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Oh, Sweet Jesus

  • Addit
  • 08/03/2015 10:09 AM
  • 2854 views


A Game Made By: Rose_Guardian
Created Using: RPG Maker 2000
It's A: RPG Game
That Roughly Takes Around: 1 Hour To Complete
And It's A... COMPLETED GAME!!!


Alright, a review that manages to kill two giant birds with one signified rock! (Now that’s how I like ‘em.) Not only do I get to manage to review a game that was made for the Golden Age Of Game Making event (which I’ve been completing ignoring until just right now) using the official English licenced version of RPG Maker 2000, but I also get to review something that was requested to me via PM! Yay!!!

I’m pretty f**king excited. Usually whenever I happen to receive a PM from someone that requests a review for one of their games and I happen to actually manage to do it and get off my ass for a change, they end up being some of the best games that I’ve played on the site – for realz. First there was Nakazu asking me to review Vorlorn for him some time back, which ended up being a very solid game in its own right and even ended up getting featured, and then there was Isrieri who asked me to review Super Talking Time Bros 2.5 – The Last Levels for him – and that game kicked ass! So I’m two for two so far when it comes to taking up these requests.

Well, today’s request was made by Rose_Guardian who wanted me – yes, “meee” – to review her contest entry for the event entitled “Destiny Quest,” a game that I initially thought looked somewhat innocent enough to try out and I thought that there was no way in bloody hell that this could be as bad as say…Sonic and The Chaos Dragons, right? Right…???



(Yeaahhh…I gotta stop being so cheerfully optimistic all the time ‘bout these sort of things…)

The Story


…You couldn’t tell that from, like, literally three feet away from you?
(Also, what the hell, “Ahnaelle?”)


Our story begins with Princess Annabelle of Ashguard Kingdom, along with her personal assistant bodyguard who’s probably getting paid dick wages to watch over her are collecting crabs (mmmm…crabs…) on the beach to bring back for suppertime… (Now why would she, a Princess, be doing this when someone else hired could have done it instead for her and not put her entire life in jeopardy being out in the open is beyond me - but whatever.)

While collecting these said crabs, she then notices that a body has managed to wash up on shore (which, if you manage to play the game, or look at the screenshot right above, it looks like he’s just been standing there the whole bloody time – and he’s, like, literally three steps away from her; how could she not notice that), and the pair soon manage to bring the unconscious lad back towards the kingdom.

The man awakens after a while with no real memory about who he is, what’s he doing here, and why is his hair even purple. (Yep, we got ourselves an old case of amnesia - a classic staplehood in all mysterious, washed up aboard protagonists in JRPG’s.) And without second thought, Annabelle decides to name the man “Edge,” like the main character that’s in Star Ocean: The Last Hope (which I f**king hate), and within the first two minutes after that is already quite smitten with the guy and is willing to even go on a walk with him through the lovely, but equally as dangerous Stone Food Forest. (You just met the f**ker!)

While walking around the forest aimlessly for a while and taking out a giant tree monster along the way, the pair are then suddenly attacked by a white haired, sinister looking man simply known as Valan who works for the imperilling Lord Arkis. (All hail Lord Arkis.) And then, even at Level 50 (more on that later), Edge and Annabelle soon get their collective asses handed to him. But just before Valan can deliver the final blow, Edge manages to unleash his hidden potential…something, or other, and drive off Mr. Valan away before uttering something about “being the Chosen One” and that he will return someday.

Well, long story short, Edge over time finds out more about who he is, and then the pair, along with two other party members who nonchalantly join up for some arbitrary reason go straight to Lord Arkis’ castle and kick the everloving shit out of him thus ending the game before Edge ultimately has return back to his home planet because his planet needs him. The end.

