though overall I find the music in this game pretty forgettable, but I'm also willing to admit that I find background music in most games forgettable.
Conclusion
As a whole "Accelerated World" has a decent amount going for it from fun characters to a custom look and feel. On the other hand it's bogged down by a combat system whose few changes to the standard turn-based combat formula feel pointless to a story that ends on a sad note. And that sad note doesn't even include a difficult final boss battle to at least give the player one final high before the game is over. And while I realize this game was put together in two weeks. I'm also not aware of any reason for this time constraint beyond the developer setting it for themselves. So I'm a lot less willing to look past this game's weaknesses than those found in event games. As such I'm only willing to give this game an average score.
