Alpha Kimori™ 1

"So Hashbrick do you recommend Alpha Kimori Episode 1?" "Absolutely!" is what I would have said if it didn't have so many things wrong with it. At this point it is nothing more than a "Well if you like RPGs and don't mind a huge let down...be my guest" Let's go down the list of everything that just makes this a disappointment in any regard. CONS Short - 5-7hrs depending on how hard you grind there isn't much going for it. The story has a hard time taking off and when you are done you are still wondering what exactly went on in that short time frame. This is exactly why RPGs were never made in episode form originally, it is hard to tell a meaningful story in a short period of time. Soundtrack - Get ready to hear the same damn music over and over. One of the songs actually sounds like watching a citcom where it hits the high notes and out comes the actors running down the stairs with their names appearing. It is a very odd taste of music and you will groan everytime you hear it even with the short episode. Lack of Strategy - The only time you will ever use "skills" is on boss fights to quickly defeat them, other than that the whole game is cruise control of spamming just attack and watching ♥♥♥♥ die. There is no weaknesses or status effects just a minor attack up, attack down system. Redone & Overused Areas - Get ready to go to the same damn areas you go through in the beginning of the game with the exception of the final area that is new everything is rehashed for every quest and side quest. You litteraly do not venture more than a woods right next to your town and nothing more. There is times where you wish they'd just wipe the enemies clean and just let you run instead of running into lvl 1 ♥♥♥♥ at lvl 32 just cause its the very first area but you need to do quest X here for the 10th time. Story - Extremely weak story of a love triangle (or lack there of) between a brain dead, can't think for myself female that is obbsessed with the main character to the point it makes you sick. Then this douchebag likes the chick you could care less about while you hunt for another chick on the other faction to realize that you could care less about your own morals that were forced on you by your crazy ass parents who have no problem to just kill you off if you fail your exam?!?! Oh ya and something about some alpha ship that came from Earth to this planet, with two factions; one that wants to get back to Earth and one that wants to just stay and make the best of it, who then made these Kimori human like things but not considered humans who consider themselves gods, while 7 souls of angels that turn into some kinda gem thing implanted in 7 different characters that can call these angel things in battle, while the other faction can turn into enemies and the reason to kill monsters on the planet is to harness their ki energy for....reasons. Confused yet? Good don't expect anything else when it ends there is nothing if anything explained in this crazy mindless plot. (It is suppose to sound like a run-on because of how short the episode is and how much they jam in your throat) Items That Don't Matter - Throw your items in the garbage, you will never use them if you are on par with the levels you should be. As for weapons and armor you will get hand outs during the story no point of ever using the stores ever... Lack of world building - There is no detail in most the areas you will travel through, just plain grass, caves, one town and a small one with little to nothing in it. Cutscenes - Not only will you see the same cutscene cut up in different places over 10 times in different points in the game as they ram it home that "this is the defining moment of change!" You will also be greeted to ingame cutscenes that require npc movement that takes so long and you can't move until its complete. The graduation ceremony you watch 3 npcs walk up take their document and go back to their place, for what, what point is there making the player wait a long ass time for no gain, no dialog, just movement... Seems like they just did one flash back and cut it up cause it was too much work. PROS Graphics - looks good for a 2D RPG, models are nicely detailed. Battle Engine - While not having to actually use it much, it is overall a well built battle engine turn based menu system. Character Building - While being short it does a ok job at detailing some of the characters and giving them a background, this is probably the shining moment in the game and the only shining moment. There are some cliched character of course but for the most part the reasons and ambitions are clearly detailed throughout the short episode. FINAL THOUGHTS If you like a RPG with a meaty story, look elsewhere. If you don't mind grinding mindlessly and go through the same areas over and over again for a little piece of pie (the story or lack thereof) then by all means take the plunge. I can't recommend this game based on the obvious issues with this game there is no meat for the lover of RPGs and in retrospect if I had known it was going to be what it was I probably would have not pushed myself through the entire episode. 2/10 - extremely average run of the mill RPG with little to no reason to actually need to experience it.

