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A Unique Experience Thats Well Worth Playing



Three Ghostly Roses is a turn based RPG developed by zDS (or Michael) and created in the RPG Maker VX Ace engine. At least I think its a turn based RPG… Its actually quite hard to say, you see Three Ghostly Roses (or TGR as I will refer to it as from here) feels a lot more like a puzzle game, where each individual combat encounter is a well thought out puzzle waiting to be solved… but I will come back to that…

In TGR you play the role of Edmund Bringham, a disheveled looking individual who wakes up with no idea where he is or why. After running into a rather unusual hooded gentleman you decide to punch and kick your way to answers. To say anymore would really spoil a lot of the game, and that’s not to say that the games story is overly original, but it does some interesting things with the amnesia suffering protagonist trope and once it really gets going it introduces some pretty interesting ideas and concepts.

The game also does a good job of giving interesting little backstories to the bosses you face throughout the game. It reminds me a little of Demon Souls specifically on that front and it was very much appreciated. All to often in RPGs bosses are just roadblocks that exist simply to be an obstacle for the player, very rarely do they serve as am important or interesting part of the world they exist in. It was a really smart design choice and something I wish I would see more of in both AAA and indie games.



Likewise the games visuals work really well. With an obvious NES inspired aesthetic, the visuals are easy to read and the world is full of little details, from semi submerged Skulls in the desert sand to clouds blowing by in the distance when your on balconies at the top of a castle. It all feels very cohesive, and more impressively considering the nostalgia fueled the visuals are, it feels atmospheric and ominous. A large part of this is also thanks to the soundtrack which was composed by the developer and has a very John Carpenter feel to it.

The level design is also generally very strong, with lots of shortcuts opening up as you make your way through the maps, some teleports for quick access to your singular save point (again like Demons Souls and many other games, this game has a single Nexus area for saving and healing) and even some loop around level design in place in a handful of areas. This makes getting around the game world relatively quick and painless, you can tell a lot of thought and care went into the way this world was laid out and designed.



All of this is just gravy though as the real bread and butter of TGR is its combat system. As I mentioned at the beginning, the games combat situations feel more like puzzles than your usual turn based RPGs. The game has a rather traditional HP system, but where it differs from other games is in the way FP points work. Each time you perform an attack you gain one FP point, as the game progresses you get access to more attacks per turn (a maximum of 3) but you also learn more powerful moves that cost more FP to balance that out. So a good example of how it works would be with the screenshot above. Each turn you can attack one of the pitch fork wielding demons, they go down in one hit each earning you 2FP. You can then use those 2 FP to kill the eagle, Using “Arts” which are special attacks, you can use 1FP to break its guard with an attack, and 1FP for an attack that the eagle is weak against, this the battle is concluded. It sounds simple, and it is, it gets a little more complicated when you factor in that there are High, Middle and Low attacks, and that each enemy has a weakness to one of those, you also get access to “Blast” attacks which are elemental with special properties. It sounds pretty complex, and depending on the enemy composition for each combat scenario, it really can be a lot to keep track of, but it works, and it works well. Its this “Stone, Scissors, Paper” design that makes each combat encounter feel like a specific puzzle. Its a really great system and I hope to see it expanded on in zDS’s next project. BUT, its not without its faults, and strangely enough, these faults actually come from the battle sprites.

Its a small nitpick to be sure, but I feel like more could have been done with the design of the sprites in relation to the combat mechanics. Using an example from the image above of the eagle, this enemies weakness is a punch to the face followed by an uppercut, visually however, it looks as though a knee to the chest followed by a drop kick (which is how you attack an enemy who is weak to middle attacks) would be the way to go. Another example would be a turtle enemy found in the jungle, despite the fact that its head is exposed and the most prominent part of the sprite, its a middle attack to its body that it is weak against. As I said earlier, its a very small thing, but it can lead to some very trial and error encounters, I don’t think the game has to flat out tell the player to look for these visual cues, but I think having the sprites designed in that way could lead to some satisfying “ah ha!” moments for players.



My only other gripe with TGR is there is a boss rush at the end of the game and while it feels appropriate thematically, from a pacing standpoint it feels like it bogs things down a bit. If the boss rush consisted just of the bosses alone things wouldn’t be so bad, but there are also other encounters throughout the rush as well which really do slow things down. Thankfully, the final boss itself is pretty great and makes you go through everything you learnt throughout the game for a satisfying ending.

And I think, in the end, that’ s the best way to describe by experience TGR, satisfying.It has some niggling issues here and there, but taken as a whole the game is an engaging, fun and unique experience. Everything comes together in a way that very few RPG Maker games manage, and considering that this is zDS’s second game released, I think its an impressive game indeed. Everything from its visual presentation and audio design to its internal game systems feel consistent and I cant wait to see what zDS releases next.

The game took me around 3 ½ hours to complete and if you are looking to experience the game for yourself, well, what are you waiting for?

Posts

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Thank you for this wonderful review!

This is not the first time a battle system I made was compared to a puzzle game! That's quite an honor, seeing how easy it is to have turn based not have a whole lot of thought required.

It's not a small nitpick to mention the battle sprites issue, it's something I totally agree on. Ideally I would have had animated battle sprites that more or less indicated where the weakness was and changed throughout the fight. Unfortunately, I neither had the time nor skill to pull that off at the time of making this haha. I did try to have some visual cues. I can totally see the confusion with bird and turtle. I don't know why but I had the rules be "flying = upper" and turtle I knew I was pushing it with having the head be the middle and the shell be the top. If I ever work on this game again, (god forbid not in a long time I hope haha) the first thing I'd do is work on battle sprites.

I shamefully admit I didn't know who John Carpenter was before this review but turns out that there are similarities when I sampled through various soundtracks he did. That was very cool.

Overall, this was a great read that was very well thought out. I can't say this enough, but it's an honor you enjoyed it as much as you did!

That Edmund fanart is incredibly good. Seriously! If I ever decide to make Three Ghostly Roses into a cartoon network cartoon, I know who to turn to!
author=zDS
It's not a small nitpick to mention the battle sprites issue, it's something I totally agree on. Ideally I would have had animated battle sprites that more or less indicated where the weakness was and changed throughout the fight. Unfortunately, I neither had the time nor skill to pull that off at the time of making this haha. I did try to have some visual cues. I can totally see the confusion with bird and turtle. I don't know why but I had the rules be "flying = upper" and turtle I knew I was pushing it with having the head be the middle and the shell be the top. If I ever work on this game again, (god forbid not in a long time I hope haha) the first thing I'd do is work on battle sprites.


Time to focus on the next project I think, take what you learned with this experience and apply it to the next one! As I said I cant wait to see what you come out with next and ill be there first thing to play it!

Glad you liked the drawing, ha ha. I am trying to do one for every game I review over on my tumblr.

Yeah, the John Carpenter influence is there. Even if you hadn't heard his music until now, there's been a revival of that kind of 80s electronic music in movies, television shows, and games in the last few years so I'm guessing you picked up the influence that way.

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