Intro

Jeez, I've been working on this game on and off for over five years now and still haven't beaten this game once. So while I can't comment on the final boss. I have made it up to floor 9. So I think I have experienced enough of "Castle Oblivion" to write a decent review at this point.

Though in some ways I'm bit surprised a review hasn't been submitted for this game already. After all "Castle Oblivion" is considered a classic in certain circles. Unfortunately being a classic means the game also suffers from a lot of classic design flaws as well. So as much as I'd like to heap praise on this project like "Devil Hunter: Seeker of Power" or consider it merely average like "Fable of Heroes 1: Legendary Edition. The simple matter is that part of the reason it's taken me so long to get through this project is because I find it highly frustrating to play through.

Story

The story is pretty paper thin with the player's party trying to rescue someone's friend whose become trapped within the confines of Castle Oblivion. And that's about all there is to it. At least that's the only goal you'll constantly get told about. To make matters worse the time spent between cut scenes in this game is pretty massive so the characters end up feeling rather lifeless because they have very little to say.

Gameplay

Unfortunately the anachronistic nature of the gameplay is one of the major driving forces on why I tend to take lengthy breaks from this one. For starters the game has an insanely high encounter rate. You'll sometimes win a fight only to get slammed by another enemy after a measly five steps. As you can imagine this makes advancing through the game rather tedious. You can try running from encounters but there's a good chance you'll fail and end up taking massive amounts of damage as a result.

This is because many enemies in this game can spam area of effect attacks that inflict absolutely massive amounts of damage on the party. So much so that the player's entire party can sometimes be defeated in two or three rounds. Thankfully you can avoid these fate pretty easily by abusing low cost moves that inflict negative status conditions on your enemies like sleep, confusion, or paralysis. Unfortunately this practice also applies to the game's many bosses as well.

And this is a problem since it turns boss fights in this game into an utterly boring affair of spamming sleep or some other status condition while having your remaining characters try and tear the boss a new butthole or two. A process that can take upwards of five to ten minutes since the bosses in this game have massive HP pools. And while you could make the fights a bit more engaging by holding back. You'll probably want to cheese your way through bosses in this game since most of them love to spam area of effect spells like the trash mobs you'll constantly run into that can inflict massive amounts of damage.

Jeez, even though I'm level 30 and on the 9th floor. My best area of effect healing spell only recovers around 300 points of damage while the last boss I fought could inflict over three times that amount of damage in a single round. So being able lock down a boss and render them harmless feels like a necessity if you don't want to spam healing items in order to keep your party alive.

In other words there isn't a good way to approach battles in this game in my opinion. At least if your looking to feel satisfied with the outcome of any given battle.

Graphics

The game relies heavily on the RTP for mapping purposes, but does feature enemies and bosses that don't come from the RTP for RPG Maker VX. A decision that is a mixed bag in my opinion since some of the bosses look so radically different from the monsters you'll find in the RTP that it's painfully obviouses these enemies were lifted from somewhere else.



Though I'll admit I've never been particularly fond of the side view battle system a lot of these games employ since the art work for the player's character is so stylistically different from the enemies that it's visually unappealing. At least that's how I feel about it.

Mapping

I normally don't dedicate a section to discussing this issue, but the maps in this game are really annoying. A lot of them seem to operate on the philosophy that bigger is better. As such, a lot of the maps are absolutely massive and made a major pain in the butt to navigate through since a lot of them also double as mazes. This is achieved by using impassable terrain to create multiple path ways or by forcing the player to navigate through an area using teleport pads. Add in the high encounter rate mentioned in the gameplay section and your left with a game that will start to drive you crazy after a while since you'll get tired of needing to either fight every half a dozen steps or tired of taking severe damage when your attempts to flee fail.

Sound

Sound wise the game is unremarkable. So much so that I'm struggling to think of anything positive or negative to say about it.

Minor Issues

The game spells nuclear as 'newclear'.



And the description for Raise II is a bit weird.

Conclusion

"Castle Oblivion" is a game that really shows it's age in a lot of respects. As a result it's hard to grade this project fairly. After all, from a modern perspective this game is terrible. It features excessively large dungeons that are made even longer via an insane encounter rate. Add in the maze like nature of many areas and your left with a game that is severely padded. If this game were a sandwich it would feature several pounds of lettuce and the thinnest slice of meat you've ever seen.

To make matters worse the fights in this game are super easy if your willing to take advantage of cheap moves that inflict negative status conditions on your enemies. So battles while numerous are also super easy. And in later stages will grant the player insane amounts of capital so you can stock up on an insane amount of recovery items. So the high encounter rate doesn't even force the player to conserve resources. It just causes the story to drag like it's trying to waddle through thick, knee-high mud.

At the same time this game was considered technically impressive by some back in the day. At least if this quote from Luiishu535 is anything to go by.

author=Luiishu535
This is an RM classic, Froggy. It might be dated today, but back in the early VX days, this was considered a technical behemoth.

So while I'm not sure how to properly factor in it's historic importance. I can offer up a rating that will reflect most people's opinions based on playing it now a days which is to say this game comes across like it was someone's first game.