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Love Is Painful

  • Addit
  • 02/21/2016 08:19 PM
  • 3825 views


A Game Made By: Liberty & Archeia_Nessiah
Created Using: RPG Maker VX Ace
It's A: SIMULATION Game
That Roughly Takes Around: 5 Minutes To Complete
And It's A... COMPLETED GAME!!!


I know that patience here is a virtue and all that fluffy stuff and it seems to be the reoccurring theme here with this game in regards to its long, drawn out developmental cycle and I know that Liberty told me to wait to review this game until all the DLC, bugs and extra content was squashed and added in – but I could be waiting for years for that to finally happen with her recent track record!!! (Where’s my Sanic badge, woman!?) And since Corfaisus and Kylaila managed to submit their own reviews for this game already not too long ago without stern consequences - I’d figured that it was either now or never…and I choose the now!

So way back in the “lovely year” of 2015 (oh, we were so young back then…), our drunken Aussie mistress who sometimes does too much decided to hold an event in the spirit of the old YDS infamous community games from way back centering around the theme of love and old hokey 1980’s dating shows where I probably watched a few of them back then but then soon changed the channel right after that, because it was, um…kind of lame.

It was a weird premise for an event, for sure – but, hey, it was almost Valentine’s Day and the site needed an event quickly whipped up for the particular occasion - so here it was. It was all in good fun, and I’m pretty sure that the main reason that most of us entered was the promise of a special achievement badge that was all the worth the pain and struggle of providing Liberty with the answers to all of our darkest and deepest secrets… Either way, it was a cool idea, for sure.

But then Valentine’s Day came, nothing happened, the game was delayed for a couple of weeks, then a couple of months, then it officially became a running joke…

But then – almost a year later when a certain, plucky young individual brought it up for attention and made it buzzing again on the front page, boom – we finally got our community game…

…expect it was riddled with some bugs…and some of the contestants answers didn’t bother to show up…and tiebreakers, for some odd reason, ended up where you didn’t get anybody at all but a dinner date by yourself…



…But at least the game finally got released, and that’s still better than waiting even longer for it to not eventually get released, right? Right…???



*sigh*

Let’s just play and review this game, already…!!!

The Story


Addit: “Someone please help me! This weirdo woman kidnapped me and tied to me to a chair just to participate on her shitty game show!”
“Also I didn’t know that you even had a game show…”


When she’s not terrorizing the Internet in fear or driving various spambots away using Kentona’s rubber mallet of a banhammer (I knew that we shouldn’t have boughten that for cheap) – Liberty also hosts her own dating show on the side in the “Relationship Maintenance Network,” where dateless wonders and nerdless singles can participate together to find themselves “true love”…or at least temporary company in the meantime to the nearest fast food restaurant. (Gotta use those coupons!)

While the show’s results for couples actually getting together and actually being successful for a relationship are less than…well…they’re actually pretty bad…but, hey, at least there’s that “one slim chance in hell” that someone actually might find true happiness, so at least that keeps the show afloat and interesting.

And, hey, sometimes even the host herself participates in it and hires a special quest for the evening just to switch things up. How she got that particular guest to do the show and not eat everybody in sight is beyond me – but, hey, that’s just another day in the life of the Relationship Maintenance Network, where the show is the drama…

The Gameplay


- DENNY’S, HERE WE COME!!!


So the game is as simple as it looks and sounds. At the start of the game, you can pick between one of the many different forum members that initially participated in the event or create a custom character of your choice. So if you want your TFT’s, Strangeluv’s, Neok’s, YDS’ or WIP’s in the game – you can slightly live the dream! :D

After you pick your character, you basically have a series of questions that are given to you to give to the three contestants for them to answer and then you pick the best answer out of all of them that you would best find in a love partner. After five rounds of questioning, the winner with the most points will be revealed to you behind the Wall Of Mystery and will ultimately be chosen to be your date. After that – it’s all up to you, smooth moves, Mr. Groove. Either you’re going to get slapped or punched in the nose, or perhaps maybe…???

The game is simple enough, and part of its charm is seeing who you’ll end up with at the end and which answers were for which particular forum member, and another part of it is seeing if you can get yourself, seeing how most of us gave our answers out such a long time ago and probably can’t remember what we initially put in. Either way, the game is just fun, and it’s particularly tenfold if you’ve been a member of this site for so very long.

While the game is simple in nature, the game does get a little repetitive with how it handles its row of questioning. Since there were only around 15 questions or so that were made for the game and with only five rounds of questioning and nothing to filter out which ones were initially brought up, the questions do tend to repeat quite often. If there were around 20 or 25 questions or so asked then it wouldn’t probablybe so bad, but this way it just tends to repeat way too often. Luckily, though, there are a lot of contestants in the game to break up the answers monotony, so at least the answers portion doesn’t repeat itself too much like the questions do.

There are also some noticeable bugs that show up from time-to-time, like how some member’s answers don’t even bother to register or just plain skip, and tie-breakers, like I mentioned earlier, will result in a no tie-breaker question but just simply cutting ultimately to the dinner date scene alone. These types of bugs shouldn’t happen for something like this, but I can cut Liberty a little bit of slack seeing how there were so many members here to deal with that I’m sure she probably missed a couple of them along the way. Still, these types of errors shouldn’t be here.

