Dragon Fantasy: The Black Tome of Ice

I'm really torn about this game. On one hand you have a love letter to JRPGs of old. The development team designed characters and battle system that are inspired by Chrono Trigger series. The music is charming but none of the tunes stuck with me, these are not pieces you will be humming in the shower. My biggest gripe with this game is the lack of polish. There are tons of game breaking bugs in the game. Put a monster to sleep to capture them. Game crashes. Try to record footage and exit the game. Game crashes. Fight a trivial monster after a boss fight in a specific location. Game crashes. Then there are the minor bugs like walking through walls and getting stuck. Meeting goals for achievements that don't actually unlock the achievement. Bugs happen but what's frustrating is that the developers don't care! Look at the discussion board on Steam, a few bugs are listed with no comments from Muteki! I emailed their support email with a link to a private video of the steps to take to break the game and they never looked at the video (the view count never went up). There's a bug where your cursor gets stuck in your menu and there's no way to get out. There's also a distinctive lack of polish in the menus. There's no way to scroll down by page and instead you must go down item per item. This gets very tedious at the end of the game when you've accumulated a ton of items! It's even worse when you go to equip something, why is it that when I go to equip a chest piece that it doesn't put me in the chest piece items and instead in the "all" category? Why can't I reorganize my spells? The low level spells are useless at the end of the game so in each turn I have to scroll down passed all the useless spells to the bottom of my skill list (remember, no scroll by page only item per item). This makes each battle takes a lot longer than they should! There's also questionable design decisions like a heavy reliance on RNGesus. You miss ALL THE TIME. Most modern role playing games seem to be moving away from this gimmick but Muteki seems to stick to old design patterns. I want Muteki to succeed and I want more indie JRPGs like Dragon Fantasy but I cannot recommend this game unless you're starved for an old school RPG. I will play/buy the next chapter (as I said, I want more of these kinds of games) but I hope Muteki gets their act together.

Hello Friends! I am writing a review for the game DRAGON FANTASY: THE BLACK TOME OF ICE. Unfortantly, im stuck in the game because of a game breaking bug and cannot continue any further into the game because of the bug. Please see game breaking bug here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/328000/discussions/0/1769259642876453023/ So how does this bug break the game? Basically, i cannot get further into the game because the game still thinks it is nighttime and it is supposed to be during the day. In ramona's quest after the split up quest, you are supposed to go to a coliseum where a guy blocks the path to get there with a password. The password is supposed to be available from the plunder thief's area, but when i go there, they say they are sleeping since it is nighttime. I found a youtube video about this same section, and it shows it is daytime during their video, so im guessing this is a game-breaking bug. I have already emailed the company that made this game and asked them what to do. If you want to pester this company, which i suggest you do, contact them here: http://choicepublishing.com/contact I found no email. Because of the above mentioned bug, i cannot progress further into the game, so i am stuck permanently at this one spot, unless i want to replay the game from the beginning again. NOT RECOMMENDED due to the above mentioned bug. If this is fixed and i can go further into the game, i will rectify my negative review after i play further into the game, which is only possible after the game breaking bug is fixed! NOTE: Im not sure playing as Ramona first is the reason for the bug, but i got it after playing as Ogden. Addenum: There is also several other bugs in the game which i already reported to the company that made the game. I hope they fix it so i can play it later, which at that time, i will change my review to positive.

Holy @#$% Music ++ Gameplay ++ Story ++ If you like chrono trigger and FF6, Or like any retro game from the 90's and have 10bucks(cnd) to spare do yourself a favor

Dragon Fantasy: The Black Tome of Ice is a love letter to Squaresoft's SNES-era RPGs. It clocks in between 10-15 hours long (my played time includes some AFKing). The overall story is above-average and the game is packed with homages to games both classic and contemporary. There is a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor and goofiness, but it doesn't get in the way. The combat is turn-based, but quick, and you can get by without much grinding if you approach the battles tactically or turn down the difficulty. I recommend turning message speed up to max. Also, there are no random battles; all monsters appear on the screen. They can be avoided and sometimes even baited away from their pack for an easy kill. They even stay dead for as long as you are in the area, often allowing you to backtrack to a campfire to recover hp/mana and save. Graphics are so-so. There are some clipping problems here and there, lots of resused NPC sprites, and a few common special effects for skills. It has some charm of its own, but don't expect the detail of Chrono Trigger or the smoothness of Secret of Mana. There is plenty of room for improvement, but the graphics definitely aren't an eyesore. I have a difficult time judging music, but I will say this game does it pretty well. Some of it is catchy, none of it was annoying, and most of the repeat cutovers are well-placed, if not perfect. If you love SNES-era RPGs (Chrono Trigger, in particular), you will enjoy this game, but I would recommend it to any JRPG lover.

From what I have played, this game is a fun version of Chrono Trigger. And I would recommend it normally if you like this style. But it will get a thumbs down for a massive, massive reason. I went the wrong way in the game, and the way this was programmed it is impossible to go back. Worst of all, because I when the wrong way without having the right (or any) people in my party, the game locks on a specific scene. So yea....because of crap programming, I get to start all again. I would be forgiving if it was my error that caused it...but to allow me to go to an area I shouldn't be able to get into, and then trap me in that area by placing someone to block my way back...and then having no way out of not getting locked....that one is on Muteki. So sorry..no sympathy. Enjoy you thumbs down for not play testing this.

