The demo for this game was originally released for Release Something Else! 2005 of the defunct gamingw.net. Even though there are some signs that there has been development for it since without a newer demo to speak of, what kind of promise did the demo provide?


Story

The game starts with a girl who manages to run away from home and gets lost in a nearby forest, where she is approached by a clumsy thief. He is able to convince her to let him join her to find their way out of there. They go to some abandoned ruins that the thief wanted to check out and return to the girl’s home. Unfazed by her parent’s scolding for escaping, she runs away yet again the next day and goes to the Harvest Festival. There she reencounters the thief, gets her fortune told (involving an Ancient language) and is joined by a swordswoman who is willing to train her in fighting skills. The latter invites the other party members to go home with her, requiring all of them to go to a nearby port town, where they find out that boats are not leaving due to a problem with a lighthouse. The party offers to solve the situation which requires them to return to the runaway’s hometown to retrieve a key required to access the top of the lighthouse … EOD


Characters/Dialogue

The characters you are introduced to, due to the relatively short length of the demo, don’t have enough time to develop. The most intriguing one of your party is the thief since he seems to have some unclear motivations that lead him to act. NPCs can provide useful information or items, and what sound like potential quests.
I found some minor grammar and spelling issues in the demo, but overall it is relatively well written.


Gameplay

Being a RPG, you would think there’s a lot of fighting is involved in it. Think again. Almost of the fights, which are random encounters except one that occurs later in the game, take place in one dungeon. The ATB fights, including the one involving a boss, are actually quite easy and dull for the player: I found that the party involved didn’t have any skills to use, no status ailments nor buffs/debuffs were inflicted during them and they could be won by just choosing the Auto-battle option. I found a couple of other places you pass through in the demo where there could have been some battles, but for some reason the developer chose not to include them. There isn’t even a treasure chest in those areas to be found!

There were also a couple of relatively easily puzzles which I have found in other RPGs: one involving flipping switches to open the path to go further into a dungeon and one finding a clear path to be able to escape without arousing suspicions. There was also a mini-game which involved mashing the ENTER button repeatedly as often of possible. It ended up serving as a time waster just to get the results of a lottery, if you chose to buy some tickets for it. BTW, even though I tried quite a few times, I wasn’t able to win the lottery to find what could be won.

There were a few interesting choices in gameplay aspect. I found a church in town that had a priest who offers some paid services as well as the ability to save for free in town, which is reminiscent of what can be found in some Sega Genesis/SNES RPGs. Also, in order to jump a gap, instead of pressing ENTER while facing the gap, you had to press the direction arrow of the jump. Finally, to call up the game menu, instead of pressing ESCAPE, you had to press the “+” button in the keyboard.


Graphic/Sound

The demo successfully uses RTP graphics, mixed with custom facesets for the party members. The background music in towns is mostly standard RTP that changes depending on where you are. In contrast, the music in dungeons and during fights appears to be custom.


Some Other Issues

I found a few problems with the demo:
- For the one of the shopkeepers, when you enter the menu of items to buy, when you press ESCAPE, which should have taken you back to the BUY/SELL/LEAVE menu, instead returns you to the menu of items to buy. It takes a few tries for it to actually work they would it should.
- There were a few tiles with passability issues. In one case, I was able to walk into an unseen area, only to be told to go back.
- I found that if you tried to exit a screen using a particular exit, you got stuck.
- I found two places in the game where if you returned to them after an event had occurred, that event got repeated with the sprite of the thief appearing onscreen in a spot where it wasn’t in the original event, so that you got two thieves in the cutscene. In one case, a very strange thing occurred if you continued playing after the repeated event: the order of the party members somehow got switched, so that a later cutscene involving both party members ended up with the thief talking to himself.
- You supposedly get some items for doing certain things, such as talking to NPCs, beating a puzzle or opening a chest. When you check the inventory after the object obtained is mentioned, it was nowhere to be found or another unrelated item appeared in the inventory. Also, there was an item in inventory with a blank description as well as some equippable items that didn’t affect stats at all.

Conclusion

The demo kind of feels like an alpha version due to the issues mentioned, meaning I wouldn't recommend it for the average RPG player. No wonder the game description advises for the demo: Take care when playing!