The plot for this game is not only chockfull full of classic, tiresome JRPG’s clichés but it’s also very, very rushed and isn’t necessarily fleshed out very well. I mean, here you have Annabelle who just managed to have met a random stranger that just happened to wash ashore and within the first two minutes is not only going for a walk with him and shopping for stuff in town but they’re also sleeping in the same bed by the end of the first chapter!? Who in the right mind does that!? I know that the scene just before the second chapter starts off with Annabelle’s sleeping in her bed while Edge is just standing right next to her after he awakes from his sleep, but you can’t honestly tell me with a straight face that he was sleeping on the floor the whole time, right? Jesus, I think Annabelle’s probably one of the most loosest women that I’ve ever seen in a game before…and for a Princess, that is. Holy shit… I can’t imagine what the king is like…

Edge isn’t really the smartest tack in the toolshed either, as some of the things that he says in this game are just …downright retarded. I know he’s got amnesia, and all, but he certainly isn’t stupid… He kind of reminds me a little of Squall: quiet, shy, keeps to himself, but – holy shit – does he have a mouth on him whenever he wants to use it.

The other two party members that join up aren’t really anything special to talk about other than they’re probably just there to add in for the sake of having a four party member system, I guess. They really don’t add that much overall to the story as a whole, so why even bother including them as official party members? They’d probably work a lot better off just being a bunch of random NPC’s that you have to help out. I know that they want to return the favor to Edge and Annabelle for helping them fight off against those groups of guys, but why bother with anything else after that? You’d think that they would just say their thanks and just go home and call it a day, especially since why would any good brother take along his little sister into taking on such a massive ordeal like striking down an evil dictator hellbent on ruling the world? I can see if the brother went along and the sister wanted to go too and he would say no and then she just snuck along anyway, but this doesn’t have that much practically to it, doesn’t it?

The dialogue is pretty bland too and is full of many different grammar and punctuation errors that just come off after a while looking pretty lackluster in comparison. If anything, because the dialogue comes off rather uninspired and corny at times, some of these different conversations come off more as a humorous attempt than it should be initially taken. I mean, some of these lines of dialogue just scream “classic, mistranslated 90’s humor” for you. For example, there’s this one kid in Ashguard who’s got his cat stuck in a tree and his mom’s like “don’t climb it,” but then he turns around and says something stupid like, “Mom, there’s cat in it.” And there’s even one part where you go inside a house in town and when you try to go upstairs Annabelle’s like, “Edge, don’t go upstairs in someone else’s house” - but it sure is okay to enter the house initially uninvited, I guess, you b*tch! (Stupid, stupid!)

Look, I know that Rose_Guardian only had a week to complete this game and the story is going to be a bit rushed and not fully fleshed out as much as she possibly could do, but, damnit, she should have been much better than this! I’m not sure if English is her first major language, or what not (although her profile says that she resides in Michigan, USA), but she seriously should either get a proof-reader to look over her stuff when she’s done or just improve her overall writing ability on her own.

The Gameplay


Oh hi, Lita, how you doin’? You’re in this game, too?


Destiny Quest’s is traditionally a pretty straightforward RPG similar to how most RPG Maker 2000 games that uses the default settings act. And just like with its underwhelming story, the gameplay itself is pretty bland as well. Not only do you start off the game with everyone at maximum level with everyone having all their best moves and abilities at their disposal, but the combat system is surprisingly dull with enemies and bosses taking much longer than they should to actually defeat with really no variance between each fight or action taken. The first boss, for example, should be pretty easy to defeat, since it’s the first boss and all, but because it heals itself all the time for basically all the damage that you’ve caused to it in a single turn the battle can go on for quite some time. Even the second boss against the big man and his group of cronies just seemingly last forever… I think after a while I just selected the “Auto Battle” command and let the game handle all my fights for me while I just kicked back, relaxed and tossed back a cold one. (Now that’s what I call some great game design.)

Since there’s no reason to level up since you’re already at the max level, grinding is virtually a non-factor here. Even if you wanted to grind to get some more money from the enemies to go buy things like potions and new equipment for your party members to use, it’s not really necessary to complete game since you have so much health and you have two characters that can basically heal you pretty quick, so there’s no reason to really fight. Even the new equipment that you get will only increases your stats by just a little bit, and you eventually receive something that trumps all the weapons that you get from there, so don’t even bother.

