This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
There are multiple things that Artifact Adventure achieves that I am yet to see in any other RPGMaker-based game so far: it 100% (or if not, very close to it) faithfully emulates aspects of the classic NES Dragon Quest/Warrior games (a side note: a lot of folks refer to NES styles as '8-bit' due to the nature of the NES's processor), in terms of graphics, music, sound effects, and straight-to-the-point dialog. On the surface, the plot is straight-up save the world fare, the battle system largely resembles the classic turn-based Dragon Quest/Warrior system, and the music loops are brief and catchy in a manner, again, reminiscent of the DQ/DW series.
Here are the most significant positives and negatives, as I see them:
+ The gameplay is classic, addictive JRPG fare. My short attention span often keeps me from playing games for hours on end, but I found it easy to place the 14ish hours I needed to beat this game (with, by my rough guestimate, 90% of the extra stuff completed) within several days. Sure, you'll be spamming attack a lot, but you'll need the healing spells in particular, and especially late in the game you'll find some magic for weaker fighters that'll supply them with competent offense.
+ The classes you can choose from, while clearly inspired by the original Final Fantasy, do not merely rip off their roots. While the game does not have difficulty settings, you can certainly use these to make the game significantly more or less difficult.
+ There is a significant amount of freedom you are given. The game in and of itself is practically composed of side quests, with the main plot ('go out and kill the Swamp King') being mostly on the backburner. Townsfolk provide you all sorts of optional stuff you can do, and there are treasures galore. There are even a bunch of pocket-sized gnomes running around the world that you can retrieve for goodies, such as potent armor.
+ Reasonable length. I could imagine it taking 16-18 hours to complete all the sidequests and beat the game.
- This game is drenched in sadness. You are constantly presented with moral decisions, and it is easy to do what you think is right only to cause all sorts of grief for the town's, if not world's, population. While I respect that this game contains consequences for the player's actions, unless you are perfect or close to it, you can expect an ending in which the entire planet is plagued by something or other. Again, my gripe is not that this game has melancholy elements to it: it's that, even if continue to do the right thing, the game will find a way to make it feel like you did the wrong thing, and for most players, that detracts from the feeling of accomplishment that we like to get from making the right decisions. In short, this game is full of 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' scenarios, and is sometimes misleading about the moral nature of some of these situations. It eliminates the reason to give the player choice to begin with.
- There is a lack of variety, in terms of towns and terrain. Expect the same grassy town with a weapon/armor/item shop, inn/save house, revival place, and a couple/few civilian houses again and again. Why not put a town in the ice region (though there is one near, it's just another grassy town), for example? You'll be seeing the same tiles again and again, and while I understand the classic JRPG vibe, a little more variety would've been nice.
- The final dungeon and boss fight are quite brief. Also, the final boss uses the same sprite as the king from the beginning of the game, yet I still can't tell if there was a plot twist in which the good king is actually the swamp king or not.
From what I understand, this game was a one-man job, plus another person provided an English translation. Given that this game was not made by a staff, I am impressed and would recommend it for the five and a halfish dollars I paid for it... as long as you can tolerate that this is a game that, even if you can beat it, you can't really win at (as far as I can tell, anyway.)… Expand
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