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Welcome to the ruin frontier!

Ruin Frontier 0, is a game that has no review (well... was!) and surely linked to Ruin Frontier, but since this is the number zero, I guess I will start with this one! Oh and it's a sci-fi short game so I was happy to try something different for a change.

Ruin Frontier 0 is a game about the Frontier (duh!)... an infinite and unexplored dimension full resources. This place is sot wild and lawless that after the Research Colony 4575 was founded, it was soon attacked and looted by an army of mercenaries. Anyway an artificial intelligence called Quantevallion survived the attack, despite forgetting its origin and previous purpouse. Quantevallion possesses the ability to control combat drones, so it decides to strike againsts the mercenary aggressors and learn about its past, then an encounter with an experimental subject will provide some surprises...



As expected in this game control Quantevallion and the goal of this game is winning the war against the mercenary army. The mechanical robot protagonist is able to control a party of four that this time is composed by drones (that you can name, if you really really want!), there are various chassis availables (that are the exact equivalent of class, some are bigger and slower, others are faster but more frail, and so on), various equipments from weapons to armors, and accessories that can be equipped by the drones. While they can be built (here resource is used in place of cash, since items are made, not bought, but the system is exactly the same), the levels (that can be accessed in any order) have some loot that can be found inside some crates (I completed the first two level just using the looted equipment).

Graphically the game is really excellent: resources are all custom and both the sprites and the static backgrounds are all very well done and recreate the futuristic frontier setting. We are speaking about various kind of drones and spaceships and different locations like abandoned cities, wilderness areas and enemy bases, mapping is ok, it reminded to me the old shoot em ups. Oh yes, this is a sort of rpg that looks like an arcade shooter video game, but with no scrolling (each screen is a )
It's a world that comes to life and complements the story that is pretty interesting, it's something that kept me interested from the beginning to the end.

The gameplay is pretty straightforward: you just explore various locations that you can call dungeons because that's exactly what they are (despite presenting various enviroments from ruined cities to enemy bases), filled with enemy spaceships and turrents. If you touch the enemy sprite... guess what? Combat will start!

Combat isn't really much different from the usual other jrpg games: you can choose how the drone will attack (with machineguns, missiles or even claws, depending what you equipped) or which skill or item you have to use (for example to repair one of the drones during the combat encounter). Energy (En) is used to power the strongest attacks, while Hp are just the resistance of the airship and it's recovered after each mission (there is no game over if you die, since destroyed drones will be replaced by new ones).
At the end of each level (including the prologue) expect a mandatory boss fight with some stronger opponents that will let you complete the level (you can play each level as much as you want in order to amass a ton of resources).

Ok, basically the game is all about this, the good news is that dungeon layouts will change everytime and so the position of loot, you can choose the order to attack each location, and you can also save anywhere.



Verdict
Ruin Frontier 0 is a pretty nice game with a short story and a solid system. I liked the story and I barely mentioned something about it because I think it's not the main focus, and being it pretty short I think it has to be experienced to be really enjoyed (despite some little punctuation and spelling errors in some dialogues but hey, nothing too terrible). Anyway the real "meat" of this game is clearly the developed combat system and the repeateable dungeon exploration, and it's very well done. It's a pretty nice game that may appeal many players, but in my opinion lacks of that "extra" content that would make it really stand out. Do not get me wrong, it's a well done game and a good experience, graphically it's very good and has an interesting and original setting and plot.

There's also a problem with balance, the more you fight, the stronger you get, game starts as a medium challenge, but later even if the enemies become stronger, with a Sentinel with Power Claw and Heavy Cannon you can destroy every opposition, only the strongest final bosses will provide barely any difficulty.

This is solid entry and and enjoyable and short adventure(even if a bit too much focused on combat encounters, still well done and ). I am not fond of the battle of frictions and the "lots of combat- short story" game concept (since it may become boring after a while), but there's no doubt that this is a pretty cool adventure. For the issues before (regarding the difficulty and "selective" game style) I must give 3.5/5 but is close to 4 (consider this a 3.7/5, ok?).
Almost memorable...
Anyway play it, it's enjoyable, looks good and it is not too long to become boring.

Posts

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Thank you for the review and I'm glad that you enjoyed your time with it. Definitely huge props to the art team for doing so much heavy lifting in the presentation side of things as well.

Since this was a 3 week game that we're eventually looking to expand further the feedback helps a lot and the rating is very fair in that regard. I think more time in the oven could have probably smoothed out more of the battle system issues (especially the broken combos you mentioned) and just as you said, more content would go a long way. The story and world building for this setting is pretty extensive but that did take a bit of a back seat in this case since we wanted to focus more on the gameplay and the "gimmick" of it being essentially a randomizing dungeon crawler. There's definitely plenty of meat to be added there, and one day I hope to be able to show a proper and complete Ruin Frontier game experience.
Yep for a 3 weeks game was pretty good. Graphics were truly excellent and I loved the graphics, I just expected a bit more in the gameplay department but maybe it's my little love for the battles of attrition and party management, but I guess that many people may like this. It is still a good game.
Clearly with some little additions It can become a classic, there is little improvement needed to turn this into a masterpiece.
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