So, due to the upcoming interview with captainregal (in Shinan's majestic interview-series) I decided to check out glacia, captain r's main project to make the whole experience more interesting. I've previously sniffed a little on his sci-fi project, INTO THE STARS, which showed mixed premise from it's author.

The categories are as follows.

Gameplay & Flow - 2.5/5:
Glacia is a seemingly very "generic" jrpg, in the sense that we have the most common pieces that constitutes classic gameplay for this genre; wander a map, down a dungeon, go into battle sequence, get exp and treasures, level up and kill the big boss. There's no attempt to break this formula, yet there's no real "slip-up" in the sense that Glacia did not fail to achieve falling in to it's specific niche.


Man, who would manifacture bedsheets that steals mana?

Captain Regal basically did what he set out to do and did a decent job at it. We have on-touch encounters with fairly well-balanced characters and enemies (apart from the last boss in the demo, which I believe the author is in the process of revising as we speak), a nice system of equippable items that teaches skills (think final fantasy tactics) and a "skill equip" system to go with it. This, plus alchemy-ingredients provides a solid ground for the grind-thirsty player or just an incentive to actually fight enemies (instead of just avoiding the majority which some players, such as my self, tend to do when there's no "real" forced battles). Additionally, we have many elements to choose from and a beastiary to go, so specializing in order to defeat your enemies is very easy if you got the right gear and skills - which actually leads in to some of the gripes I have with Glacia's gameplay.

The smaller one has to do with the loot-distribution, or rather, if you will, items you find in chests. As far as the demo goes, elemental attributes play a pretty big role in determining how well your characters will fare in battle, so naturally, there's weapons with these specific attributes attached. Now, in the first area, you face a whole lot of "fire slimes" which aren't too strong, but if not killed within two hits or so, they will cast flicker, which inflicts substantial fire damage on your (at this point) lone character. however, soon I discovered a hidden chest in an area that gave me a "Long Sword (Ice)" (the name is a bit too generic for my taste but nevermind that) and suddenly, those slimes posed no great threat and I was very satisfied with my find.

This was a very good example of the right kind of treasure the player was looking for. Now, later in the game, the bigger dungeons have quite a few chests, but while in most rpgs, you find a great variety of items to help you overcome the hardships of dungeon crawling (such as potions of different colours and shapes, herbs, gold, some unique items, etc.), you find great hoards of elemental-tinged weapons (mainly in the four prime-category, fire, earth, ice and wind) which means you'll end up with 5 "broadswords (earth)", 7 Fire hats, 13 harp of ice, and so on. It greatly diminished that sense of achievement I had upon finding that first sword, and what's more, it made the equipmentshops in town completely obsolete (which also led to me having over 250000 gold which I had no use for). While I can understand that these weapons are in no way supposed to be uncommon (apparently) it certainly took away all the excitement from opening chests.

Now, the greater problem I had with the gameplay was the battlesystem. It was one of those side-view systems with an atb-bar. In my personal opinion, an ACTIVE battlesystem (with actual real-time and what not) does not go hand-in-hand with scrolling through endless menus of items I'd like to use in battle, ESPECIALLY since they tend to change position, the cursor does not memorize my actions, I have a huge pile of items with no use (common in rpgs of this kind) and so on. It was frustrating how my commands were cancelled before I could execute them due to me scrolling trhough the menu in order to find the right command just to find my character stunned, asleep, dead or whatever. There were also a few bugs involved, which can happen to anyone, but I'm certain that the scripted side-view system had something to do with it. Not to mention the layout isn't very appealing.

Minor other gripes: While the main menu has a slot for a fourth character, you can only have three at a time. This should be adressed.

Although the mini-games and puzzles in glacia are seemingly scarce, the few that actually was there were entirely optional and although i really like puzzles and mini-games galore, it is a matter of personal opionion. But I'd like some more interaction and puzzles incorporated in to the actual dungeons (more on those in the Graphic & level-design section).

Another thing that bugged me was before I entered the boss-area, one of my characters just said "let's save" and the save-window popped up. Okay, do I have to save now, can I save later, after I've prepared myself for the boss? so, just incase I die (which I did. ALOT) I won't have to fiddle around for ten minutes every time I want to give the boss a go. Also, if I felt that I needed some more grinding, the only way for me to save was to exit the dungeon, save on the worldmap and then make my way back, without this one-time option to save near the boss. It was tedious at the very least.


Plot & Setting - 4/5:
Glacia is set in the (you guessed it) typical rpg-world with kingdoms by odd-names (Glacia, Firia, Flora... although they do make sense and are nothing short of practical). The plot has an omnious set-up involving betrayal, regicide, conflict, succession... and goes to prove that with even the most common and generic setting, you can build an epic plot. Or, should I say, have the potential - this goes to show when the game is completed and it is also heavily dependent on the next category.


that's pretty cold. and dark... almost like a glacier?

As far as the demo goes, the groundworks for the plot are barely set, so there's not much to go on (apart from a really outdated cliché which makes it's return in the last sentences of the demo, but enough time for that to develop is not given)

Characters & Dialouge - 1.5/5:
As stated before, the plot and setting is very dependent on how the flow of information is handled and carried out - that is handled by the dialouge and carried between characters within the game. Now, I'd be surprised if Captainregals first language was english (or he's more lazy than I am, which is impossible) since there are numerous typos, grammatical problems and generally wierd formulated sentences that perplexes the player once in awhile but there's also signs of a will to improve and some measure of corrected errors and grammars from playtesters (I persume) which is going to be needed, even more, in order to make the best of the potentially epic plot.

