Stories of Bethem: Full Moon

Sono rimasto piacevolmente sorpreso da questo "piccolo" prodotto. Il gioco praticamente è come The Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past. Il giocatore è nei panni di Khoma, un giovanotto che deve salvare il padre, il quale però inconsapevolmente ha creato disastri nel mondo di gioco, come a un certo punto si scoprirà. La trama è carina, nulla di eccezionale, e alla fine assume anche tinte molto tristi. Con un accenno ad un seguito... Proprio come zelda si va in giro alla ricerca di particolari oggetti per potere sbloccare passaggi ed accedere a locazioni per portare avanti la storia. Durante il gioco pian piano il personaggio si potenzia e si acquisiscono abilità per potere accedere a luoghi in precedenza inaccessibili. Il gusto della scoperta è sempre piacevole, come anche la piacevolezza di usare i nuovi poteri per accedere finalmente a quel luogo che prima era interdetto ("finalmente posso distruggere quella parete!"). In questo gioco però il protagonista non usa armi bianche, ma magie, quindi generalmente colpisce dalla distanza. La mappa è davvero enorme, tenendo conto che è caratterizzata anche da una moltitudine di dungeon, e quelli relativi alla quest principale hanno mappe ad hoc proprio come in Zelda. Spesso e volentieri ci si trova davanti a degli enigmi, i quali spaziano dal capire come uccidere tutti i nemici presenti in una stanza (maledetti quelli che si nascondono nelle fosse) al guidare una mongolfiera in un labirinto, spingendola verso un focolare (per sbloccare una porta necessaria per il proseguimento). In altre parole, vi è piaciuto A Link to The Past? Questo è quello che è: un bel clone. Ma voglio passare ai difetti, la cosa che mi piace di più sottolineare: - la mappa è enorme ma è anche causa di tantissimi giri a vuoto, perchè il gioco, sebbene facile negli scontri e nei puzzle, è stato forse progettato male. Non dà ad esempio indicazioni su come proseguire ed a volte fornisce indizi ambigui. Faccio un esempio: ad un certo punto indica che bisogna andare in un certo luogo, ma arrivandoci non è possibile proseguire. Non è chiaro se nelle vicinanze bisogna fare qualcosa o se prima di arrivarci bisogna fare altro altrove. Esatto, si scopre che bisogna andare in giro per il mondo ad accendere tre focolari (ma si scopre perchè si è costretti a farlo non sapendo che altro fare), i quali però sono nascosti, e quindi vanno cercati analizzando ogni singola locazione... molto frustrante, soprattutto perchè durante tutto il gioco accade in continuazione una situazione del genere. Inoltre una volta acquisiti i poteri bisogna ricordarsi dove poterli usare, e siccome la mappa è grande e ci si dimentica, non si contano le volte in cui si rivisitano le stesse locazioni ancora e ancora. Spesso bestemmiando quando dopo 10 minuti di esplorazione ripetuta ci si rende conto di avere viaggiato per un nulla di fatto. Ci sono portali per il teletrasporto, ma sono contati e si sbloccato pian piano durante il gioco, quindi nel mentre sono quasi inutilizzabili per arrivare dove si vuole