While this game is passably fun, it crashed far too often for me to be able to recommend it. Though there were MANY frustrating moments while playing this, I will almost certainly buy the next one when when it comes out.

The graphics have gone from NES (Rpg Maker) in the first game, to Snes/Sega graphics in this one, which for some makes it more feasible to the eyes, although it might still look "old" but who cares? We do care about the bugs, and unfortunately the devs seem to have abandoned their games, and we most likely can forget about fixes, let alone a third game, which is a shame. Personally though however it seems i was lucky, as i did encounter a crash on 2 occasions, but they weren't gamebreaking bugs fortunately. In the first you had random encounters like in the earlier Final Fantasy games, in this one you can see the enemies, and engage them or try walking past them, but it's a good way if you want to grind (there is a level 99 achievement) then this helps. The gameplay in this one is also a bit longer then the first, and achievement hunters will even have a longer and fun time hunting them, as they are fair. I am mixed as how to review it, as i would be pissed too if i hit a gamebreaking bug, but i didn't and enjoyed it, get this in a bundle or on a sale, then it's worth a thumbs up (not for it's current price). Save often, then if you hit a bug you might be able to reload and continue.

I really, really wanted to like this game, but after several attempts I just... don't, and can't. I'm an old JRPG lover, my two favorite games are Earthbound and Lufia 2, with other games and series like Chrono Trigger, FF, DQ, Suikoden, Pokemon, etc. under that umbrella as well, so naturally I should very much love this game. But unfortunately it falls quite short: to me, it is at best dull and tedious, and at worst obnoxious and frustrating. I played the first "Book", and while I'm not as big a fan of the older NES-style JRPGs, I found it to be a quaint and decent enough homage to DQ1, FF1, and its own thing for Chapter 3. Not particularly deep or complex, but its inspirations were hardly not such themselves, so it was fine. But this game touts inspiration and homage from much more refined sources, and it fails to live up to them. The story feels meandering and listless, characters just going from place to place with the thinnest of reasons and explanations when on-rails and little direction given when the world is opened to you. The characters, while sufficient in the first game due to the nature of it, feel bland and uninteresting, their backstories, personalities, and motivations rather thin. The most interesting character is Ramona (and her uncle), but the complete redesign of her character mars attachment such that I had in the first game. Ogden, removed from his kingdom, is too generic and bland now, and Anders barely has presence at all. The villains' motives and actions don't fair much better, at least 5 and a half hours into the game. The combat system is simultaneously too slow and too fast. Too slow in that choosing options from the menus takes precious many seconds to scroll through, as well as button input for confirming actions feeling lagged. Too fast in that when actions occur, they happen too quickly sometimes to properly register what's going on without a conscious examination. Battles are very frequent, and they are often packed with far too many enemies (sometimes 5+ just jumping onto the screen from nowhere). Combined with frequent missing, rather high monster HP levels for average party damage output, monster abilities that do high amounts of damage, and a low gold yield that seems too little to properly cover refilling items and staying at inns, much less buying new equipment, and combat is tedious chore, if not brazenly overly difficult as well. I've never been particularly crazy about the monster capturing system, either, even in the first game. It is a requirement at times due to the nature of the party being split up, but the feat of actually capturing a monster can be frustrating. In Pokemon, it's a one-on-one fight most of the time, but this requires you to juggle killing other monsters while just damaging the one you intend to capture, thus forcing you to play a certain way and most likely get more damaged in the process. Additionally, there's no visible HP, just an indicator that the monster is [Beat Up] at a certain point. This point isn't particularly hard to figure out with trial and error, but it's still obnoxious since a part of Pokemon's system is weighing the value of attacking or not, as well as with what attack, based on how much HP the creature has left. Having the Capture Nets be able to fail like a Pokeball would also is annoying, as that's 250+ gold that must go into buying more, rather than healing items or new equipment for yourself. The music also isn't particularly interesting or inspiring. Music in a JRPG is crucial to grabbing your attention, accentuating scenes, bringing emotion, adding to atmosphere, etc. But there's nothing in this soundtrack that is as memorable, catchy, or mood-influencing as they should be. And this isn't to mention all the bugs that seem to be prevalent in the game. I hadn't encountered anything game-breaking yet, but I did encounter minor things here and there, biggest of which was a bug where after selling something in a store, the menu would freeze and I'd have to use the mouse to click the Done button, then talk to the shopkeeper again to resume. Basically, the story feels shallow and directionless, the characters feel bland and uninteresting, the combat is annoying in its tedium and difficulty, other systems lack refinement, the music lacks presence... this all just leads to an experience that I have tried to continue several times over a course of several days, but leaves me distant and going through the motions at its best moments and vocally frustrated at its worst. The first game, Volumes of Westeria, is worth your time if you enjoy the very first Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games, and can be completed in under 10 hours. This, however, I cannot really recommend at all. Maybe it opens up and becomes more tolerable as the game goes on, but I could not make it beyond the point I did, despite my efforts.

[h1] Продолжение драконей фантазии уже уровнем повыше, но тоже без русского перевода... [/h1] Хотя по факту это тоже уровень SNES. Так что уровень Playstation ещё ждать... Долгий путь инди-проектов по ретростилистике для ретроманов. Русского перевода здесь также нет, но есть поддержка контроллера, достижения и карточки.

I don't understand why the review is bad my experience is good so far. The music is really nice really like the battle theme