LODEBAR'S PROFILE

author=Roy
I have the COWL and the ROYAL RING but didnt catch where I need to go next.

Blind can be cured by Eye Drops. I am considering making it wear of after each battle.
Buffs stack.

You will be forced to go through the Forest of Despair to progress the game at one point, and I would not recommend going there at all before that. But if you wanna win just one battle, maybe around level 10?

I thought the Date Updated was much more recent than that, but I guess you posting here counts as an update. Oh well. Pretty great game regardless, you can rest on your laurels.

Final score: 91/100

Interesting concept. But most battles feel like they last too long, or you have to go all out with the FP-heavy things and then it becomes a game of using that thing over and over and replenishing FP to stand a chance. Didn't find much use for the status moves (except Buddha seemed to sleep a lot) and I didn't get a good grip on what the Baffled status did.
It's also extremely dumb and unfair that the "final boss" (first of three) can use a move that wipes out the whole party in one shot. Had to redo the battle three times until he didn't use it. The other two I knocked out on my first try.

There were some typos, I didn't keep track, but Socrates was spelled Socartes once in the beginning. That's forgivable. What isn't forgivable is listing music in any format that isn't Artist - Title. The end credits scroll hit me in my pet peeve weak spot.

I realize this is an old game and no one might read what I write here, but I gotta say this; The self-closing door to Nina's room in the hideout will lock you inside the room forever. You can't exit. I had to reload from my previous save.

I was thinking I'd beat the game and write a review since I'm a huge BoF fan, but I don't know if I'll make it. The bad English I can forgive. The pauses in dialog, annoying as they are, I might not hold against it. But mixing 8-bit sprites with the RTP (mutant boss fight) is really ugly. And there are other graphical problems too. The Official soldiers or whatever have a black outline in one frame of the sprite but not all of them. Character portraits are misaligned so that the bottom row of pixels of the portrait in-game is from the top row of pixels from another portrait. And the battle graphics for the mercenaries on the mountain are beyond terrible.

If I can overlook the graphics too... well, I still wouldn't like it as a BoF game. I in no way feel like I'm playing a BoF game when in the second town, with asphalt and chainlink fences and fire hydrants and sewers. And don't say Dragon Quarter, because that game went all out with it and didn't start you off in a generic medieval village.

But if I think of it as a non-BoF RPG and judge it on its own term with its presentation, what then? Well, I'd complain about the lack of direction. Meeting Nina in the bar and everything after that had nothing to do with the goal of meeting master Zen... which I already did, and then he went away and there was nothing to indicate what I should do. Maybe I like overly linear games.

To the games credit, the cutscenes so far have been scripted nicely. I haven't tried fishing yet either, but good effort on even making a minigame.

I guess I accidentally wrote a mini-review here. Oops. All I wanted to say is, don't go into Nina's room after the first time.