arrivare... -ci sono personaggi nel gioco che chiedono di fare delle cose e portare degli oggetti. Il problema è che, a furia di fare avanti e dietro per le missioni principali, ci si scorda dove essi siano e chi voleva cosa. Molto frustrante e poco divertente. Soprattutto quando per la ventesima volta si parla con un personaggio che ha da dire mille cose e bisogna sorbirsele aspettando la fine del suo dialogo... Potevano mettere un tasto per skipparlo completamente. -acquisite le magie (sono 8 in tutto) queste vanno assegnate a soli due tasti del pad. Questo vuol dire che in molte circostanze bisogna entrare nel menù e riassegnarle. Questo aspetto è il peggiore del gioco. Immaginate di avere mappate una magia del fuoco ed una del vento. Entrate in una locazione, ma vi serve la magia per ricoprire i buchi sul terreno. Dovete mapparla nel menù. Sorpassati i buchi rimettete la magia che avevate tolto, perchè utile. Scoprirete però che avete sbagliato locazione (nello spirito del troppo backtracking di cui parlavo) e siete costretti a tornare indietro dopo una sola schermata: di nuovo menù, remap per la magia di riempimento, e di nuovo remap per ritoglierla. Davvero pessimo. Oppure le situazioni in cui bisogna spegnere un fuoco con la magia dell'acqua, si esce dalla stanza, si rientre e il fuoco sta ancora lì: se avevate rimappato nel frattempo, diventa MOLTO fastidioso cambiare magie nuovamente. Solo per un fuocherello! Io avrei mappano tutte le magie su uno dei dorsali o grilletti del pad, per poterle scorrere circolarmente, e quindi usarle al volo. -ci sono dei nemici che volano con traiettorie casuali, velocissimi: tra i più fastidiosi mai visti nella storia dei VG. In alcune locazioni sono pali nel culo. Facili se li colpisci, ma per colpirli devi prima bestemmiare 5 volte. -ci sono locazioni piene di teletrasporti, i quali funzionano secondo una logica strana: se entri in uno ed esci da un'altra parte, per poter raggiungerne un altro utile, bisogna rientrarci. Mi va bene se sono 2 o 3, ma non quando ce ne sono 10: diventa un "provo tutte le combinazioni" e non è piacevole. -in alcuni dungeon ci sono stanze nella completa oscurità: ho odiato vagare in esse con la sola luce attorno il mio personaggio, con i nemici che scorazzavano a due metri da me, e io non li vedevo. -come detto, nel complesso il gioco è bello, piacevole, pieno di cose da fare, con tanti achievement. Ma manca comunque un po' di anima e di atmosfera. Il protagonista dovrebbe essere un eroe, ma pare (soprattutto con certi vestiti - si possono comprare vestiti diversi con abilità diverse, ad esempio quello che permette di non cadere nelle fosse) a volte un poppante con un ciuccio in bocca... Per il resto, per me è 7/10 e al prezzo di vendita attuale (1.49 euro, sconti natalizi) è un must buy da almeno 20/25 ore di gioco. Se potete, comunque, prendete appunti su carta: il gioco è ostile, appunto perchè vi fa perdere nella mappa senza indizi e non vi aiuta in nulla per capire dove andare e cosa fare. A differenza di Zelda c'è fin troppo via vai tra locazioni troppo distanti.

