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Bloodsh- err Purification!

  • Kylaila
  • 06/03/2017 09:34 AM
  • 1335 views
Virgo vs. the Zodiac is an RPG starring our beloved harsh zealously pure virgo on a marsh to conquer the entire zodiac (which there are 12 in total with herself being one). And with zodiac, we can imagine godlike beings that rule over their own little world and are thousands of years old.
She's here to "purify all evil" and restore the previous order of the "Golden Age", where apparently these zodiacs were not ruling themselves, but were part of something else.

The demo features challenging the first zodiac (a dungeon and workaholic goats included) with roughly 1 and a half hours of playtime.
The combat is gripping, the dialogue refreshingly blunt and amusing while the story is similarly simple. There is a subtle depths to the workings and guiding trains of thought coupled with strong stereotypes that I really adore and enjoy.

Arts and Places

Staged in star constellations, this games takes place in space.
Apparently each zodiac has their own planet or space and rules over it.

Futuristic? Perhaps, but the style definitely is a big change from fancy space ships and laser guns. You have typewriters, zeppelins, samurai swords as well as vast quantities of crates. And of course, quick space travel and portals.
What it does do is to open up the gaming world to different settings scenes, color-schemes and so forth. Sadly while the big-pixeled art is very pretty (especially in the slightly more detailed combat arts!), so far the first dungeon is a little dull and drab with a large emphasis on greys and grey-purple.


Ok. Gotcha.

It makes sense both for the theme and color meaning as our first landing is at Capricorn's dystopian working world. Yet I wonder how pretty and far this art style goes, how much variety can or will be introduced and how meaningful it all gets. If it does.
There is a screenshot showing a different palette, albeit with lots of black/dark brown in it, but not enough to really show some sparks.

The infight models and portraits are well-pixeled, detailed and especially beautiful. It is a little weird you have an all-girls squad so far, but oh well.

There are only a few small nitpicks: right at the gate you can walk over a tree and the level counter under your character portrait on the left has a black line showing up somewhere, as if it wasn't perfectly cropped.

Sound-wise, it is kept to very subtle tones, I really love the confirm/cancel sounds as they are just the right feeling of doing something without being too overbearing, they blend right in.
The jumping sounds a little like wiping a glass window, but in a good way, haha (and yes, you can jump).

The background music is similar, in the starting screen you can listen to a more dramatic piece giving a nice introduction, whereas ingame pieces are very atmospheric, subtle and stay mostly in the background while still being very enjoyable to listen to.
I enjoyed the entire range of the soundtracks, though I found the one track in the desert-y space waste to have a few layers that were too quiet to really notice well. It felt very quiet compared to the rest of the soundtrack.

I mentioned the color meaning, so let's talk about one of the major systems behind this zodiac metaphor/depictions.

The "Zodiac Quality System"

Well, I will talk about the zodiac system for a bit, since while we do know our birth sign perhaps, we usually know little else. It is a guiding thought behind the entire aesthetic, however.

So let's dive in!

The 12 basic signs are proposed to have certain qualities that follow a pattern and are spread across both element (earth, fire, water, air) and the way this element is expressed (mutable, fixed and cardinal).

So for example, taurus and virgo are both earth signs, but taurus is "fixed" so they're stubborn and trying to uphold the status quo whereas virgo is "mutable" and as such can adapt to different situations more easily (but still not as quickly, cause earth).
Lastly we have Capricorn our arch-nemesis in this demo (also earth) being "cardinal" which is active and as such just has to use their power/knowledge for something (here: capitalism, pardon me: Capritalism).

This way of expression is the main focus of this game. (the cardinal mutable thingie there).
These approaches build the foundation for the battle strengths and spell orientation, for the coloring of enemies and environments, as well as any and all choices you encounter (conveniently colored in whatever it is representing).

Which is in this game:

Fixed = Red
Mutable = Green
Cardinal = Purple

According to the general direction we just saw, "red" aka "fixed" alignment type enemies are more of the tanky kind that can break defenses and counter a lot and have brute force to boot (you know, those stubborn ones).
"Green" aka mutable ones work a lot with spells, buffs and debuffs and are all over the board (like casting thorns on you that return damage for a few turns) whereas "Cardinal" are mostly offensive with offensive buffs, cleanse and other neat things.

A choice in the world environment can look like eating a cookie or not, with eating it being a more laid-back flexible approach to life aka "mutable" and not eating it upholding your rules and standards aka "fixed".
I wonder if you could fabricate a cardinal response to it .. making a chocolate cookie cake out of it, perhaps?
What confuses me a little however is that many times after you made such a small choice you can interact with the same object again and are faced with the same choice. Does this change anything? Can you change your mind retroactively? Does it count the last decision or both? I have no way of knowing.

