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Doesn't run on Sharp X1

  • Cap_H
  • 01/24/2017 12:50 PM
  • 1915 views


It's a bad line. I was trying to be punny, I was trying to write more than 'More than you can see.' It sounds stupid and it would be a premature reveal of a thing I like the best about the game. What is it? It's too early for that.
I tell you, What I don't like about ArchStone, which is a short 'boss rush' jRPG from Gredge109, which was created during this event. It's not a real old game with clunky controls and strange mechanics. To say the truth, it's a very sophisticated and modern game. And it's in English. We can't say that about a vast majority of X1 games.

Story
Marle and Gredge are fighting monsters to get an orb, which happens to be the Archstone. It's simple, with a twist we kind of expect from the beginning. It's like a short episode or a spin-off. There seems to be more behind slightly boring Gredge and courageous Marle. It's like a side mission, where you can fight alongside Gredge, who would be a stationary free healing in the main game. It feels like that at least.
Lines of dialogue are often slightly funny and They generally serve their purpose. They're nothing memorable, tho.

Gameplay
Battles are where the game shines like a well polished gemstone. Archstone is very well balanced and I managed to slay some monsters just a turn before they could defeat me. Skills, which are given us right away without a need to level up, combine well and none of them feels to powerful. Some of them are likely to end up as your favorites, but there is always a chance that you need your other strikes too.
The best thing is that it doesn't end here. The game introduces changed condition, which bring new sets of skills for each characters. The most notable is darkness, which appears several times during the game and gives the party either a short break or an opportunity to deal some major damage. Others are battle specific and always a surprise, when they happen for the first time.
I really enjoyed this and that it stayed balanced, while incorporating several mechanics. It makes long battles more dynamic and dramatic as a new set of skills can lead to a dramatic turn out.
The other thing I like about the gameplay are numbers. They're small and work such us. This is always a lovely bonus.



This map looks nice.



Sprites are enormous.

Graphics
Archstone utilizes a 3-bit palette and It is easy to spot. I love the simplicity. It may be little harsh on eyes sometimes, but Gredge managed to avoid blending of stuff together and other problems you can have with a more than NES retro palette. It has Gredge's signature style either. When you take a swift look on his other projects with custom graphics, you'll notice that this does look quite similar despite the colours.
The best part are monsters, followed by the UI, which is clean and easy to orient in. Tiles are also very nice, but they suffer from weaker mapping. This doesn't concern shapes so much as a strange decision to cutoff rooms in the middle of the screen. It's most annoying on the first map, which shows a seemingly open structure.
The game has no title screen. Just a plain black background.
Overall, the game is an eye-candy for anyone, who likes the style.

Sound
Frankly, I didn't enjoy this part. It doesn't fit the esthetics. Archstone barely has any music and it uses industrial sounding noises instead. They are atmospheric for 5 seconds. After these 5 seconds they just start to be annoying. It wouldn't be so hard to inspire yourself with X1 soundtracks and use something from them. I can imagine, that a proper track would make the game more enjoyable.

Conclusion
Archstone is not a hard game to play or like. It's a hard game to review. It's too short to call it awesome and give it a high score. It's too short to really know. Too short to sit back and enjoy it with a big portion of popcorn. What is in there works and it works well. Especially battles. I can easily imagine a longer game around skills of Gredge and Marle.
It's a game I can recommend, yet I can't rate it with more than 3.5 stars. It shows us some very good design, but it's too short for us to fall for it. I think, that it doesn't need more battles or enemies. Flashing out the world and the story would be enough.
It's a great game to show to someone, who may be interested in your work tpp.
Archstone is a rather mad piece of rock.

Posts

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Wow, thanks so much for the feedback! You make some great points.

Sorry the music was underwhelming! I'll have to work on that in the future. As far as X1 music goes, I'm not sure I know exactly what that sounds like. Would it be easy to make?

Also, I'm thrilled you enjoy the gameplay and commended my graphics! That motivates me to consider doing something like this in the future. Perhaps I could create a full length game in a similar style to this one.



On a separate note, that YouTube video which is linked at the bottom doesn't seem to be pulling up for me. Do you happen to have a link?
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
Video should be working now! It's just a song called Madstone, which happens to have some noice industrial noises in it.

It's little tricky with X1 music. You could have a model with sound board, which sounds very much like PC-88 (It's probably little fancier) or an older model with a beeper, which was quite limited. These were usually models using only 8 colors as later models supported wider palettes.
You can probably imagine Yuzo Koshiro's work for Falcom (Xanadu for example). It think that he returned to the style in Eritrean Odyssey.
Thanks for the advice!

Also, I really enjoyed this part: "It has Gredge's signature style". That made me feel great, I love that my artwork has a cohesive style at this point!
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