When it comes to games, aren't most of us glory hunters? The thrill of slaying fearsome foes, the process of getting stronger, farming awesome loot, navigating intricate dungeons, immersing oneself in otherworldly stories - these are only the most important reasons why I enjoy playing JRPGs.
Sadly, what I mentioned above is only the in-game hunt. The hunt that I deem more difficult nowadays is discovering decent (RPG Maker) JRPGs on Steam. There are so many low-effort cash grab games on Steam, but I'm so hungry that I still go on the hunt regularly - only to miss my shot after having stalked my prey for hours. Which makes me a fool, most definitely.
I'm even more saddened when - obviously - some effort went into the development of a game, yet it still fails to satisfy me, despite my naturally low expectations. "Glory's Fools" is one of those games that makes you think at first: This could be a decent game. And granted, it isn't even a bad game per se, yet I still can't recommend it.
I've played hundreds of RPG Maker JRPGs, but my least favorite RPG Maker engine is definitely RPG Maker XP (which, you probably already guessed, is the engine used to develop this game). So be prepared for either a small game window or a blurry full-screen (with no middle ground), and rejoice because of all the artificial limitations that gamers deem unacceptable these days for a reason, like slow walking speed, only 4 save slots or not being able to save anywhere.
At the game's beginning and when talking to NPCs, the game offers a lot of (pseudo-)choices (supposedly affecting the story), which makes not being able to save anywhere and only having 4 slots even more annoying (I would even go so far and claim that me not being able to save-sc*m was the main reason why I ultimately quit my playthrough). I'm already living in constant fear of losing progress because of game-breaking bugs, and this game added the constant fear of making wrong/unfavorable choices. In the second and third cities respectively, I bumped into NPCs and made choices not to my liking (in retrospect) before I was even able to find an NPC that lets me save the game. And before I forget to mention it: I'm not paranoid, because - of course - I stumbled upon (game-breaking) bugs. For example, inspect a "toilet" (dump) from the wrong direction and the game freezes (movement-related bug). Even worse, with regards to NPCs that block your way, once they moved out of your way (which can't be triggered more than once), they return to their original positions upon leaving and reentering the map, which cuts the player off permanently from (optional) areas. When I discovered such a bug for the second time, I decided to cut my losses and abandon my playthrough. Hopefully, the developer will fix these bugs following my review.
It's a shame, really, because the game seems to offer plenty of explorable locations on the world map, and some of the NPC dialogue is even genuinely funny, but these aspects only represent drops of water in a vast desert. There doesn't seem to be much of an overarching story beyond "slay monsters and get famous", and many things, including NPC dialogues, aren't properly explained or don't make any sense at all. Some players might enjoy the (pseudo-) ancient Greece setting, but I'm under the impression that this setting dilutes the game's originality even more.
Dungeon maps are rather small, while city maps are cluttered to the extreme, and everything looks the same because of the atrocious toxic-green 8-bit style color palettes. The front-view turn-based battles (mostly random encounters) are rather boring, because none of the skills are really interesting or useful, especially considering that even skills can - and will - miss most of the time (which is usually restricted to normal attacks in most other - RPG Maker - JRPGs). And to make matters even worse, right now (while writing this review), the game's achievements don't work, which I consider false advertising. Once again, one can only hope that the developer will deliver later what they were supposed to deliver from the start.
In all honesty, I only played the game for a few hours. Maybe the game gets better when the party is finally full (4 members). Maybe you aren't bothered by the issues I mentioned - give the game a try then. Heed my warning, though: True fools do foolish things despite having been warned. At least I can guarantee you: Your glory as a fool will never exceed that of Euphoniac, the famous foolish serial JRPG rage-quitter.