There are a few more details taken up in passing, like certain planets, such as Venus being related to strong love, but this is not made a big topic yet. It likely won't, either. There are a lot of different titles and names at play already and even if mentioned in passing, having to memorize the many titles would be quite the overload.
I feel they are at times a little much to take in - so not having to do that is very welcome.

The focus on one part (these alignment systems) is more than enough to tie this all together.

Writing and World Building

The entire game plays with this - depending on which stat (yes, those alignments are also stats raising defense and attack for the respectively colored attacks) you level up, your dress color changes to reflect the route you are on.
Next the enemy type and dungeon color - remember the grey-purple from earlier - are according to that direction. Our "active" cardinal alignment folks are coffee-driven hyperactive workaholics, yup.
It makes a similarly intuitive system to the usual elemental one, as you can clearly understand and recognize the three big areas and rock paper scissors tactics.
Mutable beats rigid fixed, patient tenacious fixed beats forward-pressing cardinal (and cardinal again mutable).
This makes sense to me and we didn't even have to use elements, nice!
It also gives it a different spin and feel to the abilities and the mixture thereof.

More interestingly, it also gives a general direction to the dungeon inhabitants and the environment they live and work in too.
For example, in our purple environment we also have a few "non-cardinal" folks, especially "fixed" bulky guys that, combat qualities aside, are still driven to work very hard in this world, but clearly do not identify with that drive as much and are rather happy to sleep when they can.
When in comparison, our salary goats boast with their accomplishments (or rebel against the system).

You can choose to meet or not meet certain characters later on depending on your alignment and there is plenty room for different choices along the way.
For example, you can choose to kill or spare characters (or in one case save or leave them alone). An item that was picked up also seems to belong to someone else, so I expected to later be able to properly return it (and have a chat).

This is hinted at and set up so far, but seeing as it is only a demo, this is not yet fully unfolded. So how big the impact of those choices are, I do not know yet.

There are also some flavor text dialogues hidden in the environments that are triggered by interacting with certain objects (like a bookshelf), or moving to a specific location (like a bank to sit down and chat) where you or your protagonist chats with our lovely big cookie Ginger.


My childhood.

The writing style is blunt and straightforward. We are dealing with strong stereotypes here that are surrounded by more mellow characters - like our virgo and her friendly cookie friend. This evens out the conversation flow somewhat while also having a "straight man" that can point out how ridiculous things can get, sometimes. And conveniently ignores how ridiculous the idea of killing everyone virgo doesn't approve of is.

Even the introduction already counterbalanced the hard to agree with quest to "DESTROY HERETICS" of our protagonist by introducing her and this tale by describing it in a negative way.
Her sister introduces us to virgo (which could mean any zodiac speaking here, really, as so far they are all female), and she does not approve of her actions, but enjoys watching her and so she is okay with virgo stepping out.
So it from the get-go feels much more natural to have justified mixed feelings about the conquest, while still anticipating the results of her actions.

There are many more screens I would love to show off than I can, but it all has a light-hearted undertone of everyone not taking themselves too seriously (with the sole exception of our virgo so far), and the world having an absurd clash of ideals and personalities.
Over the course of the demo there seems to be something else waiting in the shadows, and even the little bit presented shows how different each zodiac deals with the situation at hand - be that ignoring it, fighting it, or just wanting to be somewhere else entirely.

Our overworked goat children call this world well-knowingly a dystopian society where everything is allowed if it works in favor of their bigger goal of profit. Without any critique or qualms about it, nor any comment about their involvement.
Our protagonist too is not taken seriously. Already ignored at the gate, shooed around the place, she seriously presses on and does reach her first goal (taking down Capricorn).

It makes for an interesting aesthetic as the art and sound build a subtle enjoyable cohesive experience and the characters - while well playing their role - presenting very different ideals and goals.
As they are taken as clear stereotypes, the different zodiacs are indeed vastly different and show off their unique traits. It also allows for a lot of growth to occur.

One conversation did feel it broke this subtle balance towards the end, but aside from a few quirks here and there, it is consistently solid.


Personally, I found Pisces at the end ignored too harshly, even the feeling abandoned completely ignored. That's quite heartbreaking to see.

It was a little hard to understand virgo somewhat on a personal level and "identify" a little bit, but knowing how harsh n far away her personality is from mine at the same time

Nonetheless the conversation flow following that evened it out.


Combat

Uhhh boy! Yes, it's combat time!

As I mentioned, it is just the right amount of needing to pay attention but not having to worry too much.

