Intro

"Dream Quest: Knight and Princess" is a short, turn-based RPG developed by unity and Ebeth using RPG Maker VX Ace for the Retromania Event. This event was held in honor of RMN's 10th birthday and tasked developers with creating a retro inspired game over 10 days. Albeit this review will be looking at the polished version of this game that was meant to deal with a few balance issues as well as add a few small bits of content. Though not enough to really justify a second or third playthrough as it were. Albeit there is at least one minor bug that still exists in the polished version.

Minor Bug



If you reenter Princess Isela's cell after you've been challenged by the The Dark Lord Leirwrex it will cause the game to slightly reset back in time before said challenges is issued. Though why this occur is a technical issue I'm sure someone else would be better equipped to explain. At any rate this doesn't cause the game to become unbeatable or anything. And I imagine a lot of people have beaten this game without ever finding this error. So it's probably not even worth going back to fix. After all, this isn't a game breaking error like the one I found in "Ascent - The Story of the World-Binding Tower". Though arguably that error isn't worth fixing either since you have to go out of your way to cause it.

Story

You play as Gwyn, a knight and lover of Princess Isela, whose on a quest to rescue the princess from a dark lord. A plot element that is both retro and still common in even modern games since it's a simple plot line to build around. It also makes for a compelling if simple story is done well since it creates some instant drama when someone's significant other is kidnapped. At the same time this game is pretty short so we really don't learn that much about Gwyn or Isela in my opinion. At least not enough to make this a particularly compelling game in my opinion, but I've played through this game three times at this point since I kept forgetting to sit down and write a review afterwards. So the amount of times I've seen everything in this game might be starting to shift my opinions against the game. Sort of like how you can't sit down and watch something like "Major League" multiple times in a row since you start to memorize all of the jokes which causes them to fall flat after a while.

Gameplay

On the gameplay side of things the game is a pretty basic turn-based RPG with random encounters. In fact, this game is so basic it's hard to come up with anything to say about the underlying combat system that wouldn't be obvious such as enemies having elemental weaknesses. In all honesty the only interesting thing about the combat system in this game is that the game has four difficulty settings though I'd recommend sticking to normal at the highest. This is because the final boss is a damage sponge that takes a lot more time and resources to defeat than you'd probably expect. So much so that I imagine most players would find the amount of grinding needed to defeat the final boss on hard or very hard more to be extremely tedious.

On a more positive note if you fight carelessly against certain bosses in this game you will get punished for it. A good example of this is you'll probably lose the second to last boss fight if you decide to simply spam Gwyn's burst spell in order to deal with the candle. This is because such a method of attack will both consume a lot of resources and relies on the spray and pray method of combat. And if there's one thing I've learned to avoid over the years from playing strategy games and turn-based RPGs is the last thing you want to rely on in a touch battle is luck. After all, you never known when the gods and goddess of RNG might decide to royally screw you if your depending on them.

Graphics

Graphically the game uses entirely custom assets as far as I can tell which have a rather simplistic, but cute look to them. Though considering how many of the enemies look like snacks it's probably a good thing this game is short since it was starting to make me a ted peckish.

Sound

As far as I'm aware the game doesn't use any music from the RTP. If anything it seems to be drawing on older and more retro sounding music of a bygone era. And considering one of the contributors of note for the music is "The NES". I'm guessing a lot of the background music and sound effects were ripped from NES games.

Conclusion

"Dream Quest: Knight and Princess" is a pretty basic in both it's storytelling and mechanics. So much so that this game definitely catches the feel of a retro game though if that's something you actually want or not is a matter of personal taste. After all, there's a reason people have been moving more towards touch encounters and real0time combat systems over the years. And while I'm a fan of these older games. I'll also admit this game seems to be missing a certain spark to be a truly great old school style game, but since this is still an event game at it's core I've got to grade this one on a bit of a sliding scale.