Spirit Blade

Introduction

Spirit Blade is one of those games that just seems to get worse with the more time you spend with it. And in a way the last area of the game feels like the developer is perpetually flipping the bird at the player. Though, I suppose I should hold off on going into a rant about the issues with the final dungeon for a little bit since I'd like to discuss my laundry list of issues with the plot first.

Story
Summary: The over arching plot of Spirit Blade is about Moxia, a brash and reckless young warrior, setting out on a journey to become the greatest warrior the world has ever seen. Along the way her journey becomes entwined in a epic quest to save the world. Or it would be epic if the story wasn't bogged down by bad decisions like your rival.

The Rival: Sadly, the best moethod I can devise to explain why Platinatrix doesn't work as a rival is to look at a pair of games that did it better. So, I'd like to take a quick look at the first generation of Pokemon games and Jade Coccon 2. Both of these games include at least one rival character and do a much better job at tying them into the story.

In the case of the first generation of Pokemon games your rival always appears to be one step ahead of you. A fact that is only emphasized when its revealed that he managed to defeat the Elite Four before you. This makes the final clash between you and your rival atop the Indigo Plateau an epic showdown to determine who is the best once and for all. Thanks to this, your rival feels like an integral part of the game and arguably serves as the main antagonistic force since he shares the same goal as the player.

In the case of Jade Cocoon 2 the game goes out of its way to develop and flesh out the rival characters. Whether this be Cocona's doubts about her ability to lead the Sweet Knights because she was simply chosen to lead because of her age or Nam's desires to revive his people's warrior spirit. And much like the first generation of Pokemon games these characters are given a reason to compete with the main character.

Platinatrix on the other hand isn't really all that fleshed out and her stated goal is to reestablish the country that her ancestors ruled a few centuries ago before they were overthrown by the people. As such, she really has no reason to pursue Moxia since it gets in the way of her stated goal. Or in others words, why is Platinatrix devoting months of her time to tracking down and confronting Moxia over the insult of defeating her in combat when she should be spending her time on building an army in order to achieve her stated goal? After all, Moxia's hometown is in the area Platinatrix wishes to conquer so wouldn't it make more sense for Platinatrix to wait for Moxia to return from her adventures and confront her then?

The Villain de Jure: To make matters worse the villain de jure in this game actually does have the same goal as Moxia. Only he isn't bound by any sort of moral restraint when it comes to reaching this goal. So, it would have made far more sense to make him the rival character instead of Platinatrix.

Greatest Weakness: Sadly, the biggest problem with Spirit Blade's story is that it doesn't make sense. A major plot point in this game is that the three crystals that hold the world together in this game possess infinite power and as such if you wield even a portion of any one of them you would have infinite power yourself. After all, a piece of infinity is still infinite. This is because infinity isn't an actual number you see, but the concept that there is no limit to the amount of numbers which can exist. Because of this the main villain's plan becomes nonsensical because his power could never increase beyond what he gained from the first crystal. After all, once your power becomes limitless there isn't any higher level you can go to.

Greatest Strength: Perhaps it isn't too surprising, but I find myself disagreeing with shayoko and AceOfAces about Moxia. In my opinion, Moxia doesn't really differentiate herself that much from most of the generic leads found in RPG Maker games. About the only notable difference is her gender which isn't all that important to me. Though, I only bring this up because the best aspect of this game in my opinion is Goldi. A character torn between conflicting desires. She both wants to lend aid to Moxia for helping her save her boyfriends life while also desiring to live up to the older ideals about feminine charm, beauty, and place within society. And part of those ideals requires Goldi to be weaker then her husband and being in need of saving when trouble appears, but she really can't live up to those ideals if she follows Moxia around since she'll easily become one of the most powerful people on the planet. While her decision to follow Moxia is rather pat and the game doesn't spend a lot of time addressing this conflict it does make for interesting character dynamic that I wish was more fleshed out.

Gameplay

On the gameplay side of things Spirit Blade features a pretty standard turn-based combat system with the only notable difference being that attacks in this game do set damage based on your stats in comparison to the enemies. A decision that honestly hurts the game since it removes the double-edged sword known as luck, but in the words of Ru Baraba Dom from the show "The Irresponsible Captain Tylor" there is nothing more important on the battlefield then luck. As such its disappearance is keenly felt and not appreciated.

Though my biggest gripes with this aspect of the game involve the bosses and the dungeon layouts. On the boss side of things the game overuses almost all of the bosses in my opinion since almost all of them appear multiple times throughout the game even after they've supposedly been killed. In a short most of the bosses in this game over stay their welcome.

In terms of the dungeon layouts all of them are mazes which starts to become highly annoying after a while because of the high encounter rate in this game. Oddly enouugh Lv27MarkerMan has stated that the encounter rate in this game is set to the default for RPG Maker VX Ace which makes me wonder how many people tweak this aspect in their projects on this site since the default encounter rate is almost unbearable in this game.

Though to make matters worse the final boss is split up into four sections which requires you to utilize every character in the game and some of the battles require very specific strategies in order to get through. So, if you approach the battle incorrectly you'll quickly be wiped out and find yourself needing to play through every part of the boss battle again.

All of these factors make the final dungeon in this game a hell maze which only serves to aggravate the player and lead to me cursing up a storm about wanting to kick the developer where it hurts, but being a glutton for punishment I managed to finish the game anyway.

Conclusion

At the end of the day I suppose I do need to cut Spirit Blade some slack since it was Lv27MarkerMan's first game, but at the same time this game was so irritating for me to finish that I can't possibly recommend it.