Just as a warning, I tend to be one of the harsher critics on here so steel yourself for what's to come.
Some notes up front:
- I played the demo on Steam.
- I did not encounter any performance issues (although my PC is quite new and has decent hardware like a 4060Ti, IE it is well above standard RM requirements).
The review
- Character art looks good and is consistent. It also creates a style that makes the elves look like they have a distinct culture.
- Mapping is beautiful. My favorite touch are the reflections in the castle and the water.
- I just realized this is one of the only RM games that actually understands how rugs work (IE they are not amorphous blobs that take the shape of the room). Thank you!!!
- Aehlevander has a hunky, smooth voice.
- Combat seems like it could have potential but I didn't get far enough to see.
- Dragonbones enemies and custom sprites look great.
- Action sequencing looks good and is not over-indulgent.
- Overall, the game feels like a professional (but small indie) production.
- I didn't do the side quest to talk to Senersis. I was not given any idea where they are. This does not seem like the type of objective worthy of "you have to figure it out" since our character- presumably- knows this village and where this person lives.
- Also there was not any additional tracking for this. If this is an important step, like if it adds a party member or gives important gear, it should have its own quest.
- The lore is beautiful and I appreciate the narrator's efforts to pronounce such complicated names, but there is simply no way I'm retaining this info. This is too much to dump on the player especially since it has so little importance on the immediate story.
- Speaking of this narrator, I'm sorry but his mic quality is unacceptable and his read lacks engaging inflection.
- The mouth flaps only play briefly and do not follow the length of dialogue.
- The chibi sprites are nice but I do not feel they match the rest of the art.
- Why does Aehlevander turn into a human? It's cool that he can do that but it seems like most of his combat potential is locked behind turning back into a unicorn, forcing the player to waste a turn at the start of combat.
- I appreciate that the player gets to gameplay at a fairly reasonable pace but there is a LOT of it for a first zone.
- Ennea's motivation feels vague. It would be a good idea to show what the danger is. An inciting incident that drives her reason to go on this adventure. As it is, it's unclear why she NOW chooses to run off and doesn't create a sense of urgency.
I wanted to mention the encryption method. It only takes me 6 seconds or so to actually get fully into the game, but I saw a comment of it taking someone 5 minutes. Now while I do think that's an outlier, it's worth thinking about the reasons WHY one would do this. I've heard it's to protect plugins from being stolen. But I think this is a very small perspective. This is the same sin as DRM; you are making 99.9% of your players go through hoops just to punish 0.01% of your players. I get that in our small community it seems like a big deal to protect plugin authors but in the WAY LARGER gaming community... no one gives a crap and has no reason to steal them.