Review: Blasphemous Saga Fantasy

[chill-e]

Taken from Hamster Speak Vol. 10

If you've known PK-Fortis for some time, then you'd know that he loves his comics. He's written several series of comics and comic strips, with his latest being Blasphemous Saga Fantasy, a story following the mis-adventures of our two lovable heroes, Knight and Witch.

The game, however, tells of a tale after the events of the comic. Our heroes discover that the main villain, the totally unawesome jerk-faced, uhm, jerk, King of Slimes, stole a some unmentioned artifact of power while also somehow finding a new lair to focus his new reign of terror and havok and whatnot. And like any good heros, they must recover that which has been stolen once again, defeat the unquestionably evil King of Slimes, and put another one of his fortresses into ruins.

Now, I know a lot of people tend to release games as soon as they manage to make some playable content with some story for players to grasp on. I understand that people are excited that they've managed to make something and almost immediately want to know the opinions of others in regards to the game they have made. Most of these games, however, tend to be extremely short, and most of which doesn't have enough content to grasp players deep enough, and ultimately leaves a bittersweet experience, but mostly bitter.

However, BSF is not the case.

As short as BSF may be (I clocked around 7-10 minutes), what content is available is pure gold. Seldom do I find myself excited to see a next release of any game, but BSF has, miraculously, achieved that. Even if it's wrong to judge a book by it's cover, so to speak, upon looking at the title screen, you can tell that effort was put into the work done. It was cheesy, corny, and reminiscence of the first Zelda title screen. Nay. It was pretty much a cheesy and corny rip-off of first zelda title screen, right down to the scrolly text outlining the intro and list of treasures. But it was brilliant.

And Fortis, being a comic artist, doesn't skimp on the graphics department either. The graphics were bright and colourful (despite being situated in a dreary dungeon) and very much sunday-paper-comics inspired. Graphics were simplistic and lacked texture, but when trying to make graphics look cartoonish, that's exactly what should be done. And being a game based of his own comic, it's a definate plus that characters were recognizeable and looked exactly as they were in the original comic. My only complaint is that some of the tile layout on the walls sort of ended abruptly, making the dungeon look a bit strange.

As I said before, this is a very short demo. There's only one dungeon with 4 rooms, about 10 battles, and not a whole lot of dialogue. But whatever was there was wonderful as it was. Battles were simple, with Knight focusing on melee attacks, and Witch focusing on magic. But what's interesting is how the amount of experience gained is decreased with each level gain, much like various MMORPGs. The dungeon was very Zelda-like in design, with the direct overhead view, there was a simple puzzle to make the dungeon a little more interesting, and the dialogue was quirky and humourous.

With this demo being as short as it is, it's hard not to mention much else without spoiling anything, and every moment in the game is definitely worth experiencing for yourself. And it's too bad that it ends so quickly. It'll be just like every other short demo release, leaving a bittersweet flavour. Only this time, it's a lot more sweeter.