Review: Ethereal Plains Demo

[LVX156 3]

Game Title: The Ethereal Plains

Developer: http://www.rpgmakervxace.net/user/12671-besus/

Game Engine: VXAce

URL: http://www.rpgmakervxace.net/topic/13656-the-ethereal-plains-demo-available/

Download Link: http://www.besusproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/etherealplains/Ethereal_Plains-D1.02.zip

 

Game Play / Level Design:

I like the mapping. I'm a huge fan of big maps, and this game has them. The labyrinthine forest map that almost forced me to bring out the old pen and paper and draw a map was a nice touch in a world where most games are so afraid to frustrate the player that they only give you one well-lit path to travel. The world map is huge, and in lovingly fake 3D. I love it! I can't wait to see what's in the final game apart from the towns, villages and camps I've seen in the demo.

 

The game does hold your hand a bit too much in the beginning, in my opinion. I didn't need it to tell me how to solve the puzzles. A hint option would have been better, allowing you to get a hint only if you get stuck on a particular puzzle. When the game tells you how to solve a puzzle it is no longer a puzzle, but rather just a series of maneuvers to make the game longer.

 

The character moves too quickly. This, along with the aforementioned hand-holding were my biggest problem with the game, because it feels like you're running like hell all the time. I would have preferred moving slower, but maybe having a dash button for when you really want to get a move on.

 

Story / Writing Mechanics:

The story – at least as far as the demo is concerned – suffers a bit from being quite similar to Final Fantasy VII: a protagonist who was once a member of the â€evil†army becomes their number one enemy and teams up with a girl who is the only one who still has the power of the gods. Most of the story is told through cut-scenes rather than text, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

Resources Used (Audio, Visuals, Scripts):

The graphics are, for the most part, excellent. When I play a game made in RPG Maker I don't expect a high degree of fidelity, but this game is more beautiful than most I've played. The forest village was especially impressive, with a beautiful overlay and leaves falling gently to the ground. 

 

The sprites especially are very well made, and the little speech bubbles that pop up every now and then showing a character's state of emotion are wonderful. The same goes for the beautiful popups when you pick up an item, and the way the text telling you what map you're on shows up in the top left-hand corner. It's a small detail, but very well made.

 

The graphics, while excellent for the most part, do suffer in some areas. The forest maze has some very sharp corners that look a bit jarring, and the forest cave doesn't have enough contrast, so the floor pattern makes everything blend together. These are however minor things that shouldn't put anyone off. It is an RPG Maker game, and with that comes certain limitations that take a lot of time (or money) to overcome. If those limitations weren't imposed by the program, we'd see games looking as good as Secret of Mana 2 all the time.

 

Combat System & Balance:

The battle system (or what I've seen of it) rivals even the best commercial ones. Being able to link your special abilities together has the possibility to offer some much needed variety and tactical thinking. For instance, I found myself more often than not using Triage at the end of a battle instead of drinking a healing potion. By casting Triage and using Guard when there was a single injured enemy left I could bring myself to roughly 75% health before finishing him off, leaving me ready to do battle again at an instant. 

 

I never felt overwhelmed or over-powered, and healing items were just scarce enough to force you to use your special abilities to heal, which then means you have less MP/TP, forcing you to find a good balance between using offensive and defensive skills.

 

With a battle system as great as this, I really wish you could chain abilities from different characters together, á la Chrono Trigger, for even more tactical depth. While I realize this is probably not a realistic change to make this far into the game, I still want to throw the idea out there for others who might consider the same kind of system.

 

Overall Experience / Suggestions:

What this game needs more than anything, in my humble opinion, is a kind pixel artist or two who can help fix some of the more jarring issues with some of the tilesets, the square forest edges in particular. Only minor adjustments would be needed to make the graphics much more cohesive.

 

The log-jumping minigame. I didn't mind it as such, but some of the logs just moved way too fast, which combined with the somewhat jerky movement made it much harder than it needed to be.

 

No random encounters! I know some people hate them, but I love them. I really like the japanese style console RPGs where you grind quite a lot, and I'm not sure if this game will offer me that.

 

Would I buy it?

I most definitely would. If the game offered five or six hours of gameplay that would be enough for me to put down $5 or $10, but I've played the demo for two and a half hours without seeing the end of it. Unless the demo is in fact a sizable portion of the game (which I'm hoping it's not), this will be a very, very good game.

 

My overall impression is that this is one of the most impressive RPG Maker games I've ever seen, and it's just the demo! I really hope the game gets finished, because this could potentially be one of the all-time greats we've seen from RPG Maker.

 

I would rate this demo a solid 4/5.

Edited July 10, 2013 by LVX156

[Besus 6]

Thanks for taking the time to write this; glad you enjoyed it! 

 

Ironically the last review pummeled the fact there was no hand-holding in the opening dungeon, so I changed it to better guide the player. I had a feeling I may have overdone it and will definitely be scaling it back a bit. 

[Ltbenjamin 4]

I love this game. 10/10 so much detail. I'm taking notes from this game for my game.