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[h1]Overall Rating - Unplayable Trash ☆☆☆☆☆[/h1]
[h1]First Impressions[/h1]
I won a copy of Restoration (RS) from an online giveaway four years ago, and played it on a whim. Unfortunately, when I tried it at two different times, I wound up losing any hope for this game whatsoever. The introduction is forthcoming about the game mechanics, such as how new skills are learned from leveling up, that monsters scale with your level, and how the difficulty can be adjusted in the options.
You can also fight some monsters to get a feel for the combat, which is what soured my mood. My very first fight, in the tutorial area, on the default difficulty, almost got me killed. Normal attacks barely hurt the two monsters, while they tore my HP apart. I chose one special ability that attacked multiple enemies, and both of them died from that single attack. That seemed like very bad balancing to me, and the rest of what I experienced didn't improve from there on.
[h1]Gameplay[/h1]
If I had paid money for RS, I honestly would have refunded it after trying out the opening tutorial section. Had I given it a second chance and started the game in full, by the time I lost to the werewolf boss, I'd for certain have uninstalled and refunded it. This is not a well made game and I have almost nothing nice to say about it.
Shortly after watching the story elements play out, I take control of Oliver, who just got out of class. In a fantasy world, with monsters and magic, I just ended my day of high school. Sure. Looking around the area, the school is basically surrounded by a moat, with no bridge or path so I can leave. Walking over to the swan, I possess its body, and make my way to the other side.
The next screen transitions into Dead Man's Forest, populated by wild monsters. Such a safe place for parents to send their children every day so they can get an education. One random NPC on the screen is a merchant selling items. The other guy is contaminated, by which I mean he's actually a werewolf, and what might have been a simple conversation transitions into a boss fight. Previous battles have already demonstrated to me that the game has no sense of balancing, and I die against a boss I wasn't anticipating being a boss because he was only the second NPC I've interacted with.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2864144708
[h1]Controls[/h1]
Lately I've been playing games where I can just use my mouse, and although this is an RPG, it worked perfectly well. Navigating menus with the scroll wheel and mouse cursor was smooth, and backing out of any menu was as easy as right clicking. Although not my norm for an RPG, this didn't feel like a compromise or clumsy.
[h1]Story[/h1]
Reading the introduction story for RS was one of the more baffling and painful experiences I've had in an RPG. For some reason, it was written so that all of it rhymed, but there was no artistry or poetic flair to the tale. It made for clumsy, forced rhymes that lacked the charm of a storyteller or ballad, which begs the question on why it was done at all. When stripping all of that away, the story is confusing.
A village was composed of such peaceful, happy people that they couldn't fathom why a visitor wouldn't be as ecstatic as they were. He lives there for a while, being a grouch that doesn't accept any of their friendly invites, and then explodes in rage, killing everyone around him. Some wizard stops him with a spell, is hailed as a GOD for fending off one murderous nut job, and now travels the land to stop nightmares. It's phrased as if it's referring to dreams, but that seemingly wasn't just someone's bad dream, so I don't understand why that'd be the case. Then we switch over to two random kids who lost their parents in an accident, and now their grandmother is dying. She dies, start playing the game.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2864144386
[h1]Visuals[/h1]
I find the art of RS inconsistent. The overworld, cutscenes, and human designs don't look very good, with the overworld convincing me that this is an RPG Maker game. However, I'm actually fairly impressed with the monster designs. They lack animation, so I couldn't give them full points, but they're easily the best looking part of the entire game.
[h1]Sound Design[/h1]
There seemed to be more than one song that played in the forest, when I'd load in and out of battles. The music was interesting and upbeat enough that I could enjoy it, although nothing was particularly noteworthy about it. When using special abilities and spells, the accompanying sound effects seemed reasonably fitting. I didn't find anything off-putting here, although the default volume was a bit loud.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2864144332
[h1]Pros[/h1]
🌟 Since I used a mouse, I only had to put in minimal effort to play.
🌟 The humans didn't look good, but the monsters were okay.
[h1]Cons[/h1]
❌ When I fought what turned out to be a boss, it was oddly designed. The boss itself, a werewolf, kept doing minor damage. So weak in fact that it was doing less harm to me than regular enemies. However, it had two minions, one of which kept dealing around 300 damage per turn. Unless I was meant to spam healing moves, which only restores around 500 HP, I'm not really sure how I was expected to kill it on default difficulty.
❌ The font is a bit hard to read. Letters are so thick that they obscure what they're supposed to be, although I'd say the numbers are even worse.
❌ Even when you exit back out to the main menu, there's not a way to quit out of the game. I had to open Task Manager to shut it down.
❌ Enemy information is obscured by the fancy embroidery of the UI.
[h1]Tips[/h1]
🔍 Reduce the difficulty as low as it can go, because if you play this game, it'll be for the experience of oddness, not for well-designed battle mechanics. That feature wasn't included in the game.
🔍 Save often, as you'll experience nonsense when you don't expect to and lose progress.
🔍 Don't do drugs kids.
[h1]Final Thoughts[/h1]
Frankly, RS is a hot mess. The impression I get from it overall is that it copy and pasted material around at some point, and accidentally put things in the wrong place. At least, I hope they were accidents and mistakes, because doing it intentionally would be much worse. Honestly, I don't really understand why things are so random and experimental.
I'll admit that if I had access to game-making software, I'd probably push things to the limit to see what could possibly be done. However, that would be my own experimentation and learning phase, a rough draft for what I would want to polish and refine, not the end product I sell as is. I didn't play this game for very long at all, but even if I can reduce the difficulty to zero, utter nonsense is not what I want from an RPG. RS could only be restored by throwing it in the trash and starting all over.
[table]
[tr]
[th]PC Specs[/th]
[th]Performance[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Ryzen 2700
RTX 2070
16GB RAM
ADATA SSD
1920x1080
[/td]
[td]The game ran without incident on default settings.
💖 - RS is healthy
[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
