Fenrir vs Necromancer Ate My Cat

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

Teal Deer - Hot single wolf-moms in your area, call now!

It's Halloween again, and we're in for a treat, courtesy of Idontknow. For those not Intheknow about Idontknow, he's like a version of me 15 years ago, but with much better game making tools. For those who haven't played his other game, You Need a Hero, this one's just full of references to it. I'd play that one after Necromancer, especially if you liked the characters.

The setting's your standard OHR game world, with anthropomorphic animals living side by side with non-furry people in a semi-modern town with your usual mutant slimes, and a gothic-styled castle right next door. If you thought that sounds a bit like the opening to Wandering Hamster, you wouldn't be wrong, and that's why its the prototype for almost every single OHR game out there. This one's a bit more halloween-centric however. Even the slimes have gotten a nice pumpkin flavored coat of paint, and the trees have taken on a variety of yellows, oranges, and reds in tune with the season. Its a nice touch!

The game's plotline is fairly straightforward if a little bizarre. The protagonist (Poindexter) has sat down with his pet cat to watch a spooky movie marathon when a Necromancer shows up at his house to gloat over how he's going to take over the town, and then promptly eats the hero's cat just to show how much of a jerk he is. Poindexter then puts on his Black Knight armor, giving him the courage to pursue his foe and avenge his feline companion. Along the way, he encounters a ghost with a speech impediment and a very lewd sorceress who promptly steal the show, before putting some serious hurt on the aforementioned Necromancer.

Poindexter himself is fairly forgettable - he's meek, a wallflower, with his only real defining traits being that he has a pet cat. Once he dons the knight costume and "gets into character", he's a bit more of a stronger lead, dropping some olde english now and then to emphasize the part. It's a subtle change, but a nice touch. He's a melee oriented character who can swipe candy from his foes and then turn around and use them for a variety of attacks. But even though he's the protagonist in this story, he's by no means the MAIN character.

Diana the wolf-mom steals the show. She's an enormous flirt, has got some witty remark about every one of the game's multitude of foes, and is the perfect foil to Poindexter's "straight man" routine. She's also a bit more useful in combat - she tends to hit almost as hard as Poindexter, and her spell selection is pretty decent with healing, status ailments, and raw damage spells aplenty. At no point does it ever feel like she doesn't contribute to the adventure in some manner, and nearly all of the game's battles are won or lost based on Diana's performance. Prioritize her for equipment upgrades, and you won't have any trouble with the game.

I couldn't make heads or tails of the third character, the ghost DOO. I think he's supposed to be this game's version the wacky animal mascot / joke companion that a bunch of 1990's RPGs had. In terms of utility he's a weaker version of Diana with less useful spells and his normal attack consumes MP. He's perhaps best used to cram melons into Diana's mouth to further support her Lightningbolt fetish while Poindexter closes his eyes and holds down the spacebar to smash his foes over and over.

Moving onto the game's environments, there's effectively only four, but there's enough variety here and moving from one to the next gives the game a sense of progression. A graveyard, a haunted forest, a mad scientist's lab, and the interior of the necromancer's castle round out the game's dungeons - they're mostly straightforward, but do have some fairly short forks that always have some useful piece of equipment or a much needed recovery item at the end of them to use. Save points are also liberally scattered along the main 'path' and restore the party's HP/MP as well. It's NOT a difficult game by any means, but neglect your allies and you'll east dust quickly.

The music's suitably creepy at points, especially when trudging through the laboratory and the necromancer's castle. The town itself is suitably upbeat, and provides a nice contrast to the other areas. I can't place any of the tunes, through - nothing feels completely out of place, but then again nothing REALLY stands out. I'm not really a music critic.

It's just now occurred to me that Poindexter could've been the Angry Video Game Nerd. Maybe not a missed opportunity. There's enough AVGN fangames, and I don't particularly think his sense of humor would've worked well in this game. Maybe we'll see Diana return in another game where she promptly steals the show again. I want to go on an cross country adventure with a lewd, snarky, fourty-something wolf-lady myself someday. Preferably in a stylish RV, blazing some synthwave music coming out of an 8-track player, with neon pink and orange sunsets behind black outlines of palm trees in the distance.

Wow I got off-track there.