CRONEWORLD RPG ADVENTURE - 1

[h1]TL;DR:[/h1] There's seemingly a fairly appealing JRPG (this one is Korean, btw) beneath all the weird presentation peculiarities - like the cumbersome interface design and the unorthodox way the game runs and plays from a tech standpoint. Definitely not for everyone. Suggested for the technically inclined and geekily adventurous gamer, perhaps of the older crowd, who would not be averse to enduring some technical hurdles and the uncoordinated confusion (gameplay-wise) that is at least the initial part of the game as the player is getting up to speed with game mechanics. [h1]In more detail:[/h1] Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nah... Looks like a port. Or is it? The game plays by launching an HTML file in a self-contained browser. You can't get rid of the address bar even in Full Screen (F4). If you're after the episode intro [url=www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPvFM2Zqi0U]FMVs[/url], the game outsources to your regular browser and directs you to a YouTube video (that's some serious indie right there). The whole game is perhaps a big old Flash object or something? I wasn't in the mood to investigate, though, especially after exiting the application after which it covertly remained running, leaving no process behind to manually terminate. A good thing I caught on early - had to resort to restarting Steam, and it then turned out the game'd been racking up playtime while being in this limbo state. The game itself is your standard lighthearted techno fantasy about some bad blood happening between wizards (humans with elf ears) and regular humans, with locations boasting a potpourri of architecture styles from medieval to early industrial and beyond - that doesn't mean gigantic airborne aircraf... I mean, CRONE carriers are out of the question, though. There's magic (or maybe just sufficiently advanced technology). Almost everyone owns an exosuit called a "crone" - unlike the hulking behemoths of BattleTech, these are of the smaller variety, a few meters tall, like a Heavy Gear from a less known Activision franchise. The crones don't look gritty and menacing - on the contrary, most are cute & colorful, like Pokemon. The pilots appear to be mostly the requisite teens and junior high students. There are supernatural flying talking tigers and dragons. A sinister rampant AI (or a collective thereof) is scheming, bent on eradicating humans. I wish I could enjoy the story further... Technical and gameplay design issues beset the gameplay as well - there is some minimal tutorial in the beginning, but certain things just happen too fast without explanation. E.g., in the first location, some giant monsters attack the town and there are alerts flashing up top that you're supposed to react to, yet the game seems to be running a lot faster than intended, an issue that some very old games sometimes exhibited when running on newer computers and operating systems. Some fights you initially get into, a few crone sparring matches, are over in a couple seconds, with battle stats or what's happening almost beyond perception - you are only apprised of the result when the fight is over. Oh, and there's an in-game clock, with one in-game hour clocking in around 20 real seconds or so. Some tasks later on are therefore likely to be timed - e.g. in one of the first few quests you're supposed to pick up a delivery after some specified hour. This instills a sense of urgency that's compounded by the fact that the animations are faster than originally designed. A player new to the game can't help but feel rushed, yet there is little direction or explanation. Btw, a funny thing... The word "crone" being thrown around so much is unintenionally risible to the Western sensibilities - it almost begins to sound like homely irate old ladies are the centerpiece of this story. [h1]My take:[/h1] I wouldn't mind tinkering with a technically challenging piece of work like this back in the day, but as it stands now, being somewhat strained for time, I'm opting to pass on this one. However, there seems to be a compelling story and a curious RPG system (the Crones even have various emotion levels) beneath the hood - if only all of it were more accessible to the casual gamer... Still voting up, I like the aesthetics of this Crone World and the story is alright, insofar as I could pick up from the in-game intro and the accompanying FMVs on YouTube.

This game is a sin against god.