A Ghostly Rose

The game wears its Dark Souls influences on its sleeve, but has the rare understanding that Souls games are not defined solely by difficulty. From the healing item that is restored at save points to the cryptic lore that is strengthened after examining its denizens to the progressing storylines of NPCs in parallel to your own quest, A Ghostly Rose embraces its influences but uses them as building blocks for an original work, which is a sign of a great developer. The game is less "difficult" and more "punishing" because while enemies will not simply roll over and die for you, you are given plenty of room for error and experimentation with your ever growing arsenal of attack skills. The battle system is deceptively deep with a high skill ceiling that you likely won't even see on your first playthrough. While you can brute force your way to victory with high damaging skills, it is much easier and less draining on your limited healing resources to learn and make use of the game's unique Break mechanic, where you destroy your opponent's will to keep fighting by completing certain objectives unique to each enemy. These objectives range from inflicting certain ailments to defeating other enemies first. As long as you don't forget about your older skills, however, you will be able to comfortably progress through the game without too much trouble. If you are frustrated at being unable to break certain enemies, there are hints available either through examining them in battle using the State command or by viewing their info in the hub world after defeating them once. The game is not without its flaws, however. Most of them come in the form of graphical glitches. It's fairly clear that there wasn't as much time testing sub optimal paths. While you are allowed to run from most battles, doing so can result in enemy sprites not being reset properly. Thankfully, these are simply graphical bugs and do not affect gameplay, and reentering the battle will fix these glitches. In addition, while the game's pixel art is at its strongest when depicting environments, the character sprites and portraits are not as gracefully made. Edmund is by far the best looking portrait in the game, with various expressive portraits. I just wish the rest of the cast, particularly the titular Rose, were given the same level of treatment. Speaking of Rose, I wish the game spent more time allowing players see more sides of her. Without spoiling too much, A Ghostly Rose is very much Edmund's story and not Rose's. As we spend the entire game with Edmund, we see comparatively little of the backstory and events that led to their relationship taking the turn that it did from Rose's perspective. As the core driving force of the game's plot, I feel like Rose should have been endeared more to the player to give them a personal drive to see the journey to its conclusion. Instead, all we know about Rose is delivered through the filter of Edmund's parental love. It's a strong filter, and you don't have to be a parent yourself to empathize with Edmund's drive, but it's a filter nonetheless. But A Ghostly Rose is Edmund's story, and boy does the game go hard on it. Edmund is the embodiment of "man literally too angry to die." He's no saint, but his flaws strengthen, rather than weaken, his impact. Even someone like me with no children couldn’t help but feel for him by the journey’s end. To delve deeply into his character would venture uncomfortably into spoiler territory, but suffice to say that his journey through the Web is a very personal one that leaves very little to the imagination. In the end, A Ghostly Rose is a good time that is more than the sum of its parts. It is equal parts flawed and heartfelt, lean and meaty, risky and comfortable. It is not ashamed to be what it is, and refuses to bloat itself with superfluous content and padding that would compromise the story being told. It would be a mistake to pass on this game.

This is one of the best RPGMaker games I've ever played. Truly, Edmund's journey is a bizarre but engaging one that kept me interested and engaged throughout the entire playthrough.

I beat this game on a different distribution platform, but bought it here to support. Three Ghostly Roses has always been my favorite RPG Maker game. When I heard it was being re-imagined for a new generation, I was both excited and skeptical. I played Three Ghostly Roses at the perfect time in high school for it to strongly influence my perspectives on game design. Could such a dramatic departure from the source material serve it justice? It took me a while to realize that it didn't need to. I'm happy to say A Ghostly Rose has grown to be just as admirable. It's not trying to do the same thing as the first game-- it's a wholly independent story. Even so, AGR kept me hooked with great moments until the end. This is a game for people who enjoy creepy one liners, turn-based combat, or seeing skilled RPG Maker developers push boundaries. Give it a try! :D

While I have not completed the game as of yet, this has so far been an excellent reimagining of one of my favorite RPG Maker games. Everything from the tight combat to the tense mood exude love and creativity, and you can tell that the creator poured their heart into this retelling. The original version of the game was an experience that opened my worldview on how much more white space there is to explore in turn-based combat systems and A ghostly Rose improves on those systems quite impressively. Battles are more akin to puzzles, involving targeting different body parts to find the best way to take down your opponents before you get killed. Rarely can you brute force your way through combat, and every battle and enemy formation will have you solving battles in different ways. I can't say too much on the story yet since I have only cleared the first couple of areas, but it's so far quite a somber tale of a father who must fight his way through a purgatory-like world in hopes of seeing his daughter one last time. Edmund is basically the John Wick of JRPG protagonists, and will stop at nothing to punch and kick his way through every obstacle to meet his goals, but also lives with copious amounts of regret of what he was like during his life. If you like dad game stories, this is sure to fit your bill. I'm excited to play more of it! It's well worth the asking price.

