Forgotten Beginnings: A New Afterlife

1980'lerin NES RPG tarzında yapılmış, NES tarzı (ama NES'e özgü olmayan) bir müzik parçasına sahip bir RPG Maker MZ oyunudur.

Jogo bacana e desafiador!

I don't recommend you play this game. If you truly crave some old famicom-style RPG, you're better off just replaying one of those titles or looking elsewhere. Please note all I'm about to vent over is from my three hours of gameplay, during which I got maybe 30-40% through Forgotten Beginnings, according to the bestiary. The preview images tell you all you need to know, aesthetically: the 'overworld' is one big vertical series of square plains connected by single-tile-wide tunnels, all the inns (or at least the first three) use the same map, and... just look at that 'forest' dungeon. The small towns you visit are the most interesting thing, visually, and those are comprised of only two or three buildings. This is a design issue, not an art asset one. Storywise, I think "... most information isn't revealed until late in the game..." is a huge understatement. You are given almost no direction and literally no characters to care about from the beginning (Xylozz doesn't count). Only bosses [i]allude[/i] to some bigger picture in their one or two blurbs of dialogue, which fail to entice on account of how sparse and flat the gameworld is - why care about an evil plot if there's nothing for it to affect? Gameplay? I disagree. For starters, the description states a minimal amount of grinding is 'needed'... but in the sample strategy guide, the [i]first[/i] step to beating the [i]first[/i] boss is "... grind until level 4". Of the six quests I completed, three were "kill 10 of the local zone's single overworld enemy" - it's still grinding if you have a quest to do it. I found squeezing a level or two in before the zone bosses to be almost necessary as well, especially considering that you cannot go and buy better equipment with your loot. Yeah, no equipment shops! Your character progression is glacial and unengaging as a result, and whenever my party's ass was getting kicked I would just think, "Man, I wish I could go buy something to make this easier." Combat outside of my grinding gripe: annoying. Enemies don't drop anything (though some do very rarely give you an HP or MP potion) and your skillset is pretty limited and character-specific: [list] [*]Asrana, the swordsman, has a tanking ability that is ineffective for how it locks down Asrana's abilities. It is frustrating to basically remove an entire party member from the fight only to watch the enemy target someone squishier anyways. I only found this useful by its third upgrade in the third zone. It felt like a trap before then. [*]Renol, the monk, can buff their own attacks but nobody else's. This takes two turns to set up, and has to be reapplied every three turns. In a 6-turn fight, Renol is only dealing damage for half of it, and the resulting numbers just don't feel worth it. Likewise, it makes any turn where they aren't attacking feel like a waste. [*]Iryn, the 'black mage', is the most straightforward and useful. Just keep using spells and use what the enemy is weak against! However, you can't use bestiary knowledge (resistances) against unique enemies, meaning you have to play a six-element slot machine until you find the right one. The first two bosses also reflect and absorb, respectively, 4/6 of those elements, meaning you will also kick yourself in the nuts while pulling the lever. [*]Jalann, the mage, just casts Recover (heal all) every turn. Asrana can't direct the enemy's ire for ♥♥♥♥, and damage values are so high (and your ability to boost your stats so limited) that one bad turn is really all it takes to kill a party member. Jalann is generally low in the turn order (i.e. after the enemies deal damage) and you have to make sure everyone is as healthy as possible all the time, so: Recover every turn. [/list] Additionally, you'll probably be in the third zone before you have access to resurrection. Before this, if anyone in my party died, I just let us wipe before loading a save (running is punished and autosaves are constant). Between this and the grinding mentioned earlier, I spent most of my fights on autobattle, only hopping off it when it would be too inefficient to beat a critical fight. I simply just did not care about the fights whatsoever unless the game insisted I had to. My criticisms are above, but my frustration with this game is truly my own fault. I feel the writing was on the wall all over the first zone, and I just kept putting time into it.