Gears of Phantasm: Destiny Tailored(Act I)

Pros (+) : 1. Pleasant music, which from what I can tell is original or at least not default with RPGMaker XP, (which is from what I can tell what was used to make this game.) 2. Absolutely beautiful mapping, which is easily the best feature of the game. 3. Two characters to play as, though the other one joins your party anyway 4. New tilesets used, with many many original assets which is more than most games can say 5. Nice looking menu, with a lot of potential for mechanics in the future. 6. Cool cooking / alchemy system, albeit a little convoluted. 7. Many potentially interesting mechanics. 8. Really nice battle animations, the enemies were the most living thing in the game. Cons (-) : 1. I could not get past the combat system. The turn system is interesting in concept but executed very poorly, as you can get hit and die in the middle of your turn. The timed mini-games with the attacks is awful, and I couldn't tell most of the time if I was damaging or healing the enemy. The combat eventually boiled down to mashing "Z" to beat the fights. 2. Little to no story to speak of, and what there is of a story is riddled with grammatical and punctuation errors, and janky eventing. [spoiler]The main story consists of some wizard guy and providing a completely unintelligible reason for the main characters to need to level up, despite apparently being great warriors. If you picked the male character, you have no relevant guidance to what to do next. If you picked the female, you're informed you're supposed to go to the inn. (Sidenote, It took me out of what little immersion I had when the use of the modern concept of "Ordering" was used, which absolutely was not a thing in this game's medieval setting). You eventually wander your way out of the town where you're greeted to some ogre guy, who brings you into his sewer home under the city(?). He tasks you to bring a rusty iron helmet to the ogre mayor. (This is really where I started getting confused.) Despite doing a task for what seems to be a civilised member of society, the goblins in the sewer attack you. Even when you do defeat them, there's no cooldown to the respawn so you can become easily overwhelmed. When you finally make it through the short dungeon, when you go to give the ogre mayor guy his crown for some reason he fights you? There's no explanation given, and even if he defeats you (which he probably will), he acts like you beat him and it breaks the quest. That's as far as I was able to get before I lost any semblance of a quest. The tower that's hinted at is far too difficult to understand the location of if it even exists.[/spoiler] 3. The dialogue is devoid of character, and it's worse than being cookie cutter or 2D characters, they're so devoid of life and it's blatantly obvious it's the same person. Also, much of the dialogue aside from being mostly grammatically incorrect is filled to the brim with what I call "Internet Speak." It's so out of place for the setting that it's extremely jarring. It might work in a meme game found on gamejolt, but due to how much this $17 game takes itself, it's awful. 4. It looks like there's going to be an overworld map for you to explore, but it's all done in level. This might not be a bad thing in most games, but the map is way to big to not have a fast travel system. 5. Unnecessarily sexual armour for the female protagonist, I know that's a huge nitpick and a trope of the genre but it really urks me regardless. 6. Every piece of text appears in this slow, way, nauseating way. It's really unpleasant to look at. 7. The game is generally very confusing. Between the cluttered maps, convoluted story, and bombardment of mechanics, it's very hard to chew this game. It's too dense, but the content it's full of is in various states of broken, unbalanced or un-fun. Final Verdict: I would like to first and foremost say that this game is ridiculously overpriced. There is no possible way this is worth $17 CAD, even though I received this game for free. There are much, much better games on Steam alone for $1 or less, that'll give you far more playtime and enjoyment. Second, this game takes itself way to seriously. It's certianly not the masterpiece cult classic it seems to take itself for, nor should anybody treat it this way. Third. This game is extremely unpolished. I've played RPGMaker games about Big Chungus and Freddy Fazbear made by one person with more polish hundredfold than this game. There are far better, free options you should play instead. Conclusion: Should I buy this game? No. Should I play this game if received for free? If you like suffering.

