Nora's Tale

So a few weeks ago I noticed this game on the front page and thought it looked pretty neat. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that the main character was a girl, a fairly rare find in the action RPG genre, so I decided to give this a whirl. How was it? Well, do you like Zelda? If so, you'll probably like this game.

A musician named Nora, and her- father? Uncle?- guardian figure arrive in the town of Alyon to perform for the harvest festival. However, during the festivities, the wicked Mirror Queen appears, steals the king's magical scepter, cackles, and runs off. The village of Alyon needs someone to step up and get it back. Nora, who apparently double-majored in Music and Badassery in college, offers to go. To vanquish the queen, she must earn the right to wield the Spirit Blade by completing three quests.

And that's pretty much it for story in this game. Grab your sword and get to work.

The first thing you're likely to notice about this game's aesthetic is how heavily it borrows from Zelda. Some of the graphics and art were custom-made by the creator, but most of it appears to be Zelda edits, or at least heavily reference graphical objects from Link's Awakening. It makes for a pretty unique aesthetic among RM games and gives the game a bit of its own identity, making it feel different from a standard RM Title.



The focus of the game is solving a small handful of dungeons. Combat is a bit limited due to the grid-like nature of RPGMaker, and enemies mill about at random, moving and attacking in set patterns similar to the original Legend of Zelda, and dealing with them is generally pretty simple. You'll spend most of your time trying to solve the various puzzles each dungeon offers. The puzzles are simple but effective and give you pause occasionally to think about what your range of action is, but never become overly frustrating or feel like they're trying to waste the player's time. If you're looking for a real brain teaser, you won't find it here, but the game offers a pleasant and casual adventure experience.


As you explore the dungeons you'll find a handful of useful tools to help you such as bombs, a hookshot, armor upgrades, and money to buy health potions in town. You can use these tools to navigate the world just as you would in a Zelda game. In all, the game shows extreme fidelity to the basics of Zelda dungeon design, from bombing through walls to breaking pots to find health and money.



The bosses are really neat too. Rather than just charge in and slash your sword, you'll need to make clever use of your tools and environment to defeat them.

This game had a lot of other little touches that made me smile too. Your character changes color as she finds new kinds of armor, characters in town have little poses instead of standing statically in place, and in all the game is just very friendly. Even if you die you'll merely be booted to the entrance of the dungeon you were in rather than sent back to the main menu and losing all your progress. I really appreciate little quality of life features like that, especially since very few other games bother to do them!

You might argue that this game is a little too easy, and that's a fair argument, but I don't think a game needs to be hard to be engaging. It's also fairly short, but that's alright. If you're looking for a breezy, non-frustrating action adventure game, or if you like Zelda games and want to see an RM game that follows the formula pretty well, check this one out.