Four Sisters of the Wind

Intro

"Four Sisters of the Wind" is a short, turn-based RPG developed by Alichains using RPG Maker MV that can be beaten in around 30 to 40 minutes. Though if this game is an enjoyable experience or not depends on your perspective.

bicfarmer
Not used to seeing status spells being so effective, since it doesnt happen in mainstream rpg's. Good game.

On one hand being able to use status conditions to cripple bosses is pretty rare in most RPGs so getting a chance to do so can be amusing for a short period of time. On the other hand, giving players the ability to do this can lead to boring boss battles that aren't particularly memorable. Though before I get into just how broken this option is in this game. I should probably cover the game's narrative first.

Story
Summary

You play as a group of four adventures that call themselves the Four Sisters of the Wind. Though it's never explained if this is just their guild or adventurer team name or if they are actually sisters.



Admittedly they really don't look like siblings, but they could all share a parent that liked to sleep around a bit for all I know. At any rate the Four Sisters of the Wind have been tasked with retrieving the Orb of Darkness for a rich baron. A job they agreed to despite on them thinking the baron is really shady and that being an eccentric collector isn't a good enough reason to want an item with such an obviously evil name as the Orb of Darkness. Unfortunately it appears the pay for this job is too good to pass up so they set out to collect the orb the vary next day and run into a cast of interesting characters and bosses along the way.

Of course as you'd usually expect in those sorts of situations the baron is working for an evil overlord and it's lot easier to just kill the Four Sisters of the Wind after they've completed the job then pay them. I guess the evil lord in this game decided to take a page out of Gatō's book from "Naruto". At any rate after we've defeated the person sent to kill us by the baron the bosses we had previously defeated return and tell us that the seal on the great evil are weakening and that we need to talk to a priest in the holy city to learn more. Of course the game shortly ends after this so it leaves us on a cliffhanger about a follow up that will probably never happen.

Strengths/Weaknesses

On the plus side the game moves at a quick pace. Though it's pretty easy to breeze through the narrative in my opinion when the playable cast has very little personality going for them if any. As such it's hard to care about any of the Four Sisters of the Wind in this game.

On top of that the game still contains a lot of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes despite updates to addresses these issues. In fact, one of the spelling errors mentioned in the game's comment section is still there over half a decade later.

Firefly84
May: I'llll go check on the supplies.

Oddly enough an example of grammatical mistakes comes a line earlier from the same character as well.



In this example the y in the word you're isn't capitalized. Though I suppose that mistake isn't as funny as the following error where the developer misspelled a character's name.



Admittedly this error isn't as bad as it could be since the character's name is Aldo, but I'm guessing this error was caused by the developer originally intended for this character's line to begin with the word also in order to make him wishing the girl's good luck come across as a sarcastic. After all, he's here for the orb as well and just got done bragging about how he'll find it before we do.

Gameplay

On the combat side of things the game utilizes the default combat system that comes with RPG Maker MV. As such I don't have a lot to say about the game's base mechanics that probably haven't been said a dozen times before at this point. As for the team itself it's rather well balanced with character's having clear roles that don't overlap from Rebecca boosting the team's offensive firepower, to Lydia spreading negative status conditions and debuffs, to Annette being your standard cleric with healing spells with May finishing things off by being able to cast elemental spells that target single enemies or entire groups of enemies. In a way this team is too powerful since it means your going to have access to an easy out for just about any encounter.

Unfortunately this setup becomes even more broken when you realize just how absolutely broken Lydia's net ability is which she learns at level two. This ability allows you to both lower the agility of all enemies, but also confuse them. And the confusion part of this ability is why it's broken since when you confuse an enemy in RPG Maker MV it cancels their attack if they weren't already confused. And this status condition can be broken by the player attacking the enemy. This means you can effectively stun lock enemies in this game by having Lydia use a low cost area of effect spell while pounding your enemies with area of effect spells. Admittedly this system isn't a 100 percent guaranteed lock since May's group spells may not break every enemy out of the confusion status, but it does mean you can stun lock most groups of enemies if you desire to in order to turn battles into trivial affairs. And this strategy becomes even more busted on bosses since you can have Rebecca and Annette try to break the bosses confusion status by attacking them with their regular attacks as well.

Graphics and Music

When this game first came out it was one of the first if not first game to be available on the site that was made with RPG Maker MV. And in order to do this the developer put in an all-nighter to get this game out fast. As such Alichains decided to stick with the RTP for these aspects of the game which at the time probably was a bit of a novelty. Unfortunately as time has passed the likelihood you've experienced the graphical and sound assets used in this game has increased. So it's appeal has probably gone down for most since they've seen or heard this assets a lot over the years. At least if your the type of person to play and review these sorts of games on a regular basis.

Conclusion

"Four Sisters of the Wind" is a bit of a mixed bag in my opinion. On the plus side it allows the player to abuse status effects to their heart's content. On the other hand if they actually do so it tends to result in a game that's rather boring since you can render your enemies utterly helpless for the most part by locking them in a near infinite stun lock. In a way it almost feels like the player needs to hold back in order to enjoy this game which is definitely a mark against this game in my opinion since I shouldn't need to feel like I need to handicap myself in order to enjoy a game. On the other hand, it's better a game be boringly easy in my opinion than frustratingly hard.