I am going to come out and say it. I am not a big fan of this game. It does some things decently. But, it so incredibly horribly written, glitchy, and unpolished that it makes playing through the game to the end a chore. Which is a shame because at times it has some great atmosphere and some decent music.

With that said, on to the review.

Story

I played this game to the end and I still have almost no idea what was going on because the dialog and conversations made absolutely no sense. There is grammar and spelling errors in nearly every line of dialog in this game. I have a feeling that English is not the creator's first language because it almost feels like the game was originally in another language. Then, translated this game by plugging in each sentence into google translate. And if so, I would highly recommend getting a native english speaker to write for your game. It would GREATLY improve the experience. I actually found myself skipping through most of the dialog. I almost NEVER do that.

From what I could gather. The game is pretty much about 4 students who start up school, get attacked by monsters and team up to find out what evil is terrifying the school. Characters were mostly forgettable and there was nothing about the story that really stuck in my mind after playing it.


Mr. Brick you silver-tongued devil

Gameplay

Oh, where to begin.

First off for some reason the game pretty much forces you to recycle for about 1 hour to even stand a chance at winning a battle. See, there is a recycling bin in town that if you press confirm on it your character recycles a couple bottles and then gets 5 bottles they can sell for money and 500 xp. Which is ridiculous because battles at the start only give about 80-100 experience per battle and until you equip at least halfway decent armor you will get one-shotted by even the most basic of enemies. So, my first half an hour or so of the game was be spent pressing confirm over an over again on the recycling bin until Odile was up to a decent level and I was able to buy some decent equipment.

Then, when I got my other characters they were all level one. So, I had to do the same thing over again for another hour or so until everyone was equipped well enough to survive the starting area's battles. Then, enemies would be doing 0 damage to my team. Making the game incredibly easy until you ran into the next area with the next set of impossibly difficult enemies. Where you would need to recycle a little more to level up to stand a chance against them. You could fight some battles to level up. But, they are slow moving and tedious. And why do that when you can get much more experience by simply pressing the confirm button and waiting 5 seconds.

One upside of the game is that it does feature an ATB system. Which is nice. But, a lot of the battle skills do not work properly or are near useless when a normal attack will do 3 times the damage for no cost. Also, the battle difficulty is all over the place. There is no happy medium. Like the game was not really playtested at all.


Be prepared to recycle. You will be doing a lot of it if you don't want to be one-shotted in Nightmare School.

Graphics and Music

One thing I did like about the game was the graphics and music. It does look like most of the game was made with basic RTP. But, the maps all look pretty good and I liked most of the music in the game. It really lent itself to the atmosphere. I especially liked the music used in the shopping areas of the game.

The enemy battle sprites looked pretty good too. Though they kind of conflicted with the character models that were used for the characters in battle IMO. But, that is just a minor compaint.

Pros:

Like the Shop Music
I like the ability to use a mouse to move around. Very responsive. And the fact that the game slightly highlights where you click is a nice touch.
Map designs are consistently decent. Arrows that show the different exits on the maps blend in very well.
Pretty good atmosphere at times
ATB Battle system

Cons:

Horrible Writing-English is not the creators first language??
Spelling and grammar errors everywhere like someone just put every line through google translate
Boring Item Names and Descriptions-Sword 1, Sword 2, Sword 3
Recycling Bin for free XP and money??? Why???
Difficulty is all over the place. Impossibly hard to laughably easy.
Did they really need to use Persona music for the night club area?
Some battle skills are not implemented correctly. Bone Dry is suppose to drain all enemies but instead drain all allies. Cure doesn't work correctly. Etc.
My game couldn't continue for about 3 minutes because an NPC walked in front of me while recycling
Very glitchy and unpolished.
Game froze during battle a few times.
Beat the first battle, but was suppose to die

Overall

Nightmare School is IMO a slightly subpar RPG maker game with some decent atmosphere and a lot of potential. But is, at the present time, too glitchy, unbalanced, and badly written to get my personal recommendation. With a little more balancing, a re-written story, and a lot of polishing though. I can see a good game underneath just waiting to be unleashed.