Adventures in the Land of Cliche and Awful Execution
June 22nd, 2014
Right, Werner?
Oh, Debonosu. You gave me hope only to crush it so thoroughly. We’ll skip the overtures this time and get right to the demo for their latest game.
In a fantasy world, parasitic monsters called guura suddenly appeared out of nowhere and began killing and infecting humans. Eventually, people banded together, and using the power of lapis, fought back. A hundred years later, special schools for guards against the guura have been formed. Will, an orphan whose entire village was destroyed by the guura, attends one with his friends and taught by the man who saved him to become a guard and protect mankind.
The premise is kind of like the bastard child of Muv Luv and a Tales game, although for all the overwhelming horror of the guura that they give at the start, they’re just random enemies hanging out with the giant (infected) spider which is the only boss of the trial. What’s not so bad in the setup is that while the entire class is painfully slotted into each of their cliche roles, they’re all a pretty cheery bunch without any obnoxious antagonism against each other and all in it for killing the monsters instead of in-fighting. While it’s not the funniest of things, it’s rare in Japan-land to have a bunch of characters who clearly (mostly) respect each other while also teasing each other constantly. Werner is the standout, as well as the only decent bit of humor in the affair. His only lines are from other characters periodically going “Right, Werner?” and him replying “Yeah, that’s right.” That is his sole purpose in life and reason for existence.
And that probably tips my hand for the rest of the writing. It’s far from compelling or even interesting. Even the info dump about the guura is done through the medium of a class lecture. Lapis is also used as the catch-all macguffin right from the start. The second mission you’re given is to go find “pink lapis” which does “I dunno, something with dreams.” So you get it, share it with the guy who wanted it, and then both have wet dreams of your classmates because you gotta fit the porn in somewhere. Your teacher/childhood savior may as well also have “FUTURE BETRAYER FOR THE SKETCHY CHURCH OR WILL BE INFECTED” tattooed across his forehead.
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But the game’s the thing, and that’s where a really neat-seeming system is mauled by poor execution. It’s basically like Radiant Historia. You choose spots to attack, and most skills can move enemies around. If you screw up your chains, you just miss, but good placement will maximize damage. It’s got a nice kind of puzzle element to it that was really fun at the start. But then the battles kept coming. And coming. And coming. They’re so long, the random encounter rate so high, and your skills evolve/change so slowly that it quickly goes from neat to tedious in about 15 minutes. Battles need to have half the enemies and be half as frequent to keep the pace at an appropriate rate. Enemies also only attack by scuttling up and bumping into you, and skills are all just a generic weapon swing, which is tremendously disappointing on a production front too, especially for a company that’s been making roguelikes and action RPGs for years.
I guess it’s not surprising since it is Debonosu, but I was pretty disappointed. The battle system is a neat concept, but in execution doesn’t work, and even Senjin Otome was written better than this, although that could also just be because you slugged your childhood friend to shut her up. It fails the trial test of making me want to play the full game, but I guess at least didn’t make me angry. Just really, really fatigued.
Side note for the interested, Martopia’s trial went up yesterday too. I’ll get a post out on it this week, but it’s another gameplay engine that is a massive disappointment with an extra large helping of bugginess on the side.Â
Posted in Alruna | 6 Comments »
Oh wow, dat gameplay video.