Mokensen: The Swordsman

Mokensen is a traditional rpg, medium length, and it's great. I beat 99% of the game in one sitting, because I just couldn't put it down. I had to leave the 1% (it was literally just the final boss, and the two minibosses beforehand) to today, but I'm still happy to say that theg game had me very intrigued and that I really enjoyed my time with it.

Mostly.

You see, Mokensen is a very nice game, but it's held back by a few issues, and it's sad because I was really hoping to increase the rating of the game up a notch by giving it four stars, but I just can't.

Before I get on to what ruined the game, I'll start with the positives. The visuals will be the first thing I talk about, as per usual.

The game was actually pretty good looking. It's mostly RTP mixed with Mack tiles, but it gets the job done well - not to mention, there's actually some very nice mapping in there. Yes, there's a few things about maps that we a tad off. For example, often how straight the cliffs were, especially in the early areas. There was also little to no elevation making things look flat.

There's also some non-mapping wise graphical issues I had here and there. For one, the bridges in the first forest were above my party members but below me, which looked very weird. I also wasn't particularly fond of the battlebacks, just because they usually looked nothing like where you were actually battling, and did not really fit the overall style of the game.

Either way, it was a visually pleasing game to me, with the towns, especially.

The soundtrack itself wasn't anything amazing. There were a few boss themes near the end that basically made my ears bleed, and there wasn't much else that really stood out or anything either.



My problems began within the gameplay aspect of things. It's not a particularly frustrating game, but there were some seriously annoying bits around.

It's mostly your classic rpg stuff. You explore dungeons, battle enemies, and do fetch quests. I personally did not mind this. What I did mind, however, was some absolute bullshit thrown in here and there.

The first is the grinding quests. There's two quests in the game where you have to defeat a bunch of enemies to get something they drop and then to proceed. The items aren't even guaranteed drops, so even though, for example, in the first one, you need 10 snake pelts, you could have to fight up beyond 50 if you're really unlucky. You might just have to fight forever if you're that unlucky.

The random encounters, for once in a game, I actually didn't mind all to much. The encounter rate wasn't all that high so you got to explore freely without having to worry about running into enemies every step for the most part. For the most part. I did find it annoying how you were so likely to fail escaping, especially in the second half when I only battled enemies for funsies as the rewards for defeating them generally didn't do shit.

And remember when I said ''for the most part''? And then I said it again? Yeah, it got very annoying in that one dungeon. Oh god, that one dungeon. It single handedly most of the gameplay experience for me. For one, it's impossible to leave it and save or heal. The encounter rate is ridiculously high, and it's basically one huge maze where you have to continiously backtrack, causing you to run into so many enemies.

On with the battles, it's worth mentioning here that the game was very un balanced. I did have trouble with a few enemies here and there, but after like the first two dungeons, the game gets ridiculously easy. The only time I remember dying after that point is a few times in that one dungeon, and that was only because I tried escaping instead of battling, but failed almost all the time and got wrecked by one troop (that was sadly very common) in particular.



But my main problem with the battles wasn't that they were un balanced or that they were super easy, my main problem with the battles was that some of them reaaaaaaaaally dragged. A lot of the late games bosses just had a little too much hp, making them very repetitive and long. And considering the game is still super easy, you're mostly just gonna sit there doing everything perfectly and still spending five to ten whole minutes on defeating any one boss.

While the dungeon design is generally good there are a few bad ones in the bunch too. Yeah, I'm referring to that one dungeon, following suite with the italics and crytpicness. The cave you got to after the ship wasn't great either, but wasn't really too bad.

The story was decent. Very trope-y, as I said, and very easy to predict at times due to that, but it got the job done. I did not expect to find myself caring for the characters at all, but I actually really liked some of them. Rowen and Edgar were easily my favorites as the 'cool dudes' of the game, Rowen more so. Even from the start, I was really hoping to get to stick around with them because they were very fun! I also ended up liking Naomi, Gwen, and Landon. Violet and Joseph, Ken and Victoria were sort of just... there. They weren't really given much screen time at all. Victoria, especially, just felt like some super random girl who had absolutely no relevance to the story but ended up becoming a party member anyway.

And the protagonist... well, can't say I was really a fan of him.



The end twist was also pretty decent. I can't say it was bad, but I was also not really shocked in any way

The game was generally pretty well polished, though with a few passability bugs here and there, as well as one cutscene you could repeat endlessly (if you went back to the ruined town after getting to the port). It also crashed a few times for me, which was a bit annoying because I did lose some progress at some of these times. Well, those were the classic rpg maker clashes giving you an error message. What was more interesting is that the game actually stopped responding a few times as I was playing it. It's strange, an rpg maker game has never done this on my computer before, and it seemed to happen at random (it happened 2-3 times). Maybe it's just VX, and I admit I do not play all that many games in that one, so I'm not sure if it's a common thing in the engine's games.

It's a shame, really, because the game could've been really great if not for those few issues.

The ending leaves you off on a cliffhanger, teasing a very obvious planned sequel. Luckily, that's out and released so I can see what happens nex- oh wait.



I really hope the developer decides to this one day. I'd still love to play it, given that if doesn't have some of the frustrating gameplay elements this one did. I give it three and a half sneks out of five sneks.