I do like, though, how the game doesn’t use any traditional random encounters and instead relies on touch based encounters for engaging with enemies on the screen instead. That’s a good idea. I do prefer it a lot more that I have the choice of whether I want to fight a group of enemies or not, so I appreciate that it was put in there.

Dungeons are pretty much scarce that only really consists of a few areas or even a single room for you to explore. The only real dungeon in this game is pretty much the Stone Wood Forest, and that only consists of like two or three maps in total. I’m guessing that Rose_Guardian didn’t have enough time to fully implement and fill all these dungeons out, because, from where I’m standing, they’re pretty hollow and don’t really contain much other than just a couple of messily enemies to fight. Hell, even in Arkis’ Castle, if you manage to leave the throne room before ultimately fighting off against him, you’ll run into a huge empty hallway below with nothing else in it, which suggest that this game was rather rushed to get it released in time.

The Soundtrack


Ooo – snap!


The music in this game primarily uses mostly RTP, which I think works rather well for a game like this, but it also uses a few MP3 tracks added to the mix, mostly for boss battles and any key events thrown in there, mostly. I’m not sure where these MP3’s came from or if they’re from a particular game or a movie score, but they seem like such odd choices to include here. Most of the boss battle themes use this progressive, instrumental rock music that sounds quite epic in scope but really doesn’t match the mood and tone being portrayed thanks to this game’s rather rushed premise and uninteresting combat system. They’re nice to listen to on its own, but I don’t think it really works that well being splashed together there with the RTP. I think you need to make a choice with your music selection before you start whether you want to go using one particular file format or the other, because I don’t think you can get away with using both formats in most situations like this.

The only custom track that I kind of like is the Arkis’ Castle theme, “dark castle” that sounds rather ominous and militaristic that isn’t quite bad for a final area and almost has a sort of Xenogears / Secret Of Mana sound to it. I rather like it.

Sound effects are nothing really special as it just uses the RTP – which I guess is fine for a game like this.

The Aesthetics


Look ma, he really is Jesus!


I think this was probably the only overall thing that I thought was kind of okay for this game. The graphical presentation isn’t totally god awful, but you can tell that this game needs some serious work.

First off, the mapping isn’t too shabby, and I found that most of the locations look rather nice and you can easily tell from one thing to another and where you can go and not go. They’re not too extremely overcluttered and they’re not full of stupid things like different multiple lighting effects or different tint colors that makes navigating a map more difficult than it should be, so that’s a positive. I just found that, well…besides the map passability errors and some sprites being melted into the furniture, that some of these areas just seem like they don’t quite have enough going on that makes the map seem larger and more barren than it should be. For example, towns only seem to have like one or two villagers in it that makes the whole town feel more like a ghost town and the interior maps don’t have enough in the ways of furniture, floor tiling, or anything else to make it seem more livelier than it does. It’s almost like these guys just moved into the town just a couple of days ago and they’re still trying to settle in to the neighbourhood. (Although, a lot of that could be just blamed on time restraints.)

Secondly, I don’t know what’s up with the facesets, and all, but there are times when they look just fine on the message box and the main menu and then there are other times when they look all distorted and stuff. It’s really offputting. It seems like there are two separate files for the facesets and I guess that for one of them the transparency isn’t set quite right and that’s what causing the distortion to appear. Either way, I’m surprised that Rose_Guardian just didn’t leave it the way it was.

And lastly, everything just come off rather stiff in regards to even just the minorist of details, like when you open a chest or even in regards to a simple sprite animation. Since there are no messages for when you open a chest or even various sprite alterations, like when a character is sleeping or knocked unconscious, it just looks really sloppy in comparison. I mean, Rose_Guardian knows how to make a chest open up and give you an item and not make it open up again afterwards, but why couldn’t she place just a short “you got this” message afterwards? I mean, I can understand sprite alterations, because it can be a bit hard to do, especially with these larger sprites, but even just a little bit of effort would have been nice.

