RpgMaker.org

Game Title: Legend of the Seven Crystals, Swords mens Destiny
Platform: RPG Maker 2003
Genre: RPG
Creator: Khallid

[The game in the following review can be downloaded here http://gmaker.org/games/view.asp?id=151.]

Swords mens Destiny is the first of a current three part game series named ‘Legend of the Seven Crystals’. The second and third games look professional and something I can’t wait to play after this review. The first game however is definitely not… To end on a high note I’ll begin with all the negatives of this game, starting with the grammar. As a series each game seems to suffer from this and I cannot think of why, I’ve heard the excuse that English is only their second language, but surely if they aim to release professional games then asking someone fluent in English to go over their dialogue and scripts is the obvious thing to do? The grammar really does become a big thorn in this games side as it takes away from moments that were supposed to be dramatic or tragic by forcing the player to put together the poorly worded and badly spelt script. While it rarely makes playing the game unbearable it does make it difficult to connect to characters, which is a big part of what makes RPGs as a genre successful.

The other big part of a game of course is the plot, how it unfolds and how it wraps up the player in the game and makes the player want to seek out more about it. Unfortunately, while this games story has potential, it seems to have been very poorly and hastily put together as if the player made up the plot as they made the game. An example of the poor story telling is when the player goes to investigate a tower that has mysteriously filled with ghosts. At the top of the tower you meet a demon who claims to be a part of the demon pirates and after a quick battle he vanishes. What purpose did he have in the tower? Was it him that made the ghosts appear? If so, then why would he do this? None of these questions are answered. There are many random events such as these throughout the game that really make you feel like you are being strung along rather than uncovering the mysteries of the game. The enemies of the game are also very difficult to understand and I’ve come to the conclusion the demon king must have brain washed them all, although this is never confirmed. I think this because almost every main villain I beat had a sudden change of heart and started egging the heroes on. Once again, no explanations were given for this change of character. The game in itself, is remarkably easy allowing you to progress to the end without very little trouble. But that is when it gets ridiculous as you’ve previously been given no need to power level or really try but then all of a sudden the difficulty spikes significantly at the final boss that is able to get up to four moves in to your single characters one.

Now for the main thing that really annoyed me about this game, the dungeons. The dungeons in the game are not only really long, which in itself I have no problem with, but were extremely dull, very repetitive, increasingly linear and lacked any puzzles or any areas where you had to use your head. Basically the dungeons were so dull and so long I found myself almost praying that the next teleport event would take me to a cut scene.

I think I’ve bashed the game enough now so I’ll move onto the features of the game I actually liked. First off the choice of music was very good, I don’t just mean he found good music and used it, but he used it at the right moments and scenes. I think his placement of music did enhance otherwise terrible scenes that suffered from the vices I mentioned above. The battle system, while 90% default, did also make the game bearable for me as I’ve always found the side view battle system to be very suitable and enjoyable for a game type based on story telling. Not only that but the playable characters had crystal forms that were activated during boss battles that increased the characters strength significantly. While I thought this was a pretty slammin’ feature and my favourite element of the game, it definitely made this one of the easiest games I’ve ever played, upto the final boss of course. You go into the forms automatically when you have less than 20% health and when you do the boss stands no chance. So while they were cool at first it became annoying how the game didn’t seem to want to challenge you. Graphics wise the game was appealing, not using the default makers RTP the game was full of custom resources and edits of the original rtp which helped to make the game that bit more bearable.

To conclude, while the negatives do heavily outweigh the positives the game did have a charm that made me want to carry on and reach its climax despite them. Here are my ratings for this game, broken down into four in accordance with the gMaker.org review system.

Graphics: The graphics weren’t bad and were appealing to me as they were not the games default RTP. I give the graphics a 7.

Plot: The plot had potential however most events seemed forced and the flow of the story wasn’t that good to me. The plot also suffered for bad grammar and some parts of the game seemed very random and unexplained. I will give the plot a 3.

Sound: The games music was very good and used well for the right maps and moments in the game. So I’ll give sound an 8.

Gameplay: I enjoy the default battle system for RPG Maker 2003 and the little additions made the battles that bit more fun. I’ll give the gameplay a 7.