This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
I initially decided to purchase and play the full version after playing the demo. It was a refreshing reminder of my childhood favorite game, earthbound. The illustrations were bright, cartoony, numerous, a little too detailed (I'm a sucker for pixel art), but welcoming if done right. The controls were crisp. I was a disappointed with the music and sfx, but perhaps the full version would have a better soundtrack.
The battle system reminded me of earthbound, but I wasn't sure how the many differences would really come into play with the full version. I think what finally tipped the balance of my purchasing decision was the demos smart humor. I have to admit that I really enjoyed the part where the VP commented to the opposition leader about the protesters signs, noting "I thought it was a double negative, no holding signs with my face crossed out". So, I looked past the unattractive parts of the demo and decided to give the full version a try. Unfortunately, that's about as much praise I can give.
Before you continue, if you don't know the details of the game, a quick Google search can give you the run down.
In the full version, the music and sfx don't get any better. Its pretty bland and repetitive. Some levels music is just downright irritating. I had turned the volume off when playing through camp KooKoo. Music can be hard to explain in text. Perhaps even more so when it's bad music and the author - myself - has little experience describing music, but I will try my best. It's kind of like a midi, with a short loop, where the musical artist couldn't decide if the melody ought to define the song or the rhythm ought to define it, so it feels like the melody and rhythm are tripping over each In a midi. It's just, really bad.
the spoken dialog and voice acting for a few characters were well done, but the rest were not and soon suffered the increasingly unpleasantness of hearing the same catch phrase repeated over and over and over. I felt that spoken dialogue was overused. It is sometimes more pleasing to not have spoken dialog at all for certain actions, such as preparing for an attack, receiving a blow, and other actions that are often repeated. If an audio dialog must be present, then perhaps a sound effect would have been more appropriate in many places. But because spoken dialog was chosen for repetitive actions, and you hear the same spoken dialog over and over, it begins to lose its meaning. And then it becomes really annoying. Hearing "here we go!" With every attack, at least three time a battle, in every battle, takes a lot of willpower to continue playing.
But I wanted to continue playing. I had hope that things would improve. Maybe the middle or end of the game would be better. I already played through the beginning and wanted to believe that it gets better. So I continued.
The level design was initially promising. It is Sudo-non-linear, meaning that you can go where you want with some restrictions based on the current act you are playing. Not at act 3 yet? Then you can go here and there, but you can't progress past bridge X or dessert Y. It worked up to a point, until I took the taxi (a one-time-only one way trip) to the capital (blocked by an octopus but the taxi can still get through) and accidentally had the fireman "rescue me" before talking to the president or recruiting the pilot, which teleported me back to the hometown (starting location of the game). From there, I couldn't figure out how to get past the octopus blocking the bridge so I could return to the Capitol.
As it turns out, you have to recruit the pilot first in order to get to a lighthouse in order to remove the octopus, but you can't get the pilot because the blocked bridge is the road to the capital where the pilot can be recruited. And the taxi was long gone. I tried to figure out other routes and methods to get to the Capitol. In the end, I succumbed to the Internet for a workaround. By the time I had finally gotten back to the capital, my characters had leveled so much that the enemies and bosses were almost a single-hit kill. Which is the Segway to my next disappointment.
Poor level progression and balance. Even without changing the difficulty, the fights are very easy. There are a few strategic considerations (weak against water, strong against fire, ect.) but nearly every foe would take a good amount of damage from just a physical attack. And after leveling up a few levels, just a few hits is all it takes to win the battle. There is a recruitable character that allows you to change the difficulty. any time you want. Perhaps the game designers thought it would be good mechanic. to me it felt like they must have realized how unbalanced the game was, but they were too close to the ship date to fix it, so they hacked in that feature at the last minute. Probably untrue, buts it sure feels like it.
Maps. Many were way too expansive. Instead of a good level design, there are areas with numerous, huge, connected labyrinths. Within a huge area are about 2 to 3 distinct enemies. That's mostly it in a nutshell. As you can imagine, That became boringly repetitive very fast. There is a recruitable character that increases the clock speed of the game so you can explore and battle incredibly quickly. Any time you want. Perhaps the game designers thought that would be a good mechanic to help alleviate the poor level design and lack of a variety of enemies due to a looming ship date....
I have saved the most disappointing part last: shallow character development. I blame myself in part for not foreseeing this from the demo, because it mentions you can recruit 40 characters. It's possible to have strong character development for a large cast, but it requires long narratives and back stories and sub-plots an so on. This game has none of that. The VP is the only character with some development, but it wasn't very substantial. With 40 characters and a small development staff, it's hard to expect well nourished character development. Rather, they seem to be only a utility for progressing through parts of the game. And they seem to also be a collectible. Like Pokemon: gotta collect them all. But I didn't like collecting them. There were many unintuitive methods to get them to join, and some of them even relied on randomness! And without explanation! Many times I was kept thinking "how do I recruit this person"? There was no dialog or hints to explain how I can achieve this recruitment.
In conclusion, there is nothing memorable about this game. However, it has brought me to more appreciate the art of designing an RPG. I see the beauty in developing just a handful characters rather than a bucket-load (unless you're the game of thrones). It is more enjoyable to navigate a small but well crafted area than a repetitive maze. And above all, that my instincts can be wildly incorrect when making purchasing decisions after trying the demo.
Thank you and good night!… Expand
