Epic Game Theory is the first game developed and released by Onix Fox.
Created in RPG Maker MV the game has an interesting concept with the addition of multiple ends promising replayability however poor area design, frequent grammar and spelling error, broken items and extremely poor story telling quickly undermines any enjoyment that the game would have provided.
[h1] Story [/h1]
The short story begins with a "Profit" (by which the writer obviously meant prophet) contacting the protagonist in his dreams, foretelling that an upcoming war between Estinos & Westinos will devastate the land killing everyone. There is no reason given why he contacted the protagonist or any character building for the protagonists history so its left to the player to fill in the blank, but we accept the quest to prevent this war anyway if for self preservation if for anything else.
Its a somewhat generic story but it would have served the game well enough for the short two or three hours that the game is expected to last, if not for the extremely poor writing throughout the game. For example upon leaving the players house the first NPC/Party Member you encounter is Emily who introduces herself as such:
"Hi I'm Emily. You Won't hurt me will you? I'm looking for a friend I'll be your body guard."
At which point she can join your party, I wasn't sure if she was looking for a person or wanting to be my friend but there is no further story interactions with her and many NPCs in the game have dialogue that is written just as poorly or spout random quotes from a variety of sources that have no real relevance which makes it difficult to really understand what the next step is to fulfil your goal.
Another example would be an old man in a tavern, from his speech he seems drunk but apparently your supposed to realise he’s a madman whose has lost his memory, I only accidentally completed his attached side quest when I spoke to him while holding a special memory stone.
More often than not the games puzzles consist of a random NPC in location giving you a riddle which if solved correctly results in a quest item with no really plot or story reason why.
The setting suffers from extreme inconsistency throughout, seemly in a fantasy setting that suddenly has Scifi elements and modern weapons, it lacks any real world building and instead is full of real life references with quotes from Albert Einstein and various books Harry Potter and 1984 can be found on NPC shelves.
Overall between this and the poor writing it makes it feel like a game written by someone rather young of 13 or 14 years old and possibly not a native English speaker.
[h1] Presentation[/h1]
The game uses what I believe are default RPG Maker MV assets for both visuals and sound though the title screen does have music that sounds so familiar to a Chrono Trigger soundtrack that I believed it was a remix.
Area design is rather poor with nearly every area been huge and often empty including the interior maps, often this is paired with the fact there is no obvious way to tell if an edge of a screen will be an area transition or not. Also there are various design choices that make you go “Eh?” such as winding empty chest filled mazes beneath the bars with no real purpose other than time wasting in their design.
Character sprites are spared either with several characters having poor choice of sprite for example Logan the "Master Wizard" looking like a warrior.
Exasperating this is the lack of music throughout the game except for combat which means most of the game you’ll be waking around in silence until a random battle.
The one saving grace is the character animation in combat and I think that is also done by default by RPG Maker MV.
[h1] Gameplay [/h1]
Where to begin… I’ll focus on the main common ground for many RPG Maker Games and that’s the Party Members, levelling system equipment and combat.
The game has 4 party members, none of which have any story importance but are pretty much require to progress anywhere or to level your character.
First of all your main character is possibly the weakest character in the game, proficient with swords and starting with two magic skills heal and spark your character has a very low strength but more hitpoints than many members of the party.
This relegates your character to the role of party healer as except for the easiest enemies in the game he will be hitting for zero damage for most of the game in melee and spark doing 20-40 at most to foes with eventually thousands of hitpoints.
Thankfully Emily the warrior directly outside your home mitigates some of this as she is able to use several of the more powerful weapons such as axes and guns but lacks any skills, the second early obtainable party member AI is very much the same but does does only about the quarter of the damage Emily does.
The third party member is a witch called Jinx who is easily missable but possesses the same skills as the main character with one additional spell of Fire, her magic is slightly more powerful than the main character but when you find her she is level three and you’ll be around level six meaning more grinding to make her useful.
The final character is a hidden character but when found is a level 99 making all your previous work pointless as he one shots every normal enemy in the game and his special ability will two hit any sideboss in the game.
Emily & AI will be the main party for most of the game and with the tiny output even the easiest enemies which give little in gold or experience are tedious to defeat making levelling a grinding chore, especially with the steep difficulty curve in enemy difficulty and that is not taking into account the option battles with alternative ending path characters that have several thousands of hitpoints and do thousands of damage.
What makes things even worse is the levelling system and the scarcity of decent equipment upgrades in the game, when a character levels they get nothing but minor stat increase, there are no new skills nor abilities to unlock and each level really feels like little reward for the chore it is to level. The only way you can gain skills are two scrolls in the game “Double Attack” & “Triple Attack” but to add insult to injury double attack does next to no additional damage when used (28 instead of 25 in my case) and the Triple Attack scroll is broken with it using up the item but not teaching the skill.
Equipment suffers in the same way with nearly every item found been a piece of starting equipment or simply not equipable, even the more expensive accessory items in the shop that are supposed to give addition money or exp from combat are broken. So you can imagine the frustration of finally getting enough money to purchase them before realising this.
So with no or simply underpowered skills, poor equipment, no limit breaks or special moves to use TP combat is dull and unexciting.
Thankfully early in the game you can get the diplomats cloak which disables all random encounters even in random dungeons (except for the single mimic chest in the game) but the horrible thing about it all is that the game forces you to pixel hunt for hidden items placed with no rhythm or reason in their locations so without the combat its faster but still a time consuming, boring process.
Overall the game feels like a "Proof of Concept" or a demo to learn the workings of RPG Maker MV more than a finished game, on Steam it feels completely out of place and this should really be on a RPG Maker MV forum somewhere.
[h1] Pros:[/h1]
[list]
[*]Free.
[*]Nice concept.
[/list]
[h1] Cons:[/h1]
[list]
[*]Poor writing and setting with too many random quotes from too many sources.
[*]No Skills or abilities earned while leveling and slow leveling progress.
[*]Broken items.
[/list]
If you'd like to see a play through check out my video playlist below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x6kKgb8dBA&list=PLcK0-MphMJ_y77kUfNmFo7IwDCOboHBB7
