Temple of Memories

Spoiler Free Review.

I've seen this game a couple of times on this website, and was meaning to play it for a long time, but at last I have and here is the review for the game!

The game is quite a short game, but well presented & designed.

Story & Characters

This is difficult as revealing almost anything can be spoilers, trust me there is a good reason why you aren't going to get to know much before playing the game.

But to sum it up, a small group of four people explore some ruins, and you get to see what happens when they do.

It's a nice and quite simple to think up story, but OzzyTheOne, the developer, added some nice surprises and plot twists that add a good amount of depth to the story. This make it more surprising for anyone who plays this and therefore the game's story quickly becomes a lot more likeable.

None of these characters are dull either, OzzyTheOne does a good job portraying them and bringing life to them in there interactions and dialogue, but at the same time, because the game is quite short, you don't have that many scenes with them, but you do still have enough, the bare minimum, for the story and characters to be good!

Overall I think it's a really good story, and OzzyTheOne does a good job presenting it.

Cutscenes are well done, they are good both visually and story-wise. I will repeat this setence in the Mapping & Graphics section of this review.

Cutscenes also have action and movement going on in them, making things more interesting.

Gameplay

Gameplay-wise it's very fun. It's more of a story-driven game, but you get to walk around on a couple of maps and play through a few puzzles, and a few boss battles along the way.

The bosses feel challenging and the balance in combat against them is good. Saying that, I felt the party skills against the final boss was a bit easier than the first boss.

The first boss also kept using similar moves each round that nearly whipped out my party, but thankfully just using the two characters that can revive over and over again anytime I could pick moves helped work against it.

The skillsets you get for your party members work really well in combat too.

I enjoyed most of the puzzles in the game, it was only the one that involved colours switching and navigating certain directions that I found quite frustrating. I think it's a nice puzzle, just the design was too complex for what it's trying to achieve. But otherwise it's nice.

Because the mapping is very good quality as well, it effects gameplay navigating on maps in a positive way, and all that is really well done. So a congratulations to OzzyTheOne for achieving that.

Mapping & Graphics

As stated in the last paragraph above, all the mapping it well done. Mapping is all RTP, but I do like the RTP when it's used well, and here it is used very well.

The characters facesets at certain moments have been edited by OzzyTheOne to convey more emotion, and that's a really nice and neat thing to see.

Cutscenes are well done, they are good both visually and story-wise.

I think the visuals are all really good.

Audio/Music

All the audio and music I recognized was also from the RTP. I think it is all RTP, but I don't want to say that without me knowing for certain.

It's used well in cut-scenes and really fits the mood. When you talk to your own party members, too, the music playing fits well.

In boss battles, it's well used, and navigating around maps and everywhere else I remember feeling the music fits the mood and atmosphere.

Again, well done to OzzyTheOne here.

Originality

Story-wise, the game takes very cliche and common plot ideas and then adds a small surprise and twist to how they are used.

Separate from this, I felt the story presentation for the type of plot that it had going was done in a original and enjoyable way.

Gameplay-wise, some of the puzzles seemed unique to me, they aren't things you can't think up, but I haven't seen some of them used in other RPG Maker games, so I'd say there's quite original here, when compared to some other games.

I kind-of covered the rest of what to say here at the start of the review and in the Story & Character's section.

Conclusion

While it's a short game, lasting around 45 to 55 minutes, it's well thought through and presents itself in high quality and really well done.

It's a good case of quality over quantity, I think.

Overall I feel the game deserves a high score, but still could've been expanded upon a little further.

The only real issue I had was on the puzzle I felt was a bit too complex, but that isn't enough to stop me from saying, it is definitely a good game and worth your time playing.

I do recommend this game/Temple of Memories.