Here is your generic JRPG. Though, it has beautiful music, a catchy battle theme and a great story concept, the story is almost non existent. 75% of the time, you will be in the same three zones, grinding through monsters. And that's pretty much it. The other 25% you will get a little bit of the story, and some character who orders you to go back again to the zones you were already three time through. An spoiler-free example: Someone mentions, that this girl wants a word with you, so you head to her home. The girl isn't there but you can talk to some stranger in her house, who tells you that she is in the flat of that dude upstairs. So you go upstairs, only to find out she and that dude aren't there either. Gladly, another random person tells you they are both at a top secret place, and because he's a nice guy he will tell you where it is. IF you bring him this stone, which is unfortunately at the end of a place you already been three times. To reach this place, you have to grind two other areas, which you been obviously too, in the past. Another example: There is this super important tower which you have to get to immediately. But first, you have to get a few items, from the zones mentiond above already. Once you recover the items, you may notice, that you bought these exact ones about an hour ago in the town. So yeah, thanks for nothing, let's head finally to the tower now. This basically the gameplay. Someone tells you to grind through those three zones, you go back, to another port of your hometown, only to get told to go through the damn three zones again. Sounds a bit harsh, but really: this games doesn't deserve more than 2 out of 10 points. Especially with that price, which is way to high.

Falls short in too many areas. Just going to echo the major points, though: 1. Combat is too simplistic. Just spam your high damage ability and grind. Nevermind any kind of "balance" concerns, it never even attempts any kind of depth by giving things like ability/class variety, itemization, consumable management... nothing! 2. Writing is too awkward. I can forgive the above point and a weak story/premise if the writing is good (especially since this is an RPG where the focus is on writing). 3. I did complete the game. The "hours played" is a little long because I left the game on for an hour or so while I did other stuff. I don't think the game is too short. If anything it's too long. I say this because this game IMMEDIATELY throws you into grinding. And there's plenty more grinding to be had throughout. On top of that, you revisit the same areas all the time! Basically this is a ~2 hour game stretched into 7 or so. And you can't avoid at least doing some grinding. I was about level 37 on the last boss and he presented the only challenge of the game. If I was... I dunno, level 25 or something I don't think he would be beatable. More on the writing- The major problems come from two sources: everything is too direct and on the nose (Main character is told to kill, he states that he refuses to kill. Every person has to explain everything like how the government is fascist and fascism is bad. People outright point out their own biases and then say, "But you're not like that" within one second of meeting someone, etc etc) and the dialogue itself is awkwardly phrased. It sounds like it's written by someone with a passion for writing, but their first language isn't English? Like if you were to meet this writer in person you'd be impressed and say, "Wow, your English is great!" but it's not up to snuff when it comes to dialogue in a written story. The phrasing is always SLIGHTLY off. On top of that, it neither attempts to be natural or what I call "movie dialogue" (where each line is meant to both move the plot forward AND demonstrate a [thin] personality within 5 or so words). So- to put it more simply- it's kind of a pain to read.

I wish I could recommend this game. It's clearly not just another crappy RPGM game: the devs put effort into the art and story, and it shows (I played through the whole thing mainly because the story seemed promising). Unfortunately, it fails at being a [i]game[/i]. As other reviewers have noted, the characters' ability sets are all made with the same cookie cutter, and battle is extremely repetitive with no tactical aspect: attack, rinse, and repeat. Maybe get it on sale if you're an avid JRPG fan; otherwise, avoid.

