These are my loose impressions of the demo. It’s very short so I made my rating N/A because of that.

The first things that come to your mind about this game when you start it up, is the graphics, the music, and the presentation just blow you away. The game gives off a very Legend of Zelda inspired type feel, but in a very dark way. The music happens to be tracks by Apocalyptica, which is by far probably one of the best non vocal bands of all time. No question about it, the game really sucks you in.

There’s not much of a story, because it’s not even clear what’s going on. In the start of the demo you’re said to go to the town, and that’s it. I understand it’s a demo but that’s all there is. The characters you talk to have bland and emotionless dialogue, and there’s not much to say beyond that.

Before I begin on the game-play I’d just like to say that there have been a lot of action RPGs on the rise lately and frankly, well, none of them were good at all. Rm2k/3 is the worst platform to develop such a genre. It’s very hard to establish hit detection let alone get to the point of actually making the game intense. That said, this game does a good job at getting the basic mechanics down, HOWEVER, the actual fun seems to be missing. The beginning monsters you encounter can be killed in one or two hits, fine. Simple monsters at the beginning, no big reflexes involved here. However when you encounter the first spider boss, well, it’s just the same, stay in one corner, mash the X button.

This is exactly what’s missing in all action games for rm2k/3: actual variety and fun in the game-play. In all professional action games, there is some kind of mechanic that keeps the player from button mashing on the attack button over and over, even some beat-em up games go by this. It is not impossible to establish varied action game-play in rm2k/3, but it is very hard to do so. If AOE can somehow jump over this fence, along with his killer graphics, I think he might very well shake the RM community as we know it.

To conclude, AOE does not need to worry about presentation or even the story (which I think needs to be less vague), but rather the actual game-play, if he is to improve this game.