Neverspring Chronicles

Putting a conclusion in the preamble for people who don't want to read all down below: If you're looking at reviews after seeing it's clearly an RPG Maker game that mashed a variety of assets, you're probably looking to find out if there's something special here. There are and aren't in many ways, but I'm not recommending this because I pity it/its creator, nor because I can see the hard work put into it. Neither of those make something good to me and I wouldnt lie and call a bad game good. It has flaws, but also a very interesting core, and a world that can be expanded, and wants to be expanded. You won't have a bad time with the game (even less now that I've reported some issues I found hopefully), and will give support to a small author with a rich world to write. I want to see more of this world, and you will to once you play it, so consider your purchase of this game an investment that will pay off one day. That is my stance on recommending it to you, reader of this. [h3]First, who am I and who are you? [/h3] I read books more than I play games, and my favorite games are all VNs, so I'm mostly into anything for the narrative. If you're dismissive of narratives and just want a rich gameplay, you may have your frustrations with how this game plays, but perhaps it is your feedback as a gameplay gamer that the dev needs to grow more. If you're also into narratives, you'll see in this game how the author probably watches anime and has read a good amount of YA novels. Above Harry Potter, below Brandon Sanderson, perhaps swinging for Terry Pratchet. [h3] What will you experience in this game? [/h3] In a nutshell, you'll play FF4-6 with some mechanics from 7. It wears its influences all over itself, but not in a nostalgiabait way. Rather than "I clapped because I know that,' you'll just know its a familiar face on different clothes. It's not trying to be any of those games, but was made by someone who clearly loves them. [h3] Gameplay [/h3] There's a bit of a QTE attack and many special attacks that aren't QTE. If you nail the QTE, you can do an infinite, which makes it a skill-based system, and the special attacks which don't go infinite and can be pretty expensive but don't require skill to deal massive damage. I tried QTEing for my first hour and then spent the rest of the game just using a pistol on everything that moved to save time and not get angry at not getting a perfect on the QTE. The QTE is a window with a decreasing circle which you have to time, but there's no visual sign or cue to show you when you're on a perfect, and when you're outside of a good even. That makes it pretty janky and hard to control and I don't have the patience for it. But the Magitech Blaster (aforementioned pistol) will be dealing 9999 damage after you use it for a while, so it's not like you're being punished if you can't engage with the QTE mechanic. Enemy drops, stealing, looting isn't exactly dispensable, but very little rewarding. You'll spend the whole gaming getting the same items pretty much, from a randomized pool. That comes with a cursed downside in which you'll be in a dungeon in which the boss inflicts an ailment such as blind, and enter the fight without anything that heals blind. Having the dungeon prepare you for the encounter that is incoming is ideal design to me, much like the savepoint warns you of the boss, the heals warn you of the ailments you'll face. Random items might make the experience more "unique," but at a cost, and I'm not a fan of such design philosophies. Bosses possess a Rage Meter, which will increase when they're damaged and each passing turn. When it fills up, they unleash a strong move. A bit odd to be punished for attacking, and considering how spongy bosses get later on, and how strong their moves are, it adds a counterintuitiveness to battles. The stronger and better you fight, tighter the noose around your neck. If it forced me to micromanage Rage and decrease it through some kind of action, or if conversely I had to attack to stop the strong attack from coming, I'd feel the experience would be smoother and more logical. The first and final boss are the worst Rage meters, as the first one instakills you after a few rages, telling you to "not let it get closer" when I don't have any kind of knockback mechanics or escape option that lets the distance grow. It's a timer to your death on the very first battle and when I almost ragequit. The final battle is much of the same, but instead of an instakill single target skill targetting one of the two PCs you have, the final boss uses multitargets near instakills that will kill your entire party 99% of the time. I just retried it until someone survived and I could continue the battle. No skill, a little strategy with what equipments I had on each character to increase my odds, but mostly RNG. Whenever the Rage Meter was full, I just crossed my fingers and prayed for it not to be the strongest attack, and that maybe the damage was just low enough for someone to survive. All bosses between those two were either a walk in the park or challenging enough, so there's an enjoyable experience sandwiched between two slices of bread kneaded and baked by the devil. I won't tell you how to cheese every boss encounter so the dev can't nerf it, but if you need help, let me know and I'll whisper it on your ear (there's a non-skill based infinite* in the game you can exploit). [h3] Story [/h3] When making a game on no budget and without anyone wishing for it to be born, it is natural and inevitable that some content is cut, and you can feel it. There's a lot of things that probably would hit better with more time for development and depth. I can't blame it for not existing, but I can't excuse it either, so there are some terrible, sudden turn of events, some meaningless events, very shallow exchanges and a character that joins the party for no reason really, and tags along to the end of the game like the team really matters to her. It's quite awkward. It's not a massive, bold fantasy story, some of the stakes aren't very solid, but there is an emotional core very unique to its storytelling. What this author explores in this story is pride, dignity, recognition. It doesn't rub it on your face, perhaps partially because some of it flooded in less intentionally than the author meant, but your main hero and the two antagonists are trying to write their own stories, stories in which they are dignified, worthy of love and accepted by others. If the entire cast had this energy, this search in their hearts, their conversations and quests probably would be more meaningful, but the story not being devoid of any messages and emotions despite how amateurish it can be at times is what makes me believe in the potential of the world, in part. Both the hero and the villains were concepted around "Who/what smeared their honor, trampled on their dignity? How do they cope with it, what did that turn them into, what are they doing to recover from that?" and a nice essay is made out of each of them, but the rest of the cast having no such flavoring to them, if any at all, is quite disheartening. None of the bosses encountered felt personal to the cast, none of them challenged their views, smeared any dignities, had any ideological clashes. An interesting essay left only half written, sadly. Another thing the writing suffers a lot from is "remember when X?" I do; we were in Y, doing Z, when A said B and C caused a D." "Crazy times. Let's do that D again" and it's very much a copout. I understand the characters having a past, but I'd rather it be a mystery to me than this tell-not-show fest. One of them is used to, what I believed would be a romantic moment between hero and heroine, and I could excuse it, but instead it turns into a falling out, as the heroine lashes out very uncharacteriscally and the MC is 10x the aloof jerk he generally is. And that evolves in the heroine trying to cuck the MC,

