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Legitimately impressive, unexpectedly great. The only major problem being RM2K3's slow DBS.

  • Gretgor
  • 11/19/2015 06:35 AM
  • 1479 views
DISCLAIMER: So far, I've only played the "Mechanical" side of the game, so all my impressions are based on that playthrough alone. If there's anything I left off, I apologize.

So, I played the demo, and wow, just... WOW. When I saw all the stuff the developer planned to do for this project, I thought he was clearly biting far more than he could possibly ever chew, but when I played the actual game, I was absolutely blown away by how amazingly he delivered everything I dared hope to see in a game like this.

PRESENTATION AND STORY

The world is open for exploration with vast expansive maps (after a few introductory parts, that is), and it's always a wonder to just travel to all accessible places in it, as the maps look lovely and refreshing to explore, from canyons, to forests, to cities and even to crazy-ass arenas, everything is fun to investigate. That not to mention the music is always stellar, getting us pumped when we have to be pumped, and worried when we have to be worried. The graphics, the music, everything looks and sounds great in this game, and I was really impressed when there was kind of an anime cutscene when I faced the first Arena Champion for the first time. Wow.

As far as the story of the Simurions themselves go, I feel sort of how I felt in Pokémon, but with a greater sense of purpose, like in a more "serious" RPG, because of all the tragic backstory of the Simurions and all that. I really like how this game does give us that Pokémon feel, but at the same time, it delivers more maturity than that plot-wise. I also like how every single "quest" you have to do in the game (such as getting a ticket for the Arena) is accompanied by something of a "mini-story" of their own (such as getting the weird guy by the city's outskirts free from the goons that were screwing up his business).

GAMEPLAY

Gameplay-wise, I really like the adventurous feel I get from exploring the vast maps, and how careful exploration is pretty much sure to yield some nice things. For instance, there are certain robot reconstruction items you can only get through exploration. I was glad I explored enough, since my Ponuma was the key factor in defeating the first Champion, and I needed Earth Cells to bring her to life. The exploration factor was done to near-perfection in this short demo, every place that contains a rare item has a certain feeling of "importance" about it, and every little corner might contain something that may come in handy later on. There were certain paths that were blocked by apparently destroyable objects, and I can't wait until I have the skills needed to open up said paths and explore some more (which will probably have to wait until the full game, unfortunately :( ).

I also like how in order to get a Simurion to your party, it takes more than simply "catching" its soul, you have to gather parts to reconstruct them, and certain parts need to be earned, you know, through exploration and curiosity!

The only things I don't like about this game, and those are really minor gripes of mine, are:
- The usage of the RM2K3 DBS: it's way too hard to make a battle fun in RM2K3's DBS, and unfortunately, while the gameplay "around" the battles is pretty enjoyable in this game, the battles themselves felt grindy and slow due to RM2K3's DBS's sluggish nature.
- The grammar in the dialogs is oftentimes awful, but that's forgivable, since you're obviously not a native English speaker (neither am I, lol). I'd rather have an awesome game with bad grammar than a crappy game with perfect grammar.
- Not being able to construct more than one Simurion of each species. I'm pretty sure that could be accomplished by cleverly playing with RM2K3's "class" mechanics: I'd do something like leaving all heroes blank, and when a robot is reconstructed, set a blank hero to said robot's class, and add him to a "roster" of sorts to be added to the party, but given how far into the development you are, that'd probably be way too huge an endeavor to undertake in such a moment.

OVERALL

This game blew me away in the best way possible. I originally expected this to be an amateurish, lackluster attempt at a Pokémon fangame, made by a completely unprepared fan, but instead, what I got was pretty much the best RPG Maker game I played all year. The only thing that drags the experience down a little is the RM2K3 DBS, but that can't he helped, since making a CBS for a game of this magnitude would be a gargantuan endeavor I don't really expect anyone to attempt.

There was a point in which I was just happily grinding in order to get my Ponuma to level 3, which means I was taking the game just as seriously as I normally take Pokémon, and that's quite an accomplishment for an RPG Maker game! I named my Simurions after planets, and I can't wait to add some little-known exoplanets to the mix by getting more than eight of them :3

So, to sum it up: wow, just WOW. If you're a fan of Pokémon, or just open world RPG games in general, be sure to check this out. I'll be cheering for this in 2017's Misaos, hopefully! :D

Posts

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I'm impressed how you could analyse all the details on this not-that-long demo. I'm also very very happy of what you felt about the experience and I'm relieved to see that all my work was useful.

(Do not bother playing the other "version" of the game. In this demo, no difference can be seen between the two. It's more or less the same of Pokemon versions anyway.)

I can't wait for you to play the next demo and even after because the world will become even more open to exploration. But, yes, you're right, the capacities that will let you go through blocked path won't be available before some time, sadly.


-For the battle system, I'm agree with you. I plan to make it a little better using some plugins from DynRPG. I guess speeding up the Speed gauge can be a simple way to improve this.
-The gammar, for the parts you played, has been corrected since this demo, thanks to people on this forum. So with the time it will get better.
-For having several Simurions of the same type, I already use the classes for the stats curves but like you said, even if I didn't I would be very time consuming to change this now.


Thank you so much for doing this review!
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