Introduction

A Traitor's Hold was created by Cernus for the Golden Week of RM2k3 event on RPGMaker.net. An event that was kicked off in order to celebrate the release of an official English translation of RPG Maker 2003. An engine that is considered a classic by many and has been used to create a rather impressive list of classic RPG Maker games over the years. Albeit those games were created with an unofficial fan translation that has lead to some rather heated discussions over the years. Though, I suppose this isn't the time and place to get into a discussion about the pros and cons that the fan translation had going for and against it. As such, I suppose it's time to dig into the real topic of this video. Is a Traitor's Hold a good game or simply a waste of everyone's time?

Story

On the story side of things A Traitor's Hold is a mixed bag of good and bad ideas in my opinion. On one hand the game largely focuses on comedy which means the plot can be rather hit or miss depending on your thoughts about dark comedy and it's application in a story that largely appears to be your typical RPG adventure about a rag tag group of heroes that need to save the world from an evil dark lord. As such it's really hard to rate the story on its merits. Since, it's quality is going to be intrinsically tied into how much you enjoy the dark jokes thrown around throughout the adventure. Of course, a few of the jokes also poke fun at typical RPG cliches like being able to kill a lich by simply throwing a handful of feathers at it. Though, to end on a more positive note the game does end on a twist ending which helps bring together the reason behind the game's name as well as explain a bit more about what's actually going on. Though, I won't get into any real details concerning the real ending since I'd rather not ruin the experience for anyone.

Gameplay

On the combat side of things the game is rather poorly balanced in my opinion. After all, the summoner basically becomes an unstoppable goddes of death and destruction for regular encounters after you acquire the power of Bahamut, and while a few of the bosses can act as a check for Henriet. They'll need to focus all of their efforts on constantly knocking her out with consecutive punches in order to stop her assault. Other wise they'll simply fall victim to Bahamut's nonelemental damage after a handful of turns.

And while I suppose a few would counter that constantly summoning Bahamut is balanced by the need to repeatedly use ethers to restore Henreit's magic points over the course of an extended battle or after a handful of regular encounters. I'd counter that the game provides a pretty easy method for overcoming this weakness. Albeit, that fix is likely the result of a glitch rather then something the developer intended. Though, I'll save discussing the glitch in question for a later section devoted to the topic. For now I'd like to move onto discussing the graphics and sound.

Graphics & Sound

On the graphical and sound side of things the game is rather average, but that's to be expected. After all, part of the rules of the contest was that the various projects were only to make use of the graphics, music, and sounds found in the RTP. As such the game was never going to stand out in this area in either a positive or negative light for me. Albeit that limitation may be more annoying for people that hate it when games make use of the RTP. And, I've run into my fair share of those over the years.

Glitches & Eventing Errors

A Traitor'd Hold contains at least two major glitches. Albeit, I don't have footage of one of them since I stumbled into while doing a practice run on the final area before I had to head into work. And, I didn't feel the need to go back and repeat the experinece since it's possible to get through the area in question without the glitch actavating. As such, I really didn't feel the need to get footage of this particular issue, but if you finish a battle with one of the guardian's in the dark lord's tower with one of your characters knocked out. They'll appear in the next battle with a single hit point while still being knocked out. As such, they can't act, but you can't revive them with a phoenix down either. As such, you'll have to hope that the enemy obliges you by hitting the character in question and reseting their hit points back to zero so that you can use a phoenix down on them.

On the plus side the other glitch involves the first boss. Or I should say it involves the eventing around the first boss. Apparently the developer forgot to set a switch to go off after the end of the boss battle that changes the flags concerning the headmaster of the local magic school. As such, you can reinitialize the quest to take on the Shade Lich as many times as you want. A glitch/eventing error that really works to the players advantage since every time you defeat the Shade Lich you gain a set of bone armor which can be sold for 600 gold pieces as well as can steal a copy of the Shade Lich's wand which can be sold for an additional 600 gold pieces. Plus, the fight with the Shade Lich is worth over 500 AP points which means you can master any class in the game within 15 minutes or so.

Conclusion

At the end of the day A Traitor's Hold is a solid contest game and rather fun experience overall if your into the humor on display, but at the same time. This game is entirely dependent on it's comedy to carry it. If the game's comedy doesn't appeal to you then this game doesn't have anything else to fall back on. After all, the combat system is highly unbalanced and the cast is comprised of charictures that are entirely lacking in terms of depth. As such, this is game I'd only advise you seek out if your into dark comedies and enjoy watching people poke fun at old RPG cliches.