Honestly? An amazing game. What really grabbed me early on was the amazing dialogue. The battles actually grab your attention and keep it. Sure, he's cribbing off of FF7 for his aesthetic and FF6 for his music, but if you're going to crib off some games, those are some damn good options--and he does it well.

I'm enjoying playing and exploring the game. Nice features and thoughtful touches. This is a winner IMO and the Developer is super responsive on the chat.

This is a great little game for a great price! I love the vibe and the story got me interested right away.

I'm only 2.5 hours in, but I'm going to leave a review because I'm not 100% sure when I will come back to this game. I do want to return, but as I have a job and kids now it's much harder to find time, and my backlog is growing all the time. This review is probably more of a critique for the dev since I came across his youtube channel and ended up watching 3 of his videos back to back for some reason. Overall I'm pretty impressed by the dev's efforts, Neverspring Chronicles is a breath of fresh air in many ways. I'll try to distill my thoughts down as succinctly as I can. [h2]The Great[/h2] [list] [*]IMO the best thing about NC is its pacing, both for story and gameplay. Nothing ever overstays its welcome and there is a LOT of variety in gameplay considering its a solo dev. Finding scrap, pressing buttons, opening bridges, little mini-games (even tho some of the controls aren't clear), it's nothing crazy but it's enough to keep things interesting. I just don't get bored walking around which is great. [*]The dialogue is especially well-done. I'm not saying it's a masterpiece or anything but it's just compelling enough to be a positive force and has impact without taking up too much time. Honestly just the fact that the dialogue isn't cringe is huge, I can't tell you how many JRPGs are just absolute trash cliche stories these days, even including massive AAA hits. There are a couple genre cliches, but the game is supposed to be a nostalgic JRPG so that's to be expected and it's all done tastefully instead of being tropey. The story isn't the most original thing in the world but it's different enough for me to not know what's coming next and keep me on my toes. [*]Combat is brisk and snappy. I especially like timing your standard attacks, that part is really fun and is a solid improvement from traditional JRPGs. There are some unique and fun abilities/spells to use and it made even early boss fights strategic which I loved. Difficulty is more of a personal thing but so far its been a nice level of challenge. A nice quality of life improvement is that the battle system ends your attack sequence right when the enemy runs out of health, which lets you better estimate how much health it has total. [/list] [h2]The Decent[/h2] [list] [*]Music sounds like it was ripped straight from other classic JRPGs and then remixed just enough to not get caught plagiarizing. That's not necessarily bad as it does evoke a strong sense of nostalgia and makes me hate on it less than I want to. In a vacuum everything sounds good, nothing groundbreaking but I like it. [*]Leveling up is fun bc you feel like you're getting something new all the time, but I would've preferred if I could choose what came next and shape my own playstyle. [*]This is not the dev's fault as it's just part of the genre, but I think JRPG random battles need some new innovation to keep them fresh. Once you've seen all the enemies and figured out how to beat them, each recurring battle becomes a chore. A lot of random battles aren't completely trivial either, so while that's normally great bc it keeps me engaged, they do end up taking a lot of time (or maybe I was underleveled?). [/list] [h2]The Bad[/h2] [list] [*]By far the worst part of the game is its visuals. I knew to expect amateur graphics going in, but I didn't expect it to be so difficult to parse which affects readability and even takes me out of the game more often than not. Sometime's it's hard to tell what is a path or a chest or an interactable. The environments look overly busy- like someone just took stock assets and tried to make sure no 3x3 area was ever completely blank. It somewhat achieves that goal but at the cost of it not looking like a real place that could actually exist. There's not a lot of continuity between environments so sometimes it feels like I'm entering a completely different area every screen (not nearly that extreme, but still jarring). The character sprites & their portraits don't always match, or an enemy in world-space vs an enemy in battle. Sometimes I wasn't even sure who was talking bc the sprite difference was that significant. Normally I value gameplay much higher than graphics, but all of these things add up and make it difficult to focus on the gameplay. Also