This game doesn't really know how to grab your attention beyond frustration, confusion, and tedium. The enemies go every which way in random patterns, some of the dungeon solutions are obtuse, and the combat is downright frustrating due to the magic system. Look elsewhere. This one's not worth the trouble.

It's all puzzles! These dev doesn't know what the word "restraint" means! You better make sure that when you're doing the puzzles, you don't figure them out, but rather solve them PERFECTLY, cause otherwise you'll have to leave the room and redo that puzzle AND any other puzzle that's also in that room. Stay away from this game.

Waaayy heavy on the block pushing puzzles, puzzle ought to be the top tag on the user tags. It had some promise but I don't like puzzle games.

[i]A key has been provided for review purposes. This does not influence my opinion of the game in any way.[/i] [b]Overview[/b] All art is derivative to some degree. Every story you read, every movie you watch, every piece of art you see is inspired not only by those that came before it, but also by works from other media as well. And video games are no different; in 1986, The Legend of Zelda had a profound effect on the landscape of gaming which is still inspiring new works over three decades later- Stories of Bethem: Full Moon takes clear and heavy inspiration from the Zelda series. Does it learn from the lessons of old and build upon them, or does it construct an imitation that only serves to make one yearn for the real thing? [b]Gameplay[/b] Bethem is a Zelda-like action-adventure title in the truest sense; in it, you'll play as Khoma, traversing the world to find dungeons which act as your main points of progression, finding orbs which grant you abilities within said dungeons to allow you to fight in new ways, solve puzzles that were impossible before, and find new secrets. Besides the necessary items, there are plenty of optional orbs to increase your health, magic capacity, and other odds and ends. There are two main components to gameplay: Combat and puzzle solving. Combat is definitely a weakpoint for Bethem; standard enemies move quickly and erratically, with little predictability in their patterns. Enemies that shoot do so far too quickly to react to such, and enemies that chase you often move faster than you. This makes combat less about quick reflexes and more about either trying to out-range them (your basic attack has barely more range than your enemy's) or simply tanking the hits. This feels largely unsatisfying, as combat becomes more like a test of patience and tedium rather than skill and cunning. Boss fights are the primary exception here, as they do tend to have more reliably set patterns. In addition to the problems with enemy patterns, there's also the way the game uses elemental weaknesses. It's a common trope in RPGs, and not at all something I'm opposed to on principle, but the way it's used here is just awkward. There's really only two main orbs you'll be using to fight most of the time, and trying to figure out which to use against enemies can be tedious. Since you don't actually see any indication as to how much damage you're doing to a foe, the only real way to tell is to fight two identical enemies and count the number of hits each takes to defeat—and against bosses, you have no generally idea if you're using their weakness or doing normal damage. Bethem most certainly fares better when we get to its puzzle solving. As is required of an action-RPG, there's a number of block puzzles as well as various mazes. Most of them feel clever enough, with none of them being particularly difficult. However, every time you push a block, Khoma pauses for about half a second. This breaks the pace of the game, and makes these segments last longer than they should. Besides these flaws, there's a few other problems that must be mentioned. First is the fact that every orb—even your basic attack—uses magic. This may not seem like a problem since your magic recharges on its own, but it does so at such a glacial pace that it breaks the flow of the game. The map system is not the worst, but still pretty bad; There is no clear indication of where you are on the overworld or how nearby rooms connect within dungeons. The game even admits that it's lazy design in a fourth-wall shattering dialogue, so why couldn't it address this? And then there's the numerous switches that unlock barriers within the dungeons...you'll be told something unlocked, but you have no indication where, often leading to tedious backtracking. And on this point, just before the final dungeon, you're given an item which will open cracks in walls you've seen throughout the game. Yes, you now must backtrack to locate them all (it's not optional) without any help as to their locations. Imagine Wind Waker's Triforce hunt without being told where the Triforce charts are. It's really that bad. [b]Visuals[/b] Bright and colorful sprite work makes up most of the game, giving it a pseudo-retro feel. It feels similar to something you'd expect to see on handhelds, and while I feel that the sprites could have been better detailed, there's really nothing wrong with the look. It's charming, cartoonish, and clearly meant to invoke a 16-bit feel. [b]Story[/b] The plot is pretty simplistic; you take the role of Khoma, a boy whose father has been cursed with a sleeping spell by the Blue Witch. He goes to the witch's sister, the Red Witch, and asks her to break the spell; in order to do such, she needs him to find the 8 Oneiric Objects. There's not much plot beyond this, though there are a lot of really creepy scenes where the Red Witch is blatantly flirting with Khoma; judging from the art on the title screen, it's clear she's getting up there in years, and while Khoma's age is never explicitly stated, he looks to be a teenager, maybe a young adult, and this felt completely unnecessary. To add to the awkwardness, the translation is fairly rough; The developer is Spanish, and while it's perfectly understandable, it becomes apparent that it could have used another native speaker proofreading of the final product before putting it on the market. [b]Audio[/b] The sound effects are suitably cartoonish. Following in the footsteps of the Zelda titles, Bethem also has an annoying beeping noise that plays incessantly once you're low on health, and there's no way to turn this off; I can understand taking inspiration, but this is one of the most heavily criticized parts of the Zelda series that doesn't need to be imitated. The music is mostly forgettable, with the exception of one or two tunes. The backing tracks are all chiptunes that don't invoke any particular themes for the locations they play. [b]Conclusion[/b] Stories of Bethem is a game that I sorely want to enjoy. I'm a huge fan of the Zelda series, and adore Zelda-likes when they're done right. However, Bethem simply makes too many missteps for me to heartily recommend it. It's trying far too hard to be The Legend of Zelda and yet lacks the charm, clever levels, and enemy designs that made those games so memorable. Because it's too focused on imitating the classics, it never manages to carve its own mark. All-in-all, this makes Stories of Bethem a title that's challenging to recommend. [b]Final Verdict:[/b] 5.1/10 [code][b]This review was commissioned by [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33779114-pcgameit/]the PCGame!t Curator[/url], updated daily![/b][/code]

