Summary:

A well-written,twisted tale of engaging political intrigue, Deckiller's Carlsev Saga: Episode I (Version 1.41) is a pretty well-made complete game featuring unique skills to be used in battle, stat boosts through tonics and several optional sidequests.

Overall Score: 3.8/5


Background to Review:

Having started a new gameplay blog in the forum section, It had decided to play this game when coincidentally its developer, Deckiller, PMed me about playing it to get some feedback different than the quotes he chose for his gameplay. Given that he mentioned there it would take from 8 to 10 hours to play it, I thought this would merit a review. So did it live up to the hype of the reviews posted in his gamepage?


Story/Plot/Dialogue:

The game actually starts with a B & W flashback featuring a young soldier named, what else, Deckiller getting shipwrecked in some unknown land. The ship he was riding in crashed due to the Great Current. In trying to hunt for food he passes out and is found by some unseen characters. Flashing forward to the future, twelve years, Deckiller is one of two remaining generals of the army of the apparently isolated kingdom of Carlsav. The other one has defected and is leading a revolt against the tyranny of the King, who paradoxically has given women equal rights, while at the same time hindering technological progress, condoning slavery and executing prisoners sadistically at his whim.

During the assault of the stronghold of the revolting army, the seemingly unexpected occurs. Let’s just say that this is the first of a series of apparently sudden events that revolve around political intrigue that make the story quite a roller coaster ride. The main players in the developing storyline are: the King of Carlsev, the generals from both sides and their closest allies, as well as other actors from lands unknown. Each plot twist and turn you encounter is generally hinted at earlier in the story if you were paying attention. Not to give the whole story away, but at the end of this Chapter you get the most shocking revelation, which while it may explain some of what happened earlier in the game still leaves a shroud of mystery in store for Episode 2.

The game’s dialogue between the characters is well-written and serves to further the political intrigue that occurs within the game as loyalty, truth and lies are hard to distinguish from one another, especially during the many cut scenes that are seen. The most insightful aspect is not the conversations per se but rather the thoughts that the main players have at some points in the game, which somewhat hint at the real motives that drive what they say to others as well as what they end up doing. This last point I have seldom seen in RM RPGs (I recall seen it for the main character in Liberty’s Even Day http://rpgmaker.net/games/1786/ ) and never as effectively as here.

This item of the review is, no doubt, by far the strongest element in the game.

Score: 5/5


Gameplay:

The battles are traditional, front-view, turn-based battles, which are mostly non-random encounters, although, especially outdoors you’ll find some random ones. Battles generally involve 3 party members. Early in the game, the party members have different skills: one with “Essence” (elemental) attacks , one with power attacks and one that with support skills such as scan, which tells you the enemy’s HP and elemental affinity, if any. Later, the party members have quite different skills than earlier parties: one of them can draw magic from enemies that some of the members can use, another one can steal items from enemies and the last one can learn skills from certain enemies that can, for example, hit multiple enemies or cause status ailments. For more about the different characters’ skills see:

http://rpgmaker.net/games/2023/skills/

The diversity of parties used during the game makes the battles interesting and challenging, especially when having to learn to use a new party in battle or dealing with new enemies. There are some battles in which some of the enemies cast a barrier that prevents damage either from physical or elemental attacks, while in others with powerful enemies, a trigger skill or two is/are learned at an opportune time by one of the party members and must be used by them at the right moment to avoid the “Game Over” screen.

While the party members level up as they battle, although only to a certain limit, and can buy, at some points in the game, some gear upgrades, the most important stat boosts (HP, SP, attack, mental) come in the form of tonics that you get from alchemists. Each type of tonic is given in exchange for a combination of 3 battle item drops, which can vary from one alchemist to another. Choosing what tonics to make and what party member to use it on requires good planning since most alchemists have limitations on how many they’ll make. There are also, as expected, healing and curing items. Money is limited and rarely dropped by enemies, but some of the battle item drops can be sold for cash.

The game also offers a diversity of puzzles, varying in difficulty from easy to average, that need to be solved in order to proceed as well as some rewarding optional sidequests and treasures if you are willing to go out of your way and explore. Sometimes you’ll see something in the dungeon that you don’t seem to be able to reach while being there. Well, if you’re patient enough the seemingly unreachable becomes reachable. Also, it is important to talk to everybody you meet to get useful information as well as hints.

Two areas in the gameplay varies significantly are an ice cavern, where, as expected, you have to deal with sliding, and, the desert, where stepping in the wrong place causes you to end up at the start.

Finally, there are crystals for saving, healing, teleporting and fighting chosen groups of enemies. The last ones are particularly useful to level up and gain battle item drops needed to obtain tonics to boost stats.

Score: 4/5


Graphics

The graphics are somewhat limited due to the game being made in RM2k, but it’s obvious that Deckiller has made a nice effort to overcome this limitation. For example, while the sprites of the main characters involved are standard RTPs, the faceset used in the main menu are custom although not necessarily matching. Graphical elements in the different environments in which the game takes place are well laid out and consistent, so that nothing looks out of place. Graphically speaking, I found the desert in the game to be quite unique, since it doesn’t look like any desert I have seen in other RMN games I have played and has some built-in paths and markers to help you along the way.

Score: 3.5/5


Sound:

Most, if not all, of the music is non-RTP and I found enjoyable. The background music in the first half of the game has a militaristic tone to it with lots of percussion, very appropriate to the circumstances (civil war). Once the game shifts to other environments, you get nice ambient background music. Sound effects seemed to be standard RTP. The battle background music is repeated throughout much of the game, but unlike that in many other RM games, I never grew tired of it.

The only problem I found and other players seem to have reported is that sometimes some particular songs will get cut-off while playing, which sounds reminiscent of problems I have found plague most RMXP games when the developer has chosen to use DSAR.

Score: 4/5


Characters:

The title screen of the game gives you a B & W screenshot of the characters that form part of your parties:

http://rpgmaker.net/games/2023/images/9954/

There are also some important NPCs including the King of Carlsev.

Characters in the game have a wide range of strong personalities ranging from psychopath to schemer. Due to the game’s emphasis on political intrigue, there is little room for character development. The dialogue that some of them say is actually what they mean, but more often the real personality is shown through the thoughts that they have. There are a couple of characters that have a sarcastic edge to them. During the game you change your party members several times, making it hard to get emotionally attached to any of them or feel sorry for them when their time is up.

Score: 3.5/5


Other:

I did find the grammar used to be among the better ones I’ve seen in a RM game, with some minor spelling mistakes or typos, but very few compared to most RMN games. A few times, I found text cut off the right side of the text, but not much of it and not often enough to be an annoyance. Also, in scenes where auto-scrolling text was used, I found the scrolling speed to be slightly faster than I would have liked.

I found a couple of bugs which I reported and have been fixed by the developer in the current version: one of them was a game-breaking due to a missing file that’s part of the extended RTP for RM2k and another one prevented you from being able to leave an optional area. In addition to the issue mentioned in the “Sound” section of this review, I am reporting here two additional minor bugs: an enemy called the Clay Wolf had no sprite in battle (although there’s a slight chance this was intentional) and in the Alchemist’s Adobe you can walk inside the walls there if you manage to find your way into one of them.

Finally, after I played the game for just over 10 hours, I got a quick preview of Episode 2, a series of scenes which are hard to make a sense of. Hopefully, some of it becomes clearer once the first demo of it is released shortly after this review has been submitted.

Score: 3/5