unfortuantely, JRPGs typically have massive budgets and look fantastic, so in this genre you are unfortunately competing with the creme of the crop with regards to the visuals, this is probably what turns away 90% of your audience. [*]The next thing is just clarity. I'm not the smartest bulb so other people might not have the same issues but there are a lot of things that still don't make sense. This is a common issue for solo devs or people who haven't done much playtesting tho, so it's not offensive, but I do need to point it out. For example it's not clear that you need to spam a button to power up certain moves, or what triggers deflection vs dodge vs counter attack or whatever. The ATB turn order thing also wasn't clear for awhile, it would look like all characters get to the top together, however after a bit I realized it's about who gets to the top first. Some things say they don't take up a turn, but then my character goes down to the bottom of the ATB. It took me awhile to realize the green bar at the bottom is the same as the ATB on the right side of the screen. Also I still don't fully understand magitech vs skills vs abilities vs whatever, altho I'm probably just dumb for that one (or missed something). I'm also not sure if this is intentional or a bug, but sometimes the battle screen is really dark and no spotlights appear so everything is just hard to see. [*]The voice acting is not good. Hearing "Yawn better luck next time" for the 30th time gets old... my 5 yr old son laughs every time he hears it bc of how silly it sounds. [/list] In the end I honestly think you did the best with the budget, team size, and time that you had. I honestly don't know if it was possible to do much better, especially if this is your first game and the fact that you were limited to RPG Maker. I will continue to follow your journey, thank you for making the game.

Je regrette mon achat et c'est peu de le dire

I guess? I’m sorry I can’t give a more definitive answer but this game is… alright? The Bad: It’s clearly the work of a small team if not an individual but it seriously lacks the polish of other games of similar scope and it falls behind other games in the genre. It appears the game has gone through heavy revisions which explains the state the game is in. Character portraits change to older versions, some of them inexplicably are more detailed than others. There are at least 3 glaring instances of characters being out of scene that make NO sense in the story as though the authors forgot what scene was going on. The balance and scaling are all over the place. There’s a lot of emphasis on characters that you never actually interact with. There seems to be multiple areas in the game you can’t actually go to as though there’s an unfinished final act(s) of the game. The best grinding spot in the game is literally the first dungeon after the tutorial. I never figured out what most of the items did. There’s a lot of status removing items for effects that as far as I can tell are never inflicted on the player. The chain combo system gives you a terrible TERRIBLE window to hit it without a useful visual indicator and different difficulties on hitting it with different characters. Magic is supposed to be rare and extremely powerful but not only does the protagonist barely use it but I never found a mechanically justifiable reason to use it. Literally a dagger will out damage anything else. The last companion you get is thrown in at the end without any of the strengths of the relationships of the other characters. Her special talent is also one that should have been with an introductory character as it would be super helpful at the start and almost completely useless at the end. The Good: The writing. Everything is manageable and important. Everything has a real sense of urgency to it. The characters are mostly fantastic. The main character is a real piece of crap and stays that way mostly throughout the whole story. He improves towards the end which is nice, actual... reasonable growth. When his sister just abandons him to run off on her own you get it. Yeah, he DID just leave you there and never return. When his girlfriend, uncle, and family move on without him you get it, of course they would. Everyone in the story feels reasonable and I like that. Also ignore the description of the game. To someone whose now played and completed the game I can tell you that it isn’t accurate. Your sister isn’t important. The story isn’t about two siblings who led different lives coming together to save their father’s legacy, it’s all Marrak’s story. Natasha (sister) drops in 2/3 of the way through and has… ONE significant plot point. For... 8$? I'd say it's reasonably worth it. If it had a full team behind it to give it a final act and last layer of polish it would be a great game.