Stories of Bethem: Full Moon es uno de esos juegos que ha pasado desapercibido a la gran mayoría del público debido a su pequeña campaña de marketing. Este juego pertenece a un estudio pequeño español el cual ha demostrado ser capaz de lanzar un juego digno de la saga Zelda. Claramente bebe mucho de el estilo jugable de a link to the past así como otros juegos de esa índole. Pero no solo coge la formula y tira un copy/paste sin más. Lo hace de manera magistral y de una forma que genera las diferencias suficientes como para darte cuenta del trabajo que hay detrás y que no es una simple copia que busque generar beneficio con ello. Es más diría que muchas cosas que se pueden apreciar en el título están pensadas para ser únicas y que no se le comparé directamente con dicho juego. Cumple en todos los apartados y tienen un humor bastante característico que incluso algunas veces cruza la cuarta pared. En resumen juego muy pulido en todos los aspectos y que merece muchas más ventas de las que haya podido tener. Sí te gustan los juegos del estilo Zelda (clásicos) no lo dudes y si no es el caso, quizás deberías darle una oportunidad.

Me recordo a un juego viejo que no es el zelda, el alundra, algo viejo eso si. El metodo de disparar te hace facil, pero despues se complica el juego y mas en la dificultad gloria el completarlo, creatividad pura, dialogos hermosos y buenas referencias en ellos, una historia para enamorarse, etc. Si existiera una secuela me la compraria apenas pudiera

"Stories of Bethem: Full Moon" is yet another of literally hundreds of lazy amateur 2D retro top-down shooter/brawlers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. This is basically a ripoff of Legend of Zelda, there's some different mechanics, you control some magician dude or something instead of Link, but basically it's just a 2D top down adventure/shooter with little to no value for gamers, a lacklustre entry in an obsolete genre. It's also 9 years old, but that doesn't matter when it barely looks better than games 20 years older. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. To make matters worse, while lazy, low quality pixel "art" has been used, making the game look bad, many elements of the game aren't done with pixelcrap... which accomplishes a couple of things. First, it shows the developers perhaps could have done better and they knew it, so that's a major screwup. Secondly, it destroys any hopes the developer had of creating a "retro aesthetic" as their excuse for the lazy pixelart compromise... It looks completely inauthentic from a retro gaming perspective. Visually, this is a hamfisted mess, a dogs breakfast of bad visuals, and this kind of laziness and poor quality should never be foisted on gamers. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. PC gamers will be insulted by the presence of console peasant children's toy controller prompts, despite this being on PC. Developers should try to be aware which platform they're developing for. In a sheer insult to PC gamers, the developer has locked out keyboard and mouse controls on this game. The developer demands, without compromise, that you must use a console peasant children's toy gamepad to play this garbage game. This is simply unacceptable, developers must never dictate to gamers how a game is to be consumed. This looks a lot like it was designed for consoles, but released on Steam instead by mistake. While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this never made it to the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for. Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the GameMaker Studio construction kit/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset favoured by amateur developers as it's cheap and requires little in the way of development skill, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. GameMaker Studio is most commonly used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs. A strong argument can be made that construction kits like GameMaker Studio should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", GuGames Development has done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real, professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. "Stories of Bethem: Full Moon" didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the game, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for finding a bracelet, one of the first things you do in the game, trivial to get, but less than 33 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. Hardly a success story, gamers just weren't all that interested in the game. Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this game was with players reveals a surprise... there's a modest spike in player counts for the game. But this only happened once, around the same time that trading cards were applied to the game... so this is just card idlers getting their cards and moving on. A closer look at the numbers shows the game just has a couple of players every week running up the game and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? "Stories of Bethem: Full Moon" has the almost scam-like price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam. For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Sleeping Dogs", "Planet Coaster" or "Bioshock 2 Remastered". No pixelcrap is worth $5. If developers want to get paid the same kind of money as real game developers who know how to do graphics properly, they need to learn how to do graphics properly.