Also, at the end of the game after the dinner date scene you’ll get a match rating score with your partner that can go from 0% to 100% and ultimately give you your attraction rating between each other. Although most of us were initially curious about how these percentages were calculated, the end result is that this is completely random and has nothing to do with the choices that you make or is based on your date’s appearances or likes, which kind of sucks, but whatever.

Although each game only takes around five minutes or so to complete, the game does have quite the stock in its overall replay value, as I must have replayed the game over 10 times with myself and various other RMNers to see who I’d get, so at least it’s got that going for itself. And with the announcement of future DLC and more cutscenes based off your overall match rating coming to the fold in the future, this game may have a lot more in store for us in the not too distant future…

The Soundtrack


This person speaks to me.


I was wondering what the hell Liberty was going to use for the soundtrack for this game, since it was hinted several times during the initial signup process for the event that it would be something along the lines of a classic dating show, and she didn’t disappoint on that. The music for this game is quite upbeat, catchy to listen to, and fits the whole vibe of the show to a tee. Hell, some of these songs, like “light-comedy_16-fullscore” sounds like something straight lifted out of the RTP, and fits quite well, with my favorite song out of them used has to the be the dinner date scene from Mike Vekris, “The Blues Side Of Me”. The music works quite well, and I really don’t have any problems with the overall selections used. Although the real mystery behind the music has to the be all the numerous amounts of songs that were NOT used for the final game in the music folder, suggesting at one point that there was going to be a whole lot more.

Sound effects are your typical RTP stuff, which is just fine considering the type of game that it is. Overall, she did a good job in finding a suitable soundtrack that works.

The Aesthetics


Addit: “Uhhh…”
Nessiah: *psst* (“Liberty, is this a joke?”)
Liberty: (“No joke. You find happiness, now.”)
Nessiah: (“F**king hell…”)
Addit: “H…Hello.”
Nessiah: “Don’t touch me, don’t say anything, and don’t even try to hold my hand and you might live through the night, got it?”
Addit: “Uh…okay.”


I think the game looks personally nice and fits the whole setting well. While there’s nothing absolutely stunning featured here in terms of anything truly spectacular, especially with some the clashing assets used for some of the forum members, the game looks nice enough and fits the bill just fine with me. While I would have loved to have seen some more creative uses on the set, such as having an audience present, a spotlight centered on Liberty and the various contestants at certain times and a T.V. camera person (seriously, where the f**k are the cameras?), I don’t really think I can complain too much on the visual side of things. Everything here looks great.

The End Result


Addit: “Um…sooooo…you like watching sports?”
Nessiah: “…F**k you.”
Addit: “Hey, that’s not very nice.”
Nessiah: “I’m NOT nice…especially to no talent half-wits like you.”
Addit: “Ooo…”
(“Should have picked constant two…”)


Although part of me wishes that there was a lot more put into the game overall, such of having more questions to pick from, multiple different dating scenarios, and even having the player say the occasional thing here or there on set, I really can’t complain too much about what we ultimately got here, and that was a splendid community game that I think, personally, surpasses the stuff created by YDS all that time ago, While her games had a lot more going on for it, this game surpasses it in its overall replay value that makes it fun to go back every once and a while and give it a spin. And with future DLC characters and additional content being added in the future (perhaps for next Valentine’s Day?) – who knows what might be added in next!?

If you’re a long time RMNer and you HAVEN’T played this game yet for some odd reason, I’d say that you owe it to yourself to pick this up and give it a try and just have some fun with it. Who knows - you might even find that special someone.


See? She does like me.





OVERALL GRADE:
3.5 / 5 - C+ ~ A Few Quips, But Otherwise A Great Game.

Posts

Pages: 1
Liberty
RTP Princess
24266
02/22/2016 12:33 AM
...there's 23 questions asked. orz

Thanks for the review and sorry that the bug fixes haven't yet been implemented. >.<;
I do have the 'date empty' and 'no responses' things kicked, but still trying to find where the crash comes in. Might just update with those fixes and keep looking for the crash in the meantime.
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
02/22/2016 12:41 AM
It's funny because Nessy has a boyfriend irl, I think.
Addit
6394
02/22/2016 12:58 AM
@ Liberty - Was there really 23 questions asked for this thing? *double checks*

…Well I’ll be damned, lol, I guess you’re right!

And you’re welcome about the review. I still wanna give this another shot once all of the DLC and all of the other things get implemented in the future. In the meantime and between-time continue to keep on squashing all of those bugs!

@ Ratty524 – If she does have a boyfriend irl, he shouldn’t worry too much about this; she’s not my type, anyway.

But if I’m ever in need of a semi-professional artist, I may have to steal her away for a little while.
Liberty
RTP Princess
24266
02/22/2016 01:04 AM
author=Ratty524
It's funny because Nessy has a boyfriend irl, I think.

*Girlfriend. And when dates become a thing she'll be coming into yours and taking Nessy back (just like Nessy does when her girl gets picked for a date.)
Addit
6394
02/22/2016 01:13 AM
Yeaaahhh…this is why going after Nessy is just asking for a royal death sentence, because she’s got too many suitors going after her that I would be just be the fifth, sixth…um…fourteenth wheel in the equation??? In my opinion, it’s just not worth the trouble.

Looks like it’s just you and me now, talking Care Bear… :P

Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18995
02/22/2016 03:33 PM
Damn Nessy is such a tsundere ;))
Pages: 1