天下制覇

 

Find a niche and fill it.

Continuing with the trials, which will hopefully last me to the end of the season, we come to Escu:de’s Re;Lordcolons are for, that’s not reason to not stick them in anywhere. You are Wilfried, because Japan has a thing for naming characters Will lately (we’ll get to more in another week!), demon lord and cape aficionado. The antagonist would be the blonde witch, Erika. You can probably fill in the rest of the plot yourself, plus minus some random German and arguing about capes.

  

This is a half priced game though, so it probably gets a pass for not being particularly ambitious, although does still kind of get sidetracked into long expositional dumps that really aren’t needed at all. Still, it could probably use a few more characters. Wilfried is pretty strong, a true rarity for protagonists, and voiced too, which is always nice. The banter with Wilfried and Lia (mini-demon) is decent enough, but Erika and the rest don’t hold up their end in any way besides louging around in their underwear.

The gameplay is split into two parts. On the map, you fill in the board with a (theoretically) limited number of shapes, seizing certain spots giving you scenes with characters or macguffins, while enemies roam around damaging/breaking your tiles. You have a limited number of turns to get to the objective as well, although certain events give you more time. A boss will also jump your bones (played by Erika’s minion for the trial) every few turns for a fight. It’s functional; easy to pick up and understand, with theoretically strategy and brain-needing-using behind it, buuut, well, I’ll get to it.

Combat’s kind of like naughty Fruit Ninja. You click and slide to create attacks; wind in a straight line, fire must go in a grid-like in sequence. At the same time, the enemies throw their attacks which you right click to block. Block at the last second for a mana boost. Bosses are a little more interesting. For one, there’s clothing damage depending on where you attack. You can also stun them which puts them into a helpless state where you barrage the hell out of whatever piece of their clothing you hate the most, or if you’re boring, shoot them in the face for damage. There’s also mana for attacking and defending, but it really just serves to go “Hey you, stop playing so fast and enjoy our damn dozen floating bears.”

The problem with both parts of the gameplay though, is that they’re just so trivially easy, even accounting for swiping being a bit squibby when using a laptop touchpad, and what scares me is that there’s also an easy mode beneath it. On the map, you’re given a bazillion blocks and so much time that I can’t even imagine how you could fail except on purpose. In battle, everything is telegraphed with count-down timers, so it’s really just a matter of expediency to let yourself get hit since defending stops your mana from refilling. There’s a time limit in battle too, but it’s also leniant as all hell. It really needs to ramp up the challenge on both sides of the fence in the actual release because what it showed here is already getting tiresome with its obnoxiously long teddy bear battles.

   

Like Out Veggies though, it passes the “Does the trial make me want to play the actual game?” test, although I don’t think that besides Wilfried himself, there’s quite as much potential in the full game. He’s good, but I don’t think he’s good enough to carry the whole thing, especially since it seems to think ‘harder’ equals ‘throw more damned teddy bears at the player,’ so I fear how the gameplay may evolve. They could ramp up the challenge in a better way, but the core gameplay still wouldn’t be great. Again though, it’s half-priced, so is it fair to compare it to a full priced game? Yes. It is. Aroduc has spoken.

As a side note, I was wrong about my comment some weeks past about Debonosu’s upcoming RPG being traditional. Whatever’s going on there (besides the awful animation at the very start) looks far more interesting, although I’d so very much rather these guys be the main cast instead of the incredibly generic nigh-palette-and-ribbon swaps that are.