First off, there are no random encounters, you talk to various individuals some of which will attack you. Some fights may also be triggered by cutscenes or similar.
I did find the difficulty just right, not difficult (except the end boss fight) but certainly enough to keep your attention. The tutorial also does a great job of introducing the most important features and the game leaves you plenty of items to customize as you see fit.

And I think that is also what a lot of "difficulty" debates miss - difficult or not, it is engaging and enjoyable as you do pay attention to every action you take, even if there are multiple options and choosing a "wrong" or subpar one once will not mean you die instantly. Maybe at specific points that are clearly marked it can, but otherwise not really.

For everyone who does not want to pay attention, there is a stress-free mode that lets you auto-attack your way through the hordes of monsters at your leisure to explore and enjoy the chatting. I really like the inclusion of this. You can also change this at any time.

For everyone else (and our tired folks too), there is a big emphasis on using your shield ability, as blocking them reduces damage not only by 90% (NINETY), but also restores mana that would otherwise need around 5 turns to fully fill up, and on top of that also triggers a counter-attack related to your shield.
Some for example, may reduce a certain stat while dealing damage. Others might heal you, or apply a damage over time ability .. etc.
You can also use this shield "only" every second turn.


The only thing missing is a golden halo around the character to further emphasize how strong this shield is. Wait, isn't this actually how shields work?

As explained above, the abilities you can use are tied to your equipment. All spells are unlocked by equipping various ribbons, shields, boots, weapons and armor (no jewelry here).
Other than boosting base stats, some of them give passive boni (like being immune to confusion), others unlock spells for you to use. These spells usually relate to their alignment and while you cannot change equipment midfight, you can prepare ahead of fights or just keep pushing what you are wearing.

Equipment is fairly expensive and even with the inclusion of a room where you can fight enemies over and over again to grind, you will likely not be able to buy all pieces of equipment.
You will also not need all pieces of equipment.
You will also find equipment throughout the dungeon (or as a special reward for clearing the reward above - strangely you are supposed to choose between two items, but you can just redo the room and select the other one additionally)

What makes this so interesting is that most pieces of equipment are of equal value or worth, but shine situational especially. You will adjust your choices accordingly, and as much as I talked about spells here, the "normal attack" is very strong and a good alternative to said spells. Many times it did more damage than my spells did (but it also had no debuffs etc to apply).
A lot of buffs and debuffs are in place and as our value for the alignment counts as both offense and defense, reducing these stats means your enemies will take a lot more damage damage while it is applied (if you use the same type of "elemental" attack of course).

Typically, mana is drained by one spell, so you alternate between blocking and casting/attacking. This gives you a basic pattern, but you are often also encouraged to keep attacking to quickly finish enemies off. And some spells also buff you only for the next turn, so blocking would then waste this buff.

In short - there is a lot to optimize and tinker with for your personal use, and it I find it really engaging and fun. I did keep to an early set quite a while because I was saving money up for an expensive ribbon (the other shields costed 50, this 260), but I was able to hold up just fine with what I could find. For a few "fixed" enemies I noticed how ill-suited my spell direction was and had to change (as I was focused on what is weak on them, AND had little of the fixed stat so I was weak both in offense and defense).

Most fights aren't difficult, but the last boss really did push the system and have certain changing points you can remember and anticipate.
At some point she will cast a companion, and once you destroy it, she will unleash very powerful spells. So if you kill said companion while you are wounded, you are likely not gonna make it.
I had to redo the last boss a number of times and while it WAS right after a long cutscene, the game does have the option to immediately redo the fight which I am very happy about (no penalties whatsoever). There were also certain spells I realized I could use really well (blind ftw).
You can also save everywhere. THANK YOU.

Now lastly, there are very few healing items you can use infight. There are three basic healing items that also buff one alignment/stat (tea, sugarfree lemonade and coffee). There is also soap and wine to restore mana and cleanse.
You do not heal after fights unless you level up, and so you are granted a quick button to drink after a fight while you explore and always have a neat display of how many you are carrying around.
You also can only hold up to 5 of each of them at any point.
All these items are potent and I like that they scale up (how much HP is restored) as you level up, so you will not have items that are not worth using anymore later on.

There are a few active items as well (confusion) but I have not used them at all, to be perfectly honest.
I like that you are encouraged to make use of your items though, and that there is no drawback to doing so. They are very cheap and you find more than enough around the map.


All in All:

I think this is a really fun, lighthearted and engaging game.
I really enjoyed playing it, though I want a break from zodiac stereotypes for a while hahaha (yes, I think a lot when I play games).

I am excited to see where this goes and how the characters develop!
I can wholeheartedly recommend Virgo vs. the Zodiac based on what I have played so far.