Akage

Introduction

Akage was created using RPG Maker VX Ace and is meant to star a young female warrior who is on a quest of revenge against a bunch of bandits for burning down her house. And, that's all the story we really get for this game. Sadly, this game is plagued by problems that are frustrating for me on many different levels. So, I guess, I'll start with the bleeding elephant in the room first and talk about the design of the main character.

Design of the Main Character

The design of the lead character in this game is basically forcing me to discuss fan service and its use within video games or any form of entertainment in general for that matter. And, I'll be upfront in admitting that I think fan service has it's time and place and can be rather tasteful if done well, but the use of fan service has to be applied to actual characters.

Gameplay

While this game is an action RPG and features a real-time combat system. The limited amount of room to fight in this game basically makes it degenerate into a turn-based RPG. Since, you'll largely just stand in front of your opponent exchanging blows. The only way around this is to utilize magic, but this just means you'll have to constantly be running back and forth from your current location on the map to the most recent heal point. And, this process gets old rather quickly.

To make matters worse the controls are rather iffy. The game utilizes the A key as the primary attack key while the S key is utilized for casting spells. The D key is used to cycle between the spells you've acquired. The problem comes in from the usage of the Z key which is used to pick up items in this game. And you will need to pick up items in this game constantly. It's a practice that grows annoying rather fast, but its made even worse by the fact that your hand will naturally rest over the z key after a while since its the default action key in most RPG Maker games.

Another system that feels mixed at best is the mana stones enhancement system. The game never provides you with an opportunity to buy any of these stones. So, it's completely down to the luck of the draw to get anything of actual value, but none of the stones seem to be particularly useful beyond a small handful of stat points. If anything the system completely undermines itself by the fact that you can't remove these stones from an item after you've equipped them without losing them entirely. So, the game effectively prevents you from mixing and matching the various stones you've found to find the layout that offers you the most benefit.

And while the game does have one strong point in that it provides the player access to four different levels of difficulty ranging from easy to insane. This system also feels undermined by the lack of depth in the basic combat system. If anything raising the difficulty of this game just means the player will be forced to spend even more time backtracking to healing points found throughout the game in order to avoid being short on hp and mp recovering potions later.

Sound

Surprisingly the sound effects and music in this game do alright for themselves. And, that's all I really have to say about that.

Conclusion

The amount of negatives that burden this game make it a sight to behold, but only in the same way one might view Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. It's an example of fan service done in the worst way possible and it's gameplay reflects the quality of its artwork. It's a game that is best skipped over in favor of other games starring a female lead.