Sellsword

Intro

"Sellsword" is a comedic, turn-based RPG developed by Ratty524 using RPG Maker 2003 for the Golden Week of RPG Maker 2003 event. An event held to celebrate an official English release of RPG Maker 2003. A release that was a long time in coming I suppose, but it was pretty hard to justify releasing this engine officially back in the day due to an unofficial English release that had been spread far and wide over years. Though I do find myself the odd reviewer out since I'm a lot more mixed about this project. Though, I suppose I'll get into my major complaints when I get to the gameplay section.

Story
Summary

In this game we play as a trio of bumbling sellswords whose collective brain power might be enough to read a picture book. After all, they are easily tricked by one of the most obvious comic book villains in the history of fiction. A comic book villain so giddy and happy to unleash an evil chuckle that he can barely keep a straight face long enough to tell our "heroes" what they need to do to help him on his quest to change the world with a "history museum". At any rate the gist of our job is that we need to track down three artefacts the claw, wings, and skull of the legendary dragon Behemaut. A name that truly doesn't strike fear in anybody since everyone knows the true ruler of dragons is Bahamut. So it really shouldn't come as a surprise that no one believes our "heroes" claims about saving the world at the end of the day.

Comedy

The comedy largely relies on our trio of characters being a bunch of bumbling, bickering fools that spend more time attacking each other than their enemies at times. A factoid that really makes the conversation between Paris and Riley about the world sucking and how everyone is only looking after number one feel really out of place. Of course, the game also tries to deploy humor through giving places really bad names as well as with a bit of wordplay at one point as well.



And while I realize in context she's talking about knocking back some hard liquor. It's pretty easy to turn these two lines into a double-entendre. Though hopefully she's not expecting Riley to help her if that's the case since the game goes out of it's way to establish that Riley is a bigger $#%#@ than Nekogal #1.



Greatest Strength/Weakness

This game really lives and dies by it's comedy in my opinion. So much so that you'll probably struggle to get through this one if you don't enjoy the game's comedy on some level.

Spelling/Grammar Errors

The game does contain a few grammar and spelling errors. Though the most notable one in my opinion is when Paris uses the word to in the wrong place when threatening the last two bosses in the game.



Though, I'll admit I'm probably not the best person to bring this up considering I'm 100 percent positive this review contains multiple spelling or grammar errors if not both.

Gameplay

On the gameplay front is where this one falls apart in my opinion. At first glance this game is a pretty basic turn-based RPG which has replaced the standard attack command with skills that cost 0 MP to use. These range from Riley being able to hurt enemies with really bad music, to Gunnar punching stuff in the face, or Paris meditating in order to replenish her magic. A trade-off that is both a blessing and a curse in my opinion since the game places a lot of emphasis on spamming skills while giving the player a rather limited MP pool to work with. Thankfully Paris can restore her MP outside of battle, but this is also a curse as well since you'll need to stop and recharge her MP after every battle if you want to survive in this game. Thankfully you can save anywhere so it's super easy to save scum in order to compensate for forgetting to restore your MP after a fight, but the sheer amount of micro-management in this game is pretty sickening for a game that can be beaten in under two hours. In fact, it gets so annoying I really wish Ratty524 had implemented something similar to "Wild Arms 5" where you get your HP and MP restored after every battle.

Though, I suppose if he had gone that route this game would be too easy since Paris can shred enemies rather easily with her spells. Though I suppose that could be countered by making the enemies more powerful or more likely to show up in groups of two or more. Regardless it would be rather challenging to lessen the amount of time you'll need to spend in the menu with this game while simultaneously maintaining the game's overall difficulty.

As it stands I really do recommend save scumming your way through this game since certain enemies can get the jump on your party and basically destroy you. This is especially true of the scorpions which can easily drop Paris with their double attack and tend to appear with other enemies even other scorpions which can lay a smackdown on your party so fast you might lose Riley and Paris before they even get to a sling a single spell.

I'm also not entirely sure what to do with Riley since he's got the most diverse skillset in the game. While Gunnar starts out with all of his moves and a lack of MP growth so he can't spam his best move repeatedly. Riley is stuck trying to play stat buffer, healer, and status inflictor at the same time. Though buffing your allies in this game is rather pointless in my opinion since your lucky if a buff lasts long enough for your allies to get two attacks off. On the other hand Riley's status moves tend to be too inaccurate to be all that helpful which leaves him largely spending his time on healing and chipping enemies for that little bit of extra damage you need to put them down.

Graphics and Audio

Due to the rules of the event this game was made for, this game relies entirely on the RTP for these aspects. And while the RTP is nice, it does mean this game looks and sounds like a lot of other games that have been made with RPG Maker 2003 over the years. Though at least this game has better mapping going for it than a lot of those other games it blends in with.

Conclusion

"Sellsword" has a lot going for it considering it's an event game, but the sheer amount of time you have to spend on Paris restoring her MP in this game between battles is tiring. And this is coming from someone that used a princess to restore my team's HP and MP in my first run through "7th Dragon". So I'm used to burning time in order to restore my HP and MP and I still feel like it's too much. After all, I could sometimes whack my enemies to death in "7th Dragon" so fast that I didn't need to spend time on micromanaging my teams HP and MP after every battle.