There were some issues I had with the game's ramping difficulty, but on the whole? Well worth the time. I enjoyed this quite a bit. I was given a key to stream it (you can find it all here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTnsqKuiT0qITrRXq2xOHwELtzzG4wCUz ) but my opinions are my own. I thought the story was interesting, if a bit linear. And like I said about the difficulty, it REALLY ramps up towards the end, and I got so frustrated I nearly stopped playing. Thankfully I was able to power through and get it done to finish this one up. Again, I found it worth the investment of time.

This one is hard to review. I definitely liked it a lot, I think it's clunky but does everything it sets out to do successfully, and I found myself playing through it with enthusiasm. In principle, story wise, it feels like Wooden Ocean mixed with Lisa: the Painful rpg. The dialogue however feels like it goes back and forth between either poorly translated Elvish poetry or Die Hard fanfiction. I don't know how to explain it better than that honestly, but it does do a good job at making you ask questions and at stimulating your emotions, even if sometimes those questions are 'what the heck' and the emotions are confusion and laughter. And I got to wonder, am I laughing at the game, or is the game laughing at me? Am I the joker's joke, or the joke's joker? Can the Joke ever be the Joker? Uh anyways I was invested through and through even if some moments took me out of it. The mechanics are oddly satisfying, simple rpg stuff but with a nice sorta persona-esk type matchup/knockdown system. I liked it a lot. I don't know who I'd recommend this to honestly, but I guess if you liked Wooden Ocean and wanted more? Or if you just really like odd rpgs with a focus on interpersonal relationships? Honestly it's cheap and short enough, I think it's worth picking up if you're curious at least.

A solid little RPG with an interesting combat system that really started to strain against itself by the end of the game. I appreciated that the core conceit wasn't a twist, but presented blatantly and early.

(Full review here: https://rpgmaker.net/games/12388/reviews/10227/) A Ghostly Rose is a remake/reimagination of the freeware Three Ghostly Roses - which had at one point been voted the best RPGMaker game of all time. ( https://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/24599/ ) . For anyone who hasn't played that, though, this game is more likely to come across as a variation on LISA: The Painful (a bulky man in his later middle age carving a bloody path with martial arts moves for the sake of his daughter), remixed so that you always fight alone - but unlike, say, LISA: The Joyful, the combat system had been adapted for that via a limb-targeting mechanic. This might sound outwardly reminiscent of Fear & Hunger, but the Break system here, where injuries are temporary but might result in a near-total collapse of the will/ability to fight, is rather different from enemies permanently losing limbs but being otherwise unaffected as in that Finnish game - and almost nothing else is alike in terms of gameplay. Instead, A Ghostly Rose is remarkable for reapplying obvious Dark Souls elements in ways that arguably make it easier than a conventional JRPG. That is, you'll never need to grind to get past any obstacle - or, say, keep track of how many healing items you own, since you only have your Estus Flask and 1-Up equivalents that are generally refilled after just a handful of encounters - and so, after an intentionally easy, Hulk-like prologue, those encounters (including boss fights) are generally finetuned so that you'll lose many of them without knowing what you are doing, but would have decent slack for making suboptimal decisions if you have paid attention to what your abilities do and what the enemies' likely weaknesses are (Scan command is a free action here!) While levels technically exist (representing how much money you invested into upgrading character skills), money is always abundant, and most of the progression is gated by story, as there's a shonen (?)-like approach where key abilities often require the main character, Edmund, to be driven to intense emotions in specific encounters to unlock them. Thus, as you can tell, it's a very narratively-driven game - and luckily, that narrative is pretty good. As noted, the basic idea would be immediately recognizable for those familiar with LISA - but while this particular setting is hardly sanitized (some bosses hate Edmund enough to swear intensely at him and while this page does not show this, there are actually QUITE a few female enemies who are all-but-naked), it is nevertheless much less vulgar, and the dialogue is generally very appealing to read. I found surprising parallels here with Furi - in that much of the narrative is also delivered by/revolves around a guide character. That, and the question of main character's morality vs. that of the bosses is often just as acute. Truth be told, I don't think this game always sticks the landing narratively - i.e. the story of the King and Queen clearly intends to echo the classic "Lennon ruined by Yoko" storyline (or whatever its equivalent might be in the world of hip-hop) - but it doesn't seem to keep track of the supernatural aspects of the situation very well, and their implications make a supposedly clear-cut situation so ambiguous as to make it remarkably difficult to side with anyone. Having said, very few games have consistently great stories from start to finish - and on the bright side, the unique battles you get there also feature the absolute best of the already good soundtrack in the game. While all of it is at the very least good enough for the situations they are played in, two tracks from that chapter are now in my playlist. Graphically, the game is also generally pretty good; while some facesets could do with more work and some interiors could have a bit more decor, my overall impression from the graphics is very positive - particularly thanks to the evocative Broken sprites of the enemies, which always make the damage you have inflicted seem significant. In all, I recommend it - and I am now quite interested in the creator's next game, Kissed by a Star, which is due to release today! (Will update this review once I have played and reviewed that one as well.) 8/10