Mystic reviews: Universal Wars

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Mystic
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Mystic reviews: Universal Wars

Post by Mystic »

This is a review for the Heart of the OHR Edition of [game]Universal Wars[/game]
The version I played was last edited on December 3rd, 2012.

Skip to the bottom for a synopsis.

As a side note, I apologize for the lack of screenshots, which really makes this review look wonky and long. I don't want to go back and get screens, and can you blame me?

Introduction

Universal Wars is the first "real" game by user jcenterprises. The previous game, a 48-hour contest entry called Escape from Strong Castle, wasn't held in very high regard. Still, it showed unique ideas about game design, so it's not all bad. Universal Wars is very similar, and honestly I think it really fits into the "Heart of the OHR" idea behind the contest.

Review

When the game begins, you're given the choice to name all of the characters, as well as some other things. I don't really mind this: I actually like naming stuff, and it's way easier to remember what something is later if I've named it something I could remember. (I named the farming village "Farmerton" - so if it comes back up I'll remember it.) This is actually pretty neat, and is something used in the Shin Megami Tensei games, and can often be way more ridiculous. (What's your name? Your last name? Your nickname? For everyone in the game...)

So then you get to finally meet the characters you've just named... and they're pretty much all the same person. The game has a contemporary setting, with the (kids?) watching television. Their session is interrupted by an evil bull who comes to attack them, and they have to fight it off in our "tutorial battle" of sorts. Of course, the bull is easily dispatched. There is only an attack command for each character, and the bull does very little damage. Then, more come and a mysterious figure finishes them off and disappears. So here's our premise: let's find this guy who saved us. Good enough for me, I suppose.

At this point I think we should talk about the presentation of the game. The music is not awful and I have to give bonus points for being original. Yes, I'm one of those guys that prefers average original works over transplanted but great songs. The graphics, however, really need work. I'm not an artist either and I can really sympathize with the plight of the designer who cannot draw at all. But you can create bad graphics that show a lot of effort, and these ones simply don't. They're all clearly made with the OHR tools (rectangle, circle, fill, etc.) and then didn't get anything else. No borders, no attempts at shading or a light source, or even minor details. Everything is basically a solid color and shape. Sometimes the contrast (floor tiles) is so bad that it's actually kind of nauseating. That's not good. I do have to say that I like the design of being indoors, but the author gives up on this anyway. Consistency in design would be nice...

Anyway, we follow our generic heroes to the next town, where the story continues to get even more ridiculous. Our presentation here continues to be bad, although we a new variety of tiles, so that's good. The design of the areas is poor, mostly straight lines or semi-straight lines with minor mazes. The battle design also leaves much, much to be desired: we only have one attack, there's only one enemy, and battles take forever. You can imagine how often I ran from fights. Nothing is a threat, yet everything takes forever.

This continues on for some time as you move to each town and do its dungeon. Eventually, though, your characters get access to magic. At this point I'd like to discuss another "problem," which is the dialogue. Writing dialogue is hard, and I understand that, but it's extremely, well, let's say "corny." It's very childish, and maybe that's the goal, but it's often cringe-worthy. However, I don't know how much I comment because my own writing (eg Skyfall) is actually quite similar. One reason that I mention Skyfall is that the kids learn magic the same way as in my game. It's a little embarrassing, but you know: Tropes, yay. In addition, the boxes suffer from the same lack of polish that the game does. The lack of a space between the character names and the text (or even a new line) makes it difficult to read. The author can't decide if one box per character line is right, or if multiple characters should get a line. This issue existed in classics like Final Fantasy VI, as well, but also might be chalked up to lack of memory, a problem we don't have here. There are also spelling mistakes, again showing sloppy work. Put more care into everything!

Anyway, after we get magic, the game starts to get a little better. At this time two of the heroes fail to do any damage, but fortunately they have other jobs in combat. Still, enemies are completely non-threatening and still take forever to beat. Not good. Some enemies have unique ways to beat them (I believe I "tested" out every enemy at least once) but since their mechanics are not a threat, it's hard to care. Towards the end of the demo, enemies start to get hard to the point that you have to actually heal and use your other spells, but it doesn't matter that much. After you get the buff spells, nothing threatens you even a little bit ever again, since they stack infinitely. There is a bonus boss that I found that required a couple tries, which mostly involved focusing on making my main character extremely awesome so he could win. Unfortunately, it took luck because the enemy seems to have an attack that can hit like 1-12 times which is silly.

And then the demo ends abruptly. I was kind of getting into it at this point, but oh well. I think jcenterprises has something here, but there is a lot of work to be done. Polish all of the old content, rewrite some of the dialogue and redo some of the graphics, and for goodness sake play your own game! Most of the problems could be avoided if you just played it! Make early enemies do a lot more damage, but have much less health. Make them threatening without being tedious. And then you'd have a use for the million healing items that just drop for no reason! I didn't need any until the very end, when the one heal from the girl character wasn't enough (although I didn't discover until I had already finished the game that her heal was optional-spread without spread damage...)

Additional suggestions

The author shows some fairly good grasp over scripted scenes. I really, really think this game would benefit from Chrono Trigger style scripted encounters. It would make the unique enemies stop being annoying, and prevent random encounters from making backtracking so annoying (I got every treasure... why?)

Maybe consider making it clear which direction is the next town and which direction is "extra" treasure (which is worthless) so that the player can decide if they just want to move on. (Side note: I would move the electric sword location. If you don't find it you will probably lose and maybe get really stuck.)

Giving each character some sort of ability to start with will help distinguish them early and make early battles less monotonous

Number balance: Healing items appear to be identical due to the randomness and closeness of the effect. Rebalance them and consider removing the random healign from them. Consider making single-target Heal Water stronger while spreading the heal damage out (or not, but then you remove the choice). Are heals based on Willpower? Make the effect stronger/scale better - equipping the heal rod does nothing, but it would feel good to improve healing while it's on. Stacking buffs is cool if you want to keep it, but keep in mind that you can do that. Otherwise, nix it.

Final Verdict

4/10 - There's something here, hiding, but the author needs to bring it out. It has some fun moments drowned out by everything else.

Pros:
  • Scenes are interesting and while dialogue is a little childish, it was fairly engaging
    Battle design eventually picks up, but is too little, too late
    Amidst the terrible tiles lies some amount of variation, such as bubbles under water
    Original music and sound effects show some amount of effort was put into the game, despite this missing from the rest of the content
Cons:
  • Graphics range from circle tool to pain-inducing
    Early battles are so bad it's unlikely that anyone will tough them out for further hope
    Late battles involve one single choice that you can make per character, basically
    Laziness causes sloppy work in many aspects of the game: why play a game the author didn't really want to make?
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