I'm not generally a fan of JRPG style games, but this caught my interest and I decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did. I'll preface my review by saying that while JRPGs aren't usually my thing, I loved Final Fantasy VII mostly because of its engaging plot. The plot of Neverspring Chronicles hits a similar button for me. It doesn't have the same level of detail, but it still gets a respectable amount done in the 20 hours I spent with it. The atmosphere, music, character motivations etc. all work well to immerse the player and create a world that feels lived in. It was a world I enjoyed exploring and by itself it would have been enough for me to keep playing. I think it could afford to be expanded in places, of course, and hope that a little more is added in the future. As for gameplay, the reason I don't tend to play JRPGs is because of the level grinding, which I find tedious. But for me Neverspring Chronicles didn't feel like a grind at any point because your characters seem to level up enough to cope with the bosses while organically exploring an area. Only once did I linger in one place for a few minutes to do some levelling, and only then it was out of habit near the start of the game. As for the bosses, they felt challenging not because they're damage sponges but rather because they have genuinely dangerous abilities that made me think more about what I was doing. They also didn't seem unfair at any point. I think this is quite a difficult thing to get right in a JRPG but the developer clearly tried hard to strike a good balance here and, I think, succeeds. The combat itself is engaging too; the attack command gives you a QTE trigger which lets you chain further attacks if you hit it correctly (though what counts as a 'success', 'fizzled' or 'perfect' is unclear). The thaumatech system will be very familiar to anyone who has used FFVII's materia system; weapons and armour have slots you can insert thaumatech into to grant various buffs and abilities. Thaumatech levels up with experience to give new functions and characters also level up their spells and abilities the more they use them, meaning those spells and abilities grow stronger over time. This makes sense, but it does mean that it may be more efficient to just use a single ability such as the blaster/rifle all the time to get better damage in a shorter period. On top of all this, characters also learn their own individual techniques as they level up, which is a nice touch but perhaps in the end the player has a few too many options to work with in battle, some of which I never had a reason to use. But nevertheless I found the combat fun and interesting. There were a few bugs I noticed during my playthrough but the developer is actively improving the game so hopefully any bugs will be fixed in due course. I hope there'll be a cure for being dazed, unless it already exists and I didn't find it. Overall I had a great time with Neverspring Chronicles and intend to play it again in the future. I think it will appeal to any JRPG fans as well as people like me who tend not to play JRPGs.

developed by one man. this is a fun game and priced right !

For an $8.00 game, you really can't go wrong here. Neverspring Chronicles: Phoenix Down is a classic turn-based RPG with a minor active-battle system (you can get off extra damage through quick time events), with a story encompassing conflicts between gods, countries, and men; focusing on developing the individuals driving said conflict. While the story is fairly generic, it's well written, the characters are engaging and distinct, the setting is a fun near-apocalyptic magic-punk, which clearly has room for many more installments to come. My only gripe with the game is that it is extremely buggy; it crashes often, especially towards the end, and it's easy to soft lock in places (especially towns) because townsfolk will occaisonally randomly decide to stop moving in unfortunate spots while you're interacting with objects. There are also bugs with the level up system; sometimes you don't gain stats when levelling up, sometimes you lose stats when levelling up. Also, your gear randomly unequips often, during combat even---not an enemy mechanic, just something that happens. Some of the achievements also appear bugged. Still fun, but if they could clean that up it'd be a very good game.