SAM'S PROFILE

Most people look down on most fangames and commonly taunt people for being unable to come up with their own universe - however, GamingW are currently having a fangame making competition and everyone's gone nuts for it, saying they can finally make their dream fangames without being looked down upon. Some of their ideas are pretty kickass too!

So, why is it people tend to disregard fangames?

Thanks for the review man =)
I'm glad you enjoyed the way the plot was put forward, and had fun with the game. The graphics tend to be a controversial issue, some people are saying they work really well, others say they really don't suit the setting.

There's a sequel on the way, and I'm hoping you'll like that just as much. I've not shown anything from the sequel yet as I'm trying to keep everything secret until near it's demo release.

Imma jump in again with my two pennies. I, personally, don't see a problem with the community as a whole. Yes, I tend not to post on GW so much, because the members there have started trying to be something they never were - funny.

The old timers of the community with experience in RM2k3 can have a somewhat elitist attitude and do indeed refuse to move on from 2k3, but they're happy producing kickass games in 2k3, whether everyone wants to play them or not.

If members choose to move to another engine, such as Game Maker, XP, VX or even C, then that's their choice. I don't think anyone should be trying to force new engines on people who just aren't interested. Craze, this means you, though you're admittedly not the only one. If we want to change, we'll change, but for now, we're very happy as we are.

People outside the RPG Maker community do look down on us, that's true. I wonder if any of us really care though? As a 360 owner I have a tendancy to look down on PS3s due to their lack of games, doesn't mean I'm right. And yes, I have played PS3, one of my old housemates had one. Even when I see him now he admits he plays the XBox a whole lot more than the PS3.

Back on topic, I like the members here, I honestly do. Usually there's some people I really hate and cannot stand, but I don't get that here. I also don't get the feeling that there are exclusive circles. Everyone seems willing to talk to, help, and give feedback to everyone else. Something I've not seen before.

Yes, there are one or two personal grudges, but nothing major. It rarely spills onto the forums and recent cases, such as Azn vs Asa didn't even cause any commotion aside from one topic.

I think the community's doing fine, and you'll only find fault by nitpicking and looking quite hard for them.

Fenrir: First Operation
Download Here
Download with RTP Here

Well Max, hpefully you won't have to wait too long. Just finished reviewing Ethereal Dreams.

Here we go!

Ethereal Dreams - Racheal



Ethereal Dreams, by Dragonfly Studios is one of very few RPG Maker XP games I've ever played. I tend to find XP games to be somewhat of a rarity as whilst the engine is technically superior to 2k3, there's less in the way of premade resources for it. Despite an active scripting community.

This is where Ethereal Dreams stands out. It immediately negates that issue by being made with completely custom graphics! Yes, they are built from a popular template, if I'm not mistaken they're Half Kaizer style, but the incredible amount of work making all these characters and maps must have taken is an achievement in itself. Even the face and battle images are hand drawn (some resembling Tite Kubo's style - particularly Darin and Phylip's faces).



They're very well made custom graphics at that. Sometimes, when people scream about their game being made with custom graphics, you quickly find that although the graphics may be original - the authour just can't sprite. This is one of the first instances since Wilfred the Hero where I've been truly impressed by someone's own graphics, in particular the maps.

Yes, yes, it looks pretty. But how does it play?

It's often true that game's sporting great graphics are usually hiding shoddy gameplay behind them. Countless times you'll play a game that looks fantastic yet can't shake the feeling those looks are just distracting you from judging the actual game.

For this reason, I've said my piece about the graphics first. By getting it straight out of the way, right off the bat, I'm free to talk about the characters, narrative, world, and most importantly, gameplay of this well crafted game.

We'll start with our heroes. You spend the game controlling Darin, a Dragon Knight who seems to call himself Sir to impress women. He's a drunkard, and a womaniser. He's also quite the criminal. He has the same naive lovability that you'd see in anime characters such as Son Goku or Monkey D Luffy, along with the slick and carefree attitude of Spike Spiegel or even Peter Parker.



Along with him you have Phylip, a centaur, as well as the group's voice of reason. This voice is often drowned out, but without him constantly trying to bring Darin back down to Earth I don't think I could have stomached all of the narrative. Between Darin's hung over, illegal, and mischevious, often patronising, antics and Rya's (who I'll get to in a moment) unbelievable naivety, innocence and faith in people, the game heavily relies on Phylip's character to root everything down. If it weren't for him, it'd be a floaty, over-the-top, anime styled game and irritate me in the same way that Excel Saga and Puni Puni Poemy do. As it stands, he turns said irritations into light comedy.

Ryaena is Darin's adopted daughter and the third member of your team. She's in tune with nature, and is willing to give anybody a second chance. She constantly goes along with her father's misadventures, believing he's doing the right thing. Again, if Phylip weren't constantly reminding her how things really are it would have grown old, fast. Thankfully, she does show a lot of signs of knowing her father is usually wrong, and even seems to get fed up with him from time to time.

You'll also meet a woman called Kix on your travels, but for the sake of spoilers, we won't mention her just yet.

Yes, yes, but how does it play?!

Starting you off in a well crafted, easy to navigate, yet still interesting to explore, town (that was a mouthful, I know), the game opens with your main character Darin being drunk, and getting lectured. The game opens as it intends to go on, light, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, humour. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm sure we're all tired of having emotional characters drone on about their struggles and the history of their world for three hours.



Darin's moral imbalance quickly shows when you're given the option to steal a teddy from a room at the inn. I chose not to, so I've yet to see if it has any reprucussions. The first quest of the game is to find a specific mushroom to cure Darin's hangover. Whilst it's not gripping, and far from epic, it is a good enough excuse to get you out and adventuring.