Horrible. The writing is just Horrible No instructions on what to push for what functions and the F1 key is a laughable implement Tke key loadout in the system menu shuts itself every hell 15 seconds No mouse support at all The combat mechanism should be yanked out and thrown out .......horrible The control with the arrow keys to steer is a pain in the ass as it doesnt even seem aligned correctly Border fullscreen what a joke...i tried for probarly 10 minutes to go into normal full screen and still couldnt get into it $17 for this junk I went into a shop to buy lockpicks and a few things couldnt even figure out how to buy a damn thing....i hit every key on my key board and still wasnt able to The introduction of the storys paragraph rolls out and its a horrible telling and at the end of it it say DOT DOT DOT Obvviously this was somekinda cheap traanslation program In this stage this game shouldnt even be on steam for crying out load...not even if the price was free I got a refund and imagine there will be a lot of people wanting them Horrible just Horrible

Alright, I promised the dev I'd give his game a review, so here I am! I can definitely see promise in this game, but it has a long way to go. The biggest flaw I see, especially with a public release, is the clarity in the text; from story to tutorials, to general menu options. The dev decided to use unique names for everything in the menu (such as "starting act" and "joining act" which actually mean "New Game" and "Continue Game") which leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion, especially since the game has "Act I" in it's title, I assumed "Starting Act" etc were menu options for accessing different acts to be released at a later date. This "Act" naming scheme for the menu may seem thematic, but I think it really just serves to make things more confusing. It would be better to stick with tried-and-true naming conventions when dealing with important UI. The story also seems to suffer from a lack of clarity. Upon starting a new game, I was swiftly whisked in medias res where the bad guy suddenly took my powers, which seemed strange because after that the main characters didn't acknowledge it. It was really baffling. From that point, I wasn't entirely sure what was going on in the story. Tutorials also really lack necessary clarity. First, I am told to pick up a box, but within the same dialogue event I am also told not to bother getting the box. So, what do I do? Later, I go to the inn, and suddenly it's telling me about a storage chest. Do I need to store things now? (This tutorial message also progresses automatically, and seems to have a very long wait time before disappearing, making it slightly annoying in addition to being confusing.) After a brief dinner and a nap my character remarks about needing to change gear, with the inventory popping up. What gear do I need to change? And why do I need to change? If I already have gear equipped, what's the purpose of changing gear (at least storywise, not necessarily stat wise) I was also confused that my currently equipped weapon mentioned something about becoming more powerful with use...so, to me that sounds like I should use my currently equipped weapon, but the character remarked I needed to change gear. Finally for clarity, the combat tutorial mentions I can "press the A button" to get a double slash, but...when? On the field, I notice a HUD element showing me a sword icon, so maybe I can swing my sword on the map and hit enemies? I pressed A - along with many other keys - but couldn't figure out how. So maybe during combat? Well, same story, I tried pressing A, along with many other keys on my keyboard and I didn't understand what I was doing. I noticed at random times it seemed like my character might do a magic attack or something on their own, but I don't know why or how. I also have this "LB" gauge, but I don't understand its purpose. In the dungeon, I met this goblin thing alongside some rats. While the rats were really easy to dispatch - just mash "attack" - the goblin had obscene amounts of health. Since I didn't understand the combat mechanics, I died to it. At first, I was thankful for the autosave because I hadn't saved at all, but turns out the autosave was at the moment of my death, so every time I loaded the save I just got to watch myself die again, and again, and again. So as a result I had to start the entire game again from the beginning. (On a similar note to "again and again and again", there is no wait timer after running from an enemy, meaning if you are backed into a corner, you may infinitely trigger the fight until either you kill the enemy or you die; escaping will just trigger the fight again) So, what I can say that gives me hope for this game is that the artwork is well done, they definitely seems to be a lot of care put into systems and mechanics, as well as the animations. It's the passion that was put towards these aspects of the game that I hope can find its way towards making the game easier to understand and less confusing in execution.

[h1]Before I played Gears of Phantasm: Destiny Tailored(Act I), I had a small pp, no friends, no gf, depression, and no life. These things havent changed, but the game is pretty good[/h1]

Жена сказала, что если на этом обзоре наберётся 10 лайков и 5 наград, то она подарит ящик пива. Мужики, выручайте!