Landy Land

Landy Land is a game, but it's also the name of the protagonist, that is Landyssa, but known as... you can guess it, Landy!
Landy is the daughter of a valiant warrior, Randy, the heroine of this cute and short fantasy game made by Healy, even if "heroine" is not a good term to describe Landy, since she is rather brash and sometimes roguish, a troublemaker, anyway she's also a skilled combatant that will fight the monsters that almost destroyed her village. The leader of these creatures seems to be none other than Dandy, her brother, but this does not stop her to look for revenge and save the realm from his deranged relative. Uhm yes, more or less!

Landy(ssa) is a fighter, but, as every other jrpg taught us, the fighter is always joined by other friends with different skills that can support him/her, and this game makes no exception. The other party members are Mandy Madison, a healer and good friend of Landy, and Sandy Seltani, a sorceress with a mysterious past that you may or may not learn during the game!


This game may have almost no story, but has so many weird things happening!

This game is a short, lighthearted and parodistic jrpg with one village and three dungeons with random encounters, plus boss encounters that can be optional or mandatory. Apparently nothing new, but is this the case?
Well for what concerns the combat system... yes! The three characters are rather different, for example Landy is the best warrior of the team and has also some nice abilities like special attacks and a healing spell, but she has so few energy points that she cannot use them a lot! Instead Sandy, being a magic user, has a ton of mana to cast elemental spells, and when she levels up she can also learn some powerful ones that attacks all enemies. Mandy is probably the weakest team member, a mediocre attacker but at least her healing skills make her a useful member of the team.

Enemies have skills too: some may put your characters to sleep, other may poison them, luckily there are some nice artifacts that can protect from these statuses. You can also flee from combat rather easily, and loot is quite generous, I never had to go back to the village to restock, well I did just to see if I could upgrade weapons and armors, but I found the game rather easy, maybe even easier as the characters earned some levels and became stronger.
Oh, and you can also save everywhere, so remember to do that and you won't have to worry too much, there are also some healing spots that are often (not always) placed before boss encounters, so use them and take them as warnings.


Nah, I think I will examine these AND all the other barrels in this game!

Ok, so combat is ok, decent, mediocre maybe, but this is not the strong point nor the focus of the game: this is a parody and it's all about a wacky story that's an excuse for wacky dialogues and situations. Some of these are ok, others are brilliant. A recurring joke is when you check every barrel and cointainer for loot and you will notice Mandy being annoyed by this behaviour. Also if you try to perform some... uhm villanous act (well we know that in these games the hero often searches peasants houses for loot! It's normal!), anyway every interaction will lead to something... maybe just a funny commentary, or maybe loot! Try that!

Graphics and mapping are ok: there's a used of both RTPs and White Screw resources (both tiles and charsets, while monsters are the classical Rm2k3 kind) but they merge rather well (even if the maps where the White Screw chipsets are used looks slightly better). There are not overly spacious locations, and you will always know your direction, plus there are a couple of extra locations that aren't exactly hidden, but deviates from the main path to the villain lair, anyway these place are good to find some extra loot and more humorous dialogues (that includes some informations about the characters and world). So check them out!


Look who's here! Will you find the developer in the game?

Final Verdict
Despite the apparent "average" look of the graphics, Landy Land is a short but enjoyable adventure that took me... some time to complete! Ok, well I think it was less than two hours but more than one! There are some really brilliant parts (I liked the abandoned church, the skeleton bosses and the surprise demons for different reasons), and others that are a bit annoying (the random encounters, and the tedious sequence of unavoidable combat encounters before the final boss), but in the end my final experience was positive, because it's a short and parodistic that has no real bugs or issues. Yes, it may be cheesy and a bit rushed in some parts, anyway it was a pleasant little trip with its likeable protagonists, simple gameplay and easy difficulty.

Even if the game hints at new adventures (well yes, some parts of the map are visible but not visitable) it ends exactly when I expected, and that's ok! This won't be an epic great game with many minigames and original graphics and features, but it's a classic lighthearted and funny little rm2k3 game!