Now, due to the spell-checking and fixing the text, it isn't as bad as one might think really but I am very certain that many scenes and dialouges are stripped of their dramatic nature due to a bit too simplistic writing. I liked the amount of text given but the words and and sentences were either too disarrayed or just plain not dramatic enough to have any effect - the latter is very hard to achieve even for native english-speakers imo. It gives me the feeling that the characters are somewhat fleshed out and might actually be interesting but stiff-writing (translating plans into words and then to another language) seems to hold them back. I got some impressions from the three main characters whom you control the most (Rain, Blaze and Becca), which only goes to show that there probably will be alot more development further on if only the dialouges are fleshed out more. The dialouges are very straight to the point and I like that, but they are at the same time very stiff and suffer from some pretty crippled linguistics.


Taken out of context or not; this makes absolutley no sense whatsoever.

Because of this problem with the dialouge, I can't really determine wether the characters are ultra-typical jrpg-roles or not (only hints here and there) so it's kind of hard to set any score for the characters as of yet.

A minor thing that bothered me was that before facing the last boss, one of the characters utters something like "who's that stone dude?" (meaning the last boss) which lead me to believe he was made of stone (and therefore perhaps resistant to fire) when in reality, he was more likely a wood "dude" (in a "forest temple", apparently weak to fire attacks.


Graphics & Level Design - 2.5/5:
This is a very split department for Glacia. It it glaringly obvious the more that you progress in the game, that the author's mapping capabilities are more than decent (this was also present in INTO THE STARS) where the maps looks really nice, there's detail and some measure of life. Basically, the (now common) mix of VX RTP and MACK tiles really looks good in the hands of a good mapper.

Yet, the latter half of this category, and imo, the most important aspect of mapping would be level-design. Glacia may look pretty but there's very little in terms of immersion in the enviroment, nor does the design of the areas ever differ when it comes to walking from point A to point b. This especially goes to show in the last dungeon, where
A) everything is very dark, so on a monitor, such as mine, it just becomes a dark blur unless toned up.
B) everything looks the same; i mean, the higher levels have grass and trees, but the lower ones are just brickwalls, waterfalls and small dirtpaths that connect them - not only does everything look the same (which caused me to get lost constantly) but since there are neither alot of landmarks nor enough immersion to tell one area from the next, it becomes tedious and dull VERY quickly.
C) The aformentioned "dirtpaths" through the water pretty much limits your movement to a straight path, with a few turns, where dodging the onscreen monsters really just becomes a matter if they're on a one-tile wide path or not; since they move incredibly slow, and you patience is (by now, due to the above mentioned issues) wearing thin, you'll most likely enter combat in an irritable state mashing the enter-button because all you want to do is find your way and progress (also worth mentioning - since the monsters respawn whenever you reenter a map, taking the wrong turn might mean that you'll stare at that blurry, dark monitor for yet another 5-10 minutes).

To compare; the forest where you play as the captain fighting soldiers was also extremely bland and tedious (even though it looked pretty) but at the least each map had an area name with an orientation (like east forest, north west forest, etc.) that really helped me navigate and that I actually made progress even though every area looked the same.

Also, I have to mention this:

ORLY? (lamest excuse ever :( )

Music & Sound - 3/5:
The music selection in Glacia is a mixed bag. Apart from a few ripped tunes, most of the music in games was fairly decent, if not good. Like the last dungeon, the overworld theme (not incredible but fitting), the intro-music and so on. Then we have the incredibly STOCK music which shows up here and there (I mean STOCK as in elevator music. just plain terrible), the ones I recall were "tree town" and the tune in "flora forest" (or one of the forests, dont remember which). The battlemusic was pretty stock as well, but it wasn't that bad. It started to grate on me after awhile but I suspect that was on account of frustration (mentioned above) and not the actual music itself. But I have to mention the atrocious choice of having a midi-version of some OFFSPRINGS song as the boss-battle music was when the shit really hit the fan :( (nothing against the band really, it just didnt fit. and a midi-rendition didn't help either).

The soundeffects were also a bit of good and bad. There was enough sounds for most things you could interact with but some of it, during cutscenes, sounded displaced and off. Another thing that bothered me was the sound of TEXTMESSAGES. I didn't care because I spammed enter to make the text display instantly, thus removing this sound, but besides it from being completely pointless, I imagine it could be REALLY grating on your ears, should you read slower than a sloth.

Worth pointing out is that all the soundeffects were pure RTP. And while they work, I like mixing things up.

Final Thoughts

While suffering from problems with writing, grammar and some bugs that needs to be sorted out, Glacia is shaping up to be one of those decent jrpgs with balanced gameplay and a very generic cast. But if the potential of the story is worked on, fleshing out a more appropriate surrounding for the mood which is portrayed in the beginning and some focus is given towards leveldesign rather than pretty patches of grass, Glacia could definately see a little float above the bloated masses of it's kin.

If you like a classic jrpg set-up with good balance and if you're tolerant towards grammatical errors, Glacia could be interesting. If not, I'd wait for another release and see if any problems seems to have been adressed.