Three Ghostly Roses

I've played a lot of RPGs. I've played a lot of RPG maker games.

However, I have never played anything like Three Ghostly Roses.

In Three Ghostly Roses, you take control of Edmund, a lost wandering man who wakes up in a strange and ghastly world. Lead by a strange cloaked figure, Edmund must figure out why he has landed in this strange environment, and uncover the secrets of his past that led him here.

This is a truly unique game, and one that really resonated with me. There is a lot of care and thought put into everything that is done in this game, and it really shows and shines with its love and care.

That's not to say it's not without its flaws, but its an enjoyable experience.

Let's start with the good. I'm not going to talk about a lot of the story elements here, because I think they need to be experienced first hand.

My favorite part of the game is that the battles were interesting. Each one feels like a puzzle you have to get the right solution to. It often reminds me of a fighting game; You need to choose which High/Medium/Low moves work best in which situation. The battles aren't about spamming you most powerful moves, but instead choosing the right moves against the right enemies and at the right times.

Next, the atmosphere is great. The music, the bareness of the land and maps, the dialogue between characters: they all flow together to create this creepy and unsettling vibe that the story demands. It all fits together very well.


Here's some things I had fault with though:

I really think that this game could have benefited from "more descriptive sprites/battlers" for the enemies. A large portion of this battle system relies on knowing whether you should hit your enemies high, mid or low. However, sometimes depending on the enemy it's hard to tell which were effective. In the boss fights, the text prompts were a good indicator of this, but I think some better visual cues would have helped the game out here.

Second, since there is no "Save-Anywhere" function,and there's a lot of backtracking. It's not to difficult to back track to the save point, but I definitely felt like it broke up some of the momentum the game built up, and added a little bit of tedium to the "exploration" and pace of the game.


In the end, this is a game, that I don't think is for everyone, but I loved it and I definitely think that it's something that everyone should at least experience once.

Great job, zDS.