This is where the game falters a little. You wind up walking around a forest which seemingly only has a basic slime as an enemy. The forest, in places, feels somewhat square and unnatural. The paths to extra items and the paths to your goal are blindingly obvious, you can usually tell which path leads where instinctively. The game does get a little bland here, as you literally stroll through a forest, taking down an inconvenient slime every now and then just looking for a mushroom.

This is when I was most disappointed with the game. After a save point that restored all my health, I was ready to fight a boss, hoping it'd redeem my earlier enthusiasm for the game. The boss turned out to be a slime with the mushroom in it's head. It had slightly more HP, a unique two part attack called Inhale and Exhale respectively, as well as two cronies it could revive. So why did it not feel like a boss fight? Why could I just throw my strongest attacks at it until it died? It's partly due to it simply being another slime with the mushroom stuck in it's head, but that battle was really missing something and that entire first dungeon felt like a major letdown.

Yes, Darin's hangover played a part, forcing him to skip his turn now and then, but it was the only nice touch I could find.



Fortunately, the second dungeon really picked things up again for me. After gaining access to the world map (I love world maps - more games should have them), you head to an island prison to bust out your purple dragon Kane. Kane was impounded in the prison after you were caught riding him under the influence. I'm not kidding.

It's here you meet Kix, and also here that the game starts to show some real strength. Beyond it's graphics, the gameplay really starts to feel solid and well made. There are a lot of little things that really made breaking the dragon out of prison an enjoyable experience.

For starters, the guards on patrol have a field of hearing and vision, most of them can be avoided (unless, like me, you wanted to level up) so the player won't be overwhelmed if they're low on HP.

Secondly, and this is only a small thing but I was rather impressed by it. There are both male and female guards! Gender equality in RMXP is here.



Third, there's a man's diary you can read which reveals a way to skip a large portion of the game. You drop a key down a grate and into a pool of water downstairs. Usually you'd throw a switch to drain the water and the key would diappear down the plug hole, forcing you to explore further down, however, if you read the diary first it informs of another switch which drains the water without opening said plug hole. This was an amazing addition that really got me excited about what this game was trying to do. It truly was a matter of rewarding the player for exploring the game world.

The dungeon had a much better layout than the forest, it seems Dragonfly Studios are a lot better at making man made areas than natural environments. The enemies were more engaging to fight and it had a great atmosphere about it.

Having said that, the dungeon had it's downsides as well. The main one is that the head guard and boss of the prison, much like the previous boss, felt too much like a regular enemy. There was no drama involved, and he went down very quickly and easily.



The other one is how it moved the plot along. You're busting a dragon out of prison, and there's a ton of possibilities as to where things could go afterwards. As it turns out, you can't ride on him to fly around, and all he really seems to do is destroy a log that's in your way shortly after you leave the prison. Also, whilst in the prison, you also free a woman known as Kix. She then requests for you to escort her home, a proposal which womanising Darin quickly jumps at, not realising there's something extremely suspicious about this woman.

My problem is that freeing Kix is initially shown to be a choice. I can't help but think that if Darin hadn't freed Kix, the adventure would have ended there. He's cured his hangover and gotten his dragon back which was all he ever set out to do. Kix feels like she's forcefully extending the plot, rather than being integral to it.

Also, when you free Kane, there's no final boss. The head guard was the final boss of that dungeon and you meet him half way through it. It was horribly anti-climatic. To add to this, all you do afterwards is walk through a short patch of forest to a log covered with Dragon's Bane, so Kane can't move it. You recieve something to remove the Bane very shortly after in another cutscene, and the log's broken, taking you straight to the next town. The only reason that log was there was to stop you going to the next town before rescuing Kane. I can appreciate that, and the Dragon's Bane seemed like a reasonable way to extend the gameplay, but the extra piece of gameplay not only takes place in a second forest, so soon after the first one, but it's also incredibly short. The whole scene feels like it could have been cut out entirely, much like the first dungeon did when you were looking for the mushroom.

You mentioned battles?

I did indeed. At first you'd be forgiven for mistaking the battle system for the default RMXP battle system. There are slight modifications though, for example, instead of a list of options appearing when it's your turn to attack, you have icons over your fighter's head which then lead to various lists of commands. Only a small change, but easy to miss.

Also, you have Talents. Each weapon you equip has two different Talents on it, and these Talents then increase your stats. For example, if you equip a sword with a Water Talent, your Water attacks become more powerful and the Water Talent level of the character can level up, making them permanently more proficient with Water magic. It's a nice idea and a neat system for making your characters specialise in particular areas.



You do learn a few skills, but you quickly narrow every character down to spamming the same one or two skills to attain ridiculously short and easy victories.

One aspect that's good to see is that the game employs a visual equipment system. If you change Rya's sword, for example, when you next fight, you'll see her new sword in her hand rather than her old one. Again, it's the little details like this that make a game stand out.

In a nutshell...

This game is one of the most well crafted and enjoyable RPG Maker games I have ever played, and shows that you can do a lot with your games if you put enough effort in.

This game is constantly let down by it's battles though. They're often too easy, and there's not enough variety when it comes to what you're actually fighting either. I've only come across slimes, guards and wasps. The bosses also lack presence, excitement and difficulty. The slime and head guard being so much like the regular enemies of the area that you wouldn't know they were a boss character if the game didn't tell you.

I'd advise making the quest for the mushroom seem a little more urgent as the game's opening is one of it's weak points. I'd also recommend overhauling the bosses, making them harder and seem more important. They also need to employ more strategy and stand out from the regular enocunters. I would also say that the Dragon Bane quest should either be made longer, or removed entirely.

If you're looking for something with a serious story, deep characters and an involving battle system, then look elsewhere. If you want a light, cheerful, often tongue-in-cheek, anime styled experience, then you should download this immediately.