Sybaritic Extravaganza

Steam achievements can teach a valuable lesson. If no one managed (or bothered) to earn more than the first two achievements of a certain game, it means either the achievements are broken or every player quit the game early on. "Sybaritic Extravaganza" most likely belongs to the latter category. Sadly, I can't recommend this game to fans of classic old-school JRPGs (made with RPG Maker MV). When I play JRPGs, I hope to experience a gripping story (1), interesting battles with lots of awesome loot (2) and cleverly designed dungeons with lots of exploration incentives (3). Only a few select games have it all. Meat Loaf's wisdom still holds true: Two out of three ain't bad. Some games can even be fun if they only fulfill one of the aforementioned criteria. And then there are games like "Sybaritic Extravaganza" that get everything wrong. This is the game that you should play if you want to spend 4 minutes on an encounter with 4 bats to earn 4 EXP (when you need 100+ to level up). Do you like to lose progress? Great, because you can only save at certain points (green buttons for whatever reason), which means there's no "save anywhere" feature. Do you like to waste items? The game makes it easy for you: Just waste your magic skill scrolls on party members that can't use said skills, or use (up) your battle-only items outside of battle from the menu. Do you like not being able to go back the same way you just came for no apparent reason? Granted, no one really likes that, and this game constantly reminds you of this fact: Whenever you dare to leave a map, be prepared that you often times won't be able (at all or at least not without a huge detour) to simply go back the same way you just came. Well, at least something like this doesn't happen on the world map, where your characters crawl at such a snail's pace that it takes forever to reach any destination (not that there are several destinations available at the beginning - sorry for getting your hopes up). The game suffers from so many oddities that I can't wrap my head around what the developer must have thought when creating this game. Without a doubt the worst design decision, though, concerns the characteristics (or the lack thereof) of your four party members. It seems they were designed from identical or at least similar "templates", as indicated by their identical (especially HP and MP) stat values, so they all feel similar(ly useless). And as if it wasn't bad enough that only one of your party members can deal decent physical damage, when your mage finally learns magic spells, they only damage the foe's MP and apply status conditions. Where's the fun in that? Another huge annoyance is that important battle mechanics aren't explained. For example, your healer's healing spell is supposed to cost (only) 8 TP (TP are a resource gained during battles by dealing and taking damage), but the spell's description fails to mention that the spell also costs 10 MP in addition. At one point, I was wondering why a party member wasn't able to attack or defend (grayed out commands), until I figured out that attacking and defending costs 1 TP each. In the rare case that a party member starts a battle with 0 TP and you can't use any skill or item (e.g. because you have none), you can - in theory - even "softlock" yourself (which makes it even worