Review for The Last Journey by PVGames
You are Galathan, a captain of the King Alex's guard. Your quest is to gather a group of friends to escort the king to Candle Point (I keep thinking of Candlekeep from Baldur's Gate, maybe because of the graphical style). On your travels you will face a number of dangers, including spike traps in dungeons, kobolds, trolls, chimaera, undead and what have you. There's a variety of enemies to battle, each with their own skill sets that keep you engaged on your travels.
Each character has a unique set of skills available, and it becomes clear quite soon that you cannot fight only by spamming the Attack command which most RPG Maker games suffer from. The idea to balance the combat around buffs and debuffs seems ingenious, however it seems some skills are far more useful than others. Bosses quickly fall victim to Nathan's Mark and Strategist, while Alyssa's Finale sees little use. After the defense of the monster drops to 0, you can just pummel on other attacks instead of caring how much life the opponent has.
The combat is where this title shines, but also somewhat of a downfall. Both the characters and the enemies are beautifully rendered, and come with a variety of animations for waiting and acting. Each buff and debuff is clearly displayed over each character, along with a mouseover caption (which I haven't seen in another game so far). However, the combat tends to lag, and quite a bit, too. The FPS dropped to single digits very often when there were multiple enemies with active buffs, and this caused the game to either miss or lag on a lot of animations. I certainly hope this can be fixed later on, as there is a ton of promise on this game.
As mentioned, the graphics outshine most standard RPG Maker games. Jesse has an artistic style of his own, reminiscent of old Infinity Engine games. The game features those and a custom soundtrack that sets the mood of the game really well.
The difficulty seems to be a bit on the easier side when playing on Normal Difficulty. Not once did I have to stop to grind for EXP and Sovereign (currency unit) and I could purchase everything I needed the second I stepped into town. Granted, I only played the game up to Eoten Mountain Summit.
A quest journal on your current quest (as well as hints you may or may not have gotten from NPCs) would help. While folllowing the road is simple and pretty straightforward, I wonder if I took a break from the game and came back. Would I remember what I was about to do? Even though I think myself as an old-fashioned gamer, I recognize some QoL things from today's games that even I have come to like and want in an RPG.
There are two minor things I'd like to point out. First, is the "Total Saves" fact really necessary on the save screen? Especially since the game autosaves when changing areas, and these saves are added to the counter. I think someone could get confused. Also, Thomas's constant cussing gets on my nerves. It is somewhat hard to take him seriously when he keeps on cursing like that, reminding me of games like Grand Theft Auto. I understand that war can change a person dramatically, but perhaps you should tone down that dialogue a little bit?
Oh yes, and finally, before I forget. This is probably the first RPG Maker game where I find moving with the mouse almost necessary, as the featured 8-direction movement seemed not to register some of my keypresses. Sadly this shows that RPG Maker MV isn't really made out for that, but as mentioned, using the mouse alleviates movement quite a bit. I won't be blaming the lag on this, as I get a constant 90+ FPS on field maps.
Anyways, definitely one of the best games in the competition I've played so far. Thank you so much for making this game, and I certainly hope you continue to finetune it after the competition. Good luck on the contest!
P.S. And thanks for the very detailed review of my game, too!