The End Result


I have to go now. My planet needs me.


Destiny Quest just didn’t manage to turn out the way that I expected it to be. Well, I knew that it wasn’t going to be the most solid of entries here - but I didn’t expect this! This game is just…not very good at all…and it’s a bit surprising coming from someone who has a ton of games on RMN already and has been around the community for such a long time. Not only is the story really rushed rather laughingly bad, but the combat system is just so bland and repetitive with battles that just go on forever with a mixed soundtrack using two different file formats and a graphical presentation that could use some serious work.

I know that creating a game in less than a week can lead to all sorts of different problems when you’re working with such a strict time limit and mistakes are bound to happen like this, but even with such a time limit there still needs to be some sort of consistency throughout and this game just doesn’t seem to have it… I mean, I kind of enjoyed this more than I should have because of how badly everything was presented that it made me laugh more than I took it seriously – and that would have been just fine if this was presented as a comedic game and such, but it’s not.

Personally, the only reason that I’m not giving this a 0.5 rating is because, A, this game was made for a contest in a short matter of days, and, B, the mapping isn’t as bad as some of the other games that I’ve played on here before. If wasn’t for either of those contributing factors, then this game would definitely be the undisputed king of kings (and the not the good kind of kings).

Rose_Guardian, it looks like you got some hefty work to do.



(Couldn't have said it any better myself, Edge.)



OVERALL GRADE:
1 / 5 - D- ~ Not Even Worth Your Time.

Posts

Pages: 1
Rose_Guardian
2346
08/04/2015 12:17 AM
Thanks for the review Addit. I greatly appreciate. :)
I will admit I didn't expect a higher rating than this. So no worries. I'll take what I got, and will do what I can to fix it, since I plan to do an extended version of this game, on another page if I can put the extended version on another page.
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
08/04/2015 06:23 AM
Nicely written as always Addit, though I will make one small note, the game was supposed to be full of classic tiresome JRPG clichés, that was the theme of the contest.
Addit
6394
08/05/2015 06:47 AM
@ Rose_Guardian – Wow, I actually thought that you were going to kill me for giving this such a low score compared to sacred’s, but it seems like that completely unfazed you and you only want to strive now to make it even better than it is in the future. Now that is class! I kinda wish that there were more people like you who just handle these types of things rather more calmly and more smoothly and just goes on hoping to make their games even better than before. Well done.

You know what, just for that, if you plan on doing an extended version and you manage to complete it – then just give me another call and I’ll be willing to review it, okay? :)

@ nhubi – Lol, shows how much I actually cared or knew about the Golden Age Of Game Making event that was going on. (So that’s why this game had so many darn clichés in it…) Either way, I didn’t really necessarily mind the clichés being used, as that really didn’t hurt the overall score that much, as it was more or less the bland, repetitive combat and rather unpolishness of it as a whole that mainly doomed it. I suppose if everything was more fleshed out and all the kinks were worked out, than this would probably be a pretty decent game. I actually found it to be a lot more humorous than it probably is. And if it can just work out a few things and even keep that kind of silliness going throughout, than this game will do just fine, IMO.
Liberty
RTP Princess
24266
08/06/2015 06:48 AM
I actually recommended she ask you to review one of her games because I knew you'd be fair and detail the issues she needs to look into to become a better developer. Also, because you wouldn't jump on board the hate-train that some people do when they review someone whose games have seen negative reviews before. Thanks for taking the challenge, Addit. I appreciate that you did so.
Addit
6394
08/07/2015 08:35 AM
Oh, so you were partly responsible for this madness. (And here I thought I had fans… *groans*)

Besides, even with a negative score, there’s always at least one good quality to every game to at least talk about and say something positive about it. That’s my motto!

(…Or maybe that’s the Kahlua talking, I dunno…)
Pages: 1