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Easy Breezy

  • Sgt M
  • 11/12/2015 06:17 AM
  • 633 views
With the recent release of RPG Maker MV, it's great to see some quick games coming out of the community to get everyone acquainted with the new engine. Something of a "quickie", Four Sister of the Wind is one such game that was made within the first 20 days of MV's existence. So what can you expect to see in this short RTP adventure?

Four Sisters of the Wind follows the brief journey of four sisters tasked with retrieving an Orb of Darkness from an ancient temple. The plot doesn't really evolve that; you literally just go into a temple and find an orb. And for this sort of "tester" game, that's perfectly okay. Along the way, the sisters meet characters like a merchant, a guardian, and a rival that don't have much going for them beyond their brief introductions. The sisters themselves don't have much development either, and I didn't find a reason to know much about them aside from their roles in combat.

One of the most well-done features of Four Sisters is its maps. Though they number only a small handful, Alichains has crafted some splendid-looking maps using just the RTP and make competent use of the new three-layer system featured in MV. There are quite a few nooks and crannies that I felt compelled to explore, though I sadly did not find any treasure of practical use in any of them, but the areas were fun to look at, at the very least.

The use of eventing was also a high point and shows that the creator has a solid grasp on cutscene flow. While often riddled with typos, the few cutscenes in the game were well-paced, making proper use of concepts such as fading and animation. Encounters are also non-random, handled through events that respawn after a set amount of time, through I found the respawn rate to be rather quick.

And that was a problem since the number of encounters was rather high. This wouldn't be as much of a problem as it was had the majority of the game's battles not been downright trivial. I was able to finish most battles by mashing the attack button and casting my mage's AOE spells. Some spells were also overpowered due to what I can assume were bugs. My cleric's group healing spell, for example, cost 0 MP and there was nothing stopping me from using it in every fight. Monsters also dropped loads of healing items; almost none of which I ever needed.


The game makes good use of the character generator.

Interestingly, bosses were not resistant to any status effects. As such, every boss fight just boiled down to loading them up with status effects and whaling on them thereafter. Only one boss ever presented a challenge, and that was mainly due to my mage character having the fortitude of balsa wood.

There's lots of little things that could have bug-tested before release. Blank spell descriptions, spell balance, a teleporter tile that looped me to the beginning of the room, etc. There is also an excessive number of spelling errors at the end of the game, which leads me to believe that the developer may have been pressed for time before his trial period ran out. Understandable, but hopefully those all get fixed up if they ever get the full version.

Despite the shortcomings in the gameplay, it's impressive to see the creator gets a fully functional, working RPG done within a couple of weeks considering MV's stripped-down, clean-slate database that it starts creators off with. Though flawed, nothing in this project was outrageous enough for me to stop playing and it was fairly enjoyable right up to the end.

Four Sister of the Wind is definitely a quick project, but it's far from a bad one. The creator has proven that they are competent with RPG Maker's basic features and workings in this little 20 minute adventure, and I'm sure they'll be off making even better games in due time.