Foreword

I'll admit it's a bit weird that there seems to be some confusion about the name of this game. If you look at the game's title screen it's listed as "Mystical Sunrise" but if you look for it using the site's search function it's listed as "Mystic Sunrise".


Jeez, you can't even get agreement on the site itself for the name of this game.

Admittedly this isn't a big deal, but it does surprise me that the team behind this game couldn't agree on an official title and decided to go with two slightly different names for some reason. At any rate I'll be going with "Mystical Sunrise" since it's the name on the game's title screen as shown below.



Intro

"Mystical Sunrise" is one of the official sample games that was released in order to help promote the official English release of "RPG Maker 2003" that was developed by Archeia_Nessiah and Ocean and uses some graphical resources created by JosephSeraph. Though if this is a good sample project or not is a debate I really don't want to get into since I imagine most people that bought the official version of RPG Maker 2003 were already familiar with the capabilities of the engine to some extent either through playing games or making games using an illegal and unofficial English translation of the software. As such I erally don't think the quality of this project as a sampler for what the engine can do really matters. The real question should be is "Mystical Sunrise" a good game or not.

And in that regard I'm rather mixed about this title since there are aspects I both love and hate about this project in almost equal measure. As a result I'm having a hard time pinning down my overall feeling about this project and can only hope writing down my thoughts will help give me a foundation to grade this project. And like most of my reviews I think we should start by discussing the narrative.

Story

You play as Myra a sorceresses whose accidentally created a magical orb that turns cute forest animals into deadly monsters and in order to fix this problem she decides to hire a hunter named Gideon. A hunter whose got a bit of a past that he really doesn't want to bring up since he's a wanted man.



Though it doesn't take long for this past to come back and bite the party when multiple lawmen show up and try to shoot the party to death in order to bring him in. After all, it seems his wanted poster has to include the classic line of wanted dead or alive.

Thankfully for Gideon were closing in on the out of control magic orb by the time we learn the truth. So we just threaten to light him up like dry kindling if he betrays us. After all, it's never a good idea to get on the bad side of someone who can fling around a never ending barrage of fireballs. And since Gideon does stick to his word we allow him to leave and hopefully become a law abiding citizen a few towns over. And hopefully the long arm of the law never finds out about us helping him escape justice for stealing from the locals. Since I really don't want to abandon my remote home. After all, it's where I do dangerous magic experiments.

Unfortunately this narrative aspect of this game is made to feel rather unimportant by the developers. This is because your always presented with the option to skip cut scenes in this game.



Admittedly this was probably added by the developers in order to make speeding through the game on a second or third playthrough a little faster since you don't have to spam the z key in order to advance through cut scenes as fast as possible. On the other hand there's very little reason to play the game a second or third time in my opinion since the story is very basic with the player simply being tasked with destroying an out of control orb. And it's not like the characters being sent to destroy this orb are particularly deep either since the game only contains a handful of cut scenes that take place between sections where the player is forced to deal with specific groups of enemies.

Gameplay

"Mystical Sunrise" makes a few changes to the standard battle system found in RPG Maker 2003, but the bulk of the core components are still there. As a result the system doesn't feel that different from the standard system. For starters the game uses an active battle system that has been sent to wait mode so the player has more time to make decisions on what they are going to do. As a result the system feels more like the conditional turn-based system from "Final Fantasy X" instead of the active battle system of "Final Fantasy VIII". Though I'm guessing this game is meant to feel more strategic than either of those games since every encounter in this game is a set encounter against a specific group of enemies. So being able to take your time in order to make a move that best fits your needs is very helpful. Otherwise the player is a lot more likely to fall into the trap of spamming their basic attack as much as possible in order to end fights quickly.

On the other hand both characters operate slightly differently when it comes to combat. For example, Myra doesn't directly cast magic in battle. Instead she uses scrolls that were prepared previously with the player given multiple opportunity to craft new scrolls as the party advances towards the final boss. And the power of these scrolls is ramped up as the player advances albeit some scrolls are way better than others with certain scrolls like haste essentially being broken since speed is king in these sorts of games. After all, it's a lot easier to defeat your enemies if you get to move move often than them.

Gideon on the other hand has a gauge system where performing certain actions like using his pistol or trying to drug the enemies with sleep inducing smoke will build his gauge. This gives him access to additional options like firing his shotgun or using medicine that restores HP to both players. It also empowers his revival skill which consumes the entire gauge when used but it's power increases based on how many pieces of gauge were consumed when the skill was activated. Though, I'll admit the smoke ability isn't as useful as I'd like since status moves in this game aren't particularly reliable when it comes to putting a negative status condition on the enemy. In fact, I think hypnosis from Pokémon is more accurate. Albeit Gideon's smoke ability can potentially put an entire enemy party of five enemies to sleep at once. So the low accuracy is made up for somewhat in larger group battles, but in smaller engagements it feels like a waste of time. And that's even when you take into consideration that smoke boosts Gideon's gauge by two bars. So it allows you to gain access to skills like medicine and shotgun a lot faster. But I'd argue you'd get more use out of spamming Gideon's pistol for charging your shotgun blasts since two pistol shots are the equivalent of one shotgun blast in most cases.

If anything the biggest divergence between this game and the standard system is that as you level up your characters gain skill points like in "7th Dragon" or "Etrian Odyssey" and these skill points can be spent to improve certain aspects of your character. Sadly this system isn't as diverse as I'd like since you can only spend points on increasing your hit points, agility, defense, or giving yourself the ability to use revival skills more than once. And as previously mentioned the most important off all of those options is speed since being able to act more often can easily compensate for having less hit points or being able to take less hits.

And while the game does have a final boss that can take a few hits before it goes down. It still feels underwhelming since the player gets access to the most powerful scroll in the game just a little while before that fight. A scroll that can unleash the apocalypse upon your enemies. A scroll that doesn't even get a chance to hit multiple opponents during the final battle since the orb has apparently decided it's a good idea to fight two people at once.



Graphics

Graphically the game is very solid and showcases a lot of original assets. Which means this game does feel visually distinctive which is more than I can say for a lot of other games I've played over the years that were made with either the illegal or legal version of RPG Maker 2003. In fact, I'd ague the best aspect of this game is it's visual presentation. Unfortunately this is one of the least important aspects of a game in my eyes since something can get away with looking terrible if the story is compelling.

Sound

Sound wise the game is merely alright in my opinion with my biggest issue being that the game's soundtrack is rather forgettable. On the plus side the game doesn't use any of it's music in a way that's off putting like "Eureka Seven Vol. 1: The New Wave". I'll never get over how many times that game started playing super ominous music over stuff that really wasn't that ominous in my opinion.

Conclusion

"Mystical Sunrise" is a mixed bag in my opinion. On one hand the game's combat does offer some strategic challenges, but most battles can be easily overcome by just keeping basic RPG strategies in mind. As a result most battles really aren't that challenging. In fact, I only had to make use of the revive skills twice during my last playthrough. And the final boss is easily surpassed in difficulty by a blue spider wearing a witch's hat whose wise enough to bring along some crab minions in order to have the number advantage in battle. On the other hand the game's narrative really doesn't draw me in since neither Myra or Gideon is that interesting as characters and the story they are involved in is so basic that it makes them even more forgettable. As such I consider this one of those middle of the road games whose only worth looking at if you've beaten all of the better RPGs on this site and need something new to scratch that itch.