Upon the Graveyard of Humanity

I will be honest here, I didn’t get very far in this game, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. This was a game that had tremendous potential to be awesome based on the premise, but it has sadly fallen far short of that goal.

Far, far short.

You begin the game as Lydia, a vampire who has devoted her eternal existence to annihilating the human race because of how horrible her life was as a mortal. She accomplishes this by posing as a harmless young apprentice to a kindly old wizard so that she can steal his research and inventions for her own use. Shortly after the game begins, this plan backfires in spectacular fashion and Lydia goes into hiding, plotting her revenge until meeting a stranger in the woods …

Balance 1/5:

Your first action in the game is to use your vast vampiric powers to demolish an Archmage in a few shots. After this, your supposedly powerful vampire protagonist is then easily outclassed by the likes of rats and birds in the wilderness. What’s worse, the maps are loaded with examinable objects that just trigger fights with huge numbers of enemies from which you cannot escape. These are annoying and simply trick the player into killing themselves over and over again. There doesn’t seem to be any purpose behind them.
They're just bait to lure the player into a battle they're almost sure to lose.

Aside from these problems, battles themselves are standard slash fests with little strategy involved. Tansforming into an awesome vampire lord and annihilating them with a thought would at least be amusing, but you can't do that either. And why not? The game makes it clear that Lyida only assumes her weak human form to blend in with other humans, yet she apparently would rather get eaten alive by vermin than reveal her true form to them. When a character has abilities at their disposal that they aren't using for nonsensical reasons, even at risk of their own death, it's annoying to say the least.

Level-Design N/A:

Well… based on the first area I started getting excited about some of the level design. Lots of details about the environments and even a few tantilizing hints about future plot events. It even managed to use lighting in a relatively decent way. Combat was boring but maybe the levels will make up for it! But then I got here...



What a lovely forest…


This sort of glaring graphical flaw makes evaluating the design of levels rather pointless. There were good things, however, such as the great deal of description of many environmental objects, which I appreciate, as well as the beginning of a hidden item quest that could probably keep the player searching for quite some time. The layout of levels NOT obstructed by unually graphic errors were at least functional. However, seeing such a blatant graphical oversight is enough to make most people stop playing right there.

Characters 3/5:

Basically in this game you assume the role of a powerful vampire who manipulates all the people around her on her ultimate quest to destroy the human race. Honestly, this premise and this character have enormous potential; Lydia’s smugness and the mind games she and her opponents play on each other have great entertainment values. Unfortunately she trapped in a demo so weak and broken that she is not given any chance.

There is a second playable character as well, a girl of elven descent who apparently wants to be a jester of some sort, who is hinted to loathe scoiety's expectations of her, perhaps making her a mirror to Lydia. However I did not get far enough to see this relationship develop before the infuriating encounters made me quit.

The dialogue is sometimes awkward and contains odd grammatical flaws as well.

Story 2/5:

The basic narrative of vampires and humans has been repeated ad infinitum from both human and vampire perspectives, and so far this game seems like little more than a Masquerade fanfic. Lydia is an interesting enough protagonist to take this story to different places than we’ve seen before, and I hope to see it go in that direction, but its just far too soon to tell.

Music and Sound 2.5/5:

Mostly VX RTP here. Most of the tracks are at least appropriate but nothing amazing.

Overall 1/5:

This game has a pretty fascinating premise and could be interesting one day, but right now it’s such a garbled mess that it is barely playable. Perhaps one day it will reach a better state and be playable, but until then it is too frustrating for even me to play it.