Alpha Kimori is an ok game that suffers from some debilitating issues pros: easy to learn battle system. Good art good music Cons: the fights are relatively easy without any grinding required. I don't know if it's due to the translation or not,but the dialogue and plot are so terrible I cannot continue to play this game. reading the dialogue is like watching a soap opera it is that level of forced conversation. In fact a soap opera is better. Update! I got developer comments. That's awesome. That makes the dev's credibility go up a notch in my eyes just for that. And, given that I think I'll add some more detail to this review so they, and others, can understand exactly what I'm talking about. Warning! Small spoilers along with *a lot* of text below [spoiler] The issues I have with the story are more to do with the character interactions. I played right up until the two main characters have spied on the lady in the cloak and it's time for graduation. I've got three specific examples I can show right at this point in the game: 1. you are ordered by one of the elder's to follow the woman in the cloak. Why does this person order you, someone that's not even graduated to follow someone? I could see the motivation for choosing the MC as being an internal political struggle since maybe the MC and his family has leanings towards the other elder you are supposed to deliver the package too, a test of loyalty for the character to see if he is willing to follow orders since he doesn't like to kill and may be conspiring with the enemy, or some other thing. However, whatever the motivation is for having the MC follow the woman in the cloak we aren't shown any of it. All we have is a blatant plot hook that the player is smacked in the face with. The Elder even says something to the effect of "she trusts you" but we don't know that. The Elder certainly shouldn't know that. It makes the Elder come across as either knowing way more and being scary intelligent, which it didn't for me, or just some dumb guy that has powers of the script. Aside from the fact that having a non-graduate tail someone who could be an enemy spy instead of trained government agents the presentation to make the MC as a choice could've been better: Something like "that areas mostly for trainees, you being there makes perfect sense so go ahead and catch up and see what you can learn" It's not great but it's better than "Plot character appears and forces you on a quest" 2. On the day of graduation the character "confronts" his parents with his lack of desire to graduate and be a soldier. This has several flaws: A. The MC seems entirely unaware of the situation he's in and how his opinion will be construed. Either the MC doesn't understand his situation and therefore is stupid or he does understand the situation and doesn't care if his parents reject or report him and is willing to accept death. Now if he's aware and is willing to accept death he's either brave or depressed at his existence maybe verging on suicidal. However, we don't see any of those traits in the MC prior to this. We see only a sort of vague resistance to his situation. He'll avoid killing the beasts if he can, but if the player chooses to charge headlong into every fight killing every animal drenching the characters in the blood of the fallen that's all good. So the MC is neither directly opposed nor directly for. he's only sort of "meh" B. His parents reaction is so over the top it is unbelievable. The line "I'll kill you myself" is probably what pushed it over the edge for me. That single line says so much about the characters relationship with his parents as well as theirs with him and yet the response to it is "oh well I guess I should go to graduation then". C. There's no variation in the text. It seems like a small point and yet throughout this whole very intense conversation the text is the same. I don't know if there is inflections or raised voices or anything. It reads monotone. I have no problem with the plot being straightforward. Straightforward is fine. I don't need a bunch of choice trees like mass effect to enjoy a game. But I do need to be able to believe the characters. With this game I felt like I was watching a presentation not playing a game. [/spoiler] Hopefully this makes my point of view a little more clear and also doesn't come across as emotional. I have tried to present my examples objectively without rambling. Feel free to comment and let me know if this comes across as too personal instead of professional.

Boring, simplistic and tedious. This game has fights that are constantly the same with no degree of difficulty or even the slightest chance of failure. The storyline can be guessed right from the start. This game consists of walking around in a RPG Maker world (which can be fun, if you like it old-school), but consists of nothing more then 'fetch and retrieve'-quests. No change, no challenge, no story. I am glad I got this game from a Humble bundle, because I would not have forgiven myself the purchase otherwise.

Alpha Kimori 1 is a short 5-10 hour game depending on how you play. I picked this up in a bundle and i don't believe this game as a stand alone is worth $9.99. If you are a fan of this retro style jrpg you will probably really enjoy this game and for an rpgmaker game it goes above and beyond the typical bad steam rpg game.I think some of the others reviewing this particular game took it way too seriously and didn't enjoy the subtle charms that Alpha Kimori offers. This is the first in a trilogy and is the only one currently on steam so keep that in mind. The 2nd can be purchased on the offical website. Pros: Great Music Engaging Story Fun artwork and Styles Easy to learn battle system Cons: First hour or two is basically fetch quests. Areas constantly reused with reskined monsters Battles can get repetitive

First of all i had a bit of fun playing this game i even got me part 2. But there are some issues with it: 1. Length - the game has such a lack of content and stuff that is there is being rehashed over and over and over. one Flashback scene in particular 2. Difficulty - the game is painfully easy, even without fully utilizing your abilities and training you will have no problem at all 3. Items - or better the lack thereof. there is basically one weapon for each character for sale at some point and they are pretty pricy too. few pieces of armor/helmet and accessory's i have found ONE in the whole game. Not that you would need any in regards to -2-. 4. Scripted events - no matter how strong you are, how you wipe the floor with event enemies the outcome of the battles won't change in the slightest. It starts to get very annoying at some point. I can understand that the linear path has to go to a specific outcome but there are better ways to make that happen. 5. Ending - this trilogy is probably never gonna finish. Part 1 came out in 2011, part 2 (which is not on steam yet) in 2012 and then the dev seemed to abandon the project. The last feedback on how far part 3 is progressing was from 2012 so its safe to assume that the project is dead.

+ Nice graphics (with the exception of the KI skills) + No crashes, no bugs (not sure if it is intentional that you can't use the sector 2 shortcut at one point) + interesting final fight - lots of backtracking - a million flashbacks to the same "don't hurt that poor kitty" scene - small party (usually 2 characters and few playable characters) - basically no variation when it comes to equipment - close to no status effects - slow gameplay (can't run / skip combat animations) - only 4 skills/ character, typically a regen mana spell, a heal spell a single targeted damage spell and one that you don't use - combat is nothing but spaming your highest ki skill all the time + some healing during boss battles

The grammar and spelling are atrocious. The main character is a whiny brat and the story is extremely convoluted. The art styles are not consistent between the overhead sprites, splash screen, and battles.