Review: Breathwind: Return of the Dragons

[Ocedic 249]

Title: Breathwind: Return of the Dragons

Author: Obrusnine

Version: E0 v2.3

Review by: Ocedic

 

Introduction

 

Breathwind is a high fantasy RPG that is characterized by its verbose storytelling and western RPG influences.

 

 

Presentation

 

The first thing you encounter with Breathwind is its intro, which stands out from the typical RM game intro by being a voice-over movie. The video compression seems iffy, as the video quality seemed to be rather low and there is clear pixelation, seen below. Since it was just a series of still images, it begs the question of why it has to be a movie file at all. The quality would probably be better if it were just pictures shown, and I imagine it would equate to a smaller file size as well. The voice narration is okay, but not spectacular and it's clear that it's the author himself which pulls you out of immersion. It's highly recommended that the author find an actual voice actor for these narrations. In terms of the visual content of the intro, repeat images were noticeable, which also lends to the feeling of non-immersion.

 

 

The game itself uses a lot of RTP and facegen. The author seems to have a good grasp on creating a consistent visual tone. The main offender here are the maps, which are blocky and unnatural. This is both a graphical issue and a gameplay one which I'll get to later. The author has acknowledged his weakness in mapping, but that seems to be all he's done. It's not really excusable to simply say "I'm not good at mapping" and just ignore the issue. The thing is, the mapping isn't totally bad, it's mostly just the maze section that offends. The map is unreasonably huge and the paths are just narrow walkways,

 

The UI needs to be looked at, as things can seem a bit messy and incomprehensible. The position of the time/date seems to be in a poor location, as it blocks part of the main viewable play area.

 

 

The information could be condensed and moved to be in a less intrusive area. Do we really need to know the year at all times? Or even the month and date? It may seem like a small point, but small touches like that have huge ramifications in how the game looks and feels.

 

In terms of audio, the music is fairly good and fits the theme of the game, though the selection does get rather repetitive considering the huge amount of time spent navigating the environment (more on that later) and constant battles. It comes across as a bit generic overall, but it fits the vision of the author and it works, so that's not a big deal.

 

Verdict: Mapping needs work, UI should be looked at

 

Gameplay

 

Breathwind's main differentiating feature is its survival system, which in theory forces the player to manage attributes like stamina, hunger and thirst to not die. In practice, the system is rather simple and mundane. In old versions, it had really gotten in the way of gameplay, but now it seems to negligible and trivial. I didn't use a single survival item during my playthrough, but that isn't the issue itself. There just isn't a real feeling that those conditions are anything more than numbers the player has to manage. In essence, there's no getting around that fact, but it's up to the designer to mask it. They're also indistinguishable from one another, with the exception of temperature. Perhaps it should be changed to some kind of graphical representation rather than numbers, and add more effects to the attributes to differentiate them. Perhaps you shouldn't simply die from zero stamina, but rather suffer a combat penalty based on stamina. At the moment if you die from stamina, it's just odd and feels jarring.

 

The gameplay is just... not very fun. Part of it is the huge map in which you navigate a labyrinth of the same enemies. The map size should really be reduced, which would make the dungeon less tedious and help with the mapping issues mentioned earlier. Things got better at the 'trials' part. I have to say, if most of the dungeon crawling consists of the first half of the dungeon, it would really test my patience. The game would be better off if a lot of needless wandering was cut out, and the environments were prettied up a bit so that thinks don't feel so repetitive. Also, the trial of intelligence was a fairly poor choice of puzzle, as it basically relies on someone knowing the term or not. I liked the poem riddle, although that seemed more related to intellect than spirit, as I would say someone who is smart is one who can figure something out rather than just possessing some random knowledge. Not a big deal, but I think a better puzzle could be made.

 

The battles themselves are okay, but the use of default abilities is disappointing. I ended up just attacking over and over again until I needed to heal. Spend some time in things related to combat to make it more interesting. For one thing, incorporating the survival system with battle performance would make things very interesting. And a small note, but for some reason Heal 3 costs less MP than Heal 1 while Heal 2 costs more than 1. Just seems very odd:

 

 

Verdict: Exploration not fun, battles dull, survival system promising

 

Story

 

This seems to be where the author spent most of his efforts and it shows. The game is rather loquacious and verbose, many times to a fault. It's very easy to lose interest in the extensive lore simply because there's so much of it, and it's not necessarily interesting or relevant. The intro begins with a huge amount of info dumping and the backstory goes on some tangents that seemed to just add needless complexity to the plot. The story about the war with the dragons itself is very interesting, but then it starts talking about human kingdoms and I actually just zoned out. Parts like that just seem very pointless to throw at the player at the beginning. And really, if you think about it the entire dragon war was fairly pointless if they just ended up being the humans' allies anyways. The first half of the intro could be cut and the rest of the story would essentially be the same, as it seems in modern times humans and dragons are best friends.

 

The author smartly puts a lot of lore in a codex section that is optional to read. I do think that there's way too much stuff unlocked at the beginning. I realize the author has spent a lot of time on the lore and backstory and is eager to share it, but I imagine many players will be turned off and just ignore it due to the sheer volume of text. The lore entries should be spaced out a bit more evenly so players have time to digest it bit by bit. I did read the monster entries and they were actually fairly interesting, so I think this is a great feature that could be done better.