This charming game is a completionist's playground - it has lots of collectables such as completing a museum, finding candies for a ghost, digging up truffles for a pig creature, and more. The game is very rewarding for the type of player who pays attention to their surrounding, as you constantly have reasons to return to older areas in order to use newly acquired powers to open new rooms and find treasure you weren't able to get earlier. I noticed a couple of negative reviews referred to the puzzle rooms as padding and attempts to waste your time. Well, if you think of puzzle solving as a waste of time then you probably shouldn't be playing this game. But if you enjoy puzzles, action RPGs, retro graphics, a pleasant soundtrack and collectables, you will probably enjoy this game.

★★★ Stories of Bethem es un juego que compré hace tiempo, 2016, y por una cosa u otra había dejado de lado. Me atrajo la idea de jugar algo como los clásicos action rpg japonés, encima hecho en España. 7 años después no encontraba juegos aptos para jugar con el peque de la casa y nos pusimos con este siendo la experiencia muy satisfactoria. Se siente diferente jugablemente por que no tenemos una espada, tenemos hechizos. Le han dado una vuelta a los poderes habituales para explotar ideas que probablemente no se podían hacer en 16bits y generar nuevos tipos de situaciones que resolver en las mazmorras. Imaginar un fuego que se propague por plantas para resolver un acertijo si lo hacemos de la manera correcta. El juego tiene varios momentos que al resolverlos te traen de vuelta la satisfacción de resolver algún momento de Alundra. Tiene muchos coleccionables que con un mínimo de interés prácticamente dejas a punto de cerrar cuando vas a terminar el juego, siendo ameno hacerlo mientras completas la historia. Los extras de final de juego son abundantes, por un lado son muchas las cosas que obtienes pero estas ya apenas las usaras quedando desaprovechados muchos objetos. Hay una mazmorra especialmente dura que he dejado por estar ya forzando el completismo que no me apetecía. No he probado el modo gloria (modo dificil) La historia es una premisa sencilla que sirve de excusa para llevarnos a mazmorras y escenarios variados del género. La manera de contarla, sus diálogos y sus personajes es muy amena, cercana por la nacionalidad de los desarrolladores. Esto me ha hecho conectar con lo que propone. No tengo dudas que lo peor del juego es su apartado grafico, el escenario del volcán por el fondo de lava es especialmente feo y los enemigos finales hay alguno horrible que desentona. Muy justo, funcional, simple incluso para la época. Un poco mas de presupuesto o recursos y el juego creo que hubiera sido mas conocido. Musicalmente no desentona. Hay una mazmorra que tiene un tema muy épico que encajaría en Demons Souls. Un juego que regalar, que recomendar a alguien porque probablemente no llegaría sus manos de otra manera. Tiene ideas interesantes y acertijos trabajados que demuestran un gran mimo por parte de los desarrolladores (pese a los recursos), debería acercarse una persona algo curtida en este género (o usar guías) ya que no te dan mascado nada como en juegos actuales del gran público. Por el precio que tiene (5€) vale la pena darle una oportunidad y te va a tener entretenido bastante rato trayéndote de vuelta algún buen recuerdo si te gusta el género. Es una lástima porque 2 proyectos después el estudio ha cerrado :(. Cosas a destacar positivas: •Acertijos originales en la línea de los action rpg de 16bits Cosas a destacar negativas: •Gráficamente muy justo