 

 

Ultimately, the writing itself is well done. The flow of the narrative feels good, and the end of the demo did leave me wanting to find out what happens. It does take a very long time to get to that point, however, and that's never a good thing. As I mentioned to another developer, if you have to keep saying "Be patient it gets better" then something is wrong, as the intro needs to hook the reader and is probably the most important part because that's when they decide whether or not to put the book down. Part of this is the monotonous gameplay mentioned earlier that should be addressed, but the long-winded narrations don't help matters. The author's job should be to entice the player to learn more about his world, rather than throwing his world at the player and hoping the audience will become engrossed.

 

Verdict: Some portions too verbose, but otherwise interesting

 

Recommendation

 

I do think this game is worth a look if you're into Western fantasy. There are gameplay issues that drag the experience down and the overall experience could use some more polish, but at its core there is a rich story that is waiting to be told.

Edited February 24, 2013 by Ocedic

[+ Novem 344]

Thanks for the review! Now I'll do my best to address your concerns.

 

It's not that the video compression is iffy, it's that the movie's resolution is higher then that of the window it's being displayed in. As far as I know, when I export out of movie maker there is no option for custom resolutions, it only lets me pick from a few presets. The youtube version is of much higher quality, so I recommend you use it instead.

 

The reason it is a movie file is preserve the music timing so that it is appropriate. If I made it in the maker, I would have to spend hours poring over to make sure the waits on images were exactly correct to the music and voice-over, which just isn't practical.

 

For the repeating pictures, it's worth mentioning that I don't have much choice but too repeat images. I don't have any artistic skill (believe me, I'd rather this be a fully animated pencil-drawn style cutscene in the vein of Dragon Age: Origins intro), so it already takes large amounts of time just to find the pictures I did find.

 

I would find a real voice actor if I had the funds to do so. If anyone is willing to step up and do it, then I would be more then willing to accommodate them. The problem is though that this is a long-term kind of job. The narrator has a place in the story near the end, mostly dealing with the repercussions of your decisions.

 

I'm not ignoring the issue, I just haven't had the time to go back and make the maps cleaner. I've been having an enormous focus on Episode 1 at the moment, and there is so much mapping to be done there that I just haven't felt it worth it to go back and fix it up. I have gotten a lot better though, some of my newer maps look at least average rather then empty and bland.

 

I do agree that the map is unreasonably big, I could probably cut a large portion of it off, it's just I don't want to accidentally delete anything. When I clean up the maps, I'll make sure to make the maps more direct and less randomly jumbled like they are (they are certainly less so in Episode 1).

 

The UI isn't really something I can edit, as it's mostly script based. The clock is where it is simply because I couldn't find anywhere else to put it. As I mentioned in the tutorial, it can be disabled at any time by pressing F6. I mostly turn it off when I'm playing anyways.

 

Yea, you won't think the music is repetitive later. What was displayed in Episode 0 is probably 1/30th of all of the custom music in the game so far (although, honestly, most of the newer tracks are from the superior XP and VX RTP's).

 

The reason it seems negligible now is because I've balanced it to fit with Episode 1's version of things. Episode 0 is mostly a tutorial and introduction level. I am planning to decrease the survival values for that specific bit of the game, but what's in there now is reflective of what you will see in Episode 1 (which will actually fit, because the world is huge). In addition, I am bringing in an item weight system at a later time to make it more difficult to carry tons of survival supplies around.

 

Each of the stats already have status effects that are applied when they get low. Stamina is central, and when it reaches 0 you die. It was always a core tenet of the system, and is meant to increase difficulty beyond just combat. I think it does this well, and overall, I just really like it and it matches the atmosphere I am going for.

 

Now that puzzle stuff is just nitpicking! lol

 

Yes, as I've already mentioned, I'm going to tighten up that labyrinth and make it more direct.

 

I haven't really gone into combat balancing and numbers yet, which is the reason everything on the combat side is so weak. That's a good observation though, I'll make sure to fix that up.

 

It's not needless complexity, I promise you that it is important to the plot later on. Not in Episode 1 so much, but in Episode 2, all of that backstory really comes into play. Although honestly, first it was criticized for being too under-detailed and confusing, but now it's being criticized for being over-detailed. I tried, okay? lol

 

Also, war is usually needless. The Dragons started it with their bloodlust. There will be more about their origin as well as some explanation of their bloodlust in Episode 4. The humans balanced out their emotions with the connection, repressing the Dragons inner calling and bringing out the good that was there all along.

 

Episode 0 is actually 300 years ago if you remember. So it's not technically modern times. Stuff really changes after the dragons disappear. That is really addressed in Chapter 4 of Episode 1, not everyone is happy about the return. Some are very dissatisfied and buried in petty hate of the Dragons simply because they disappeared, and of course there is also some misplaced blame spread about.

 

Believe me, all of the lore I placed in the codex section isn't even the half of it. Don't worry, there is plenty more to unlock, even just in Episode 1.

 

If you don't like talking, believe me when I say that this isn't the game to be playing. I really enjoy lengthy conversations, and there is a Mass Effect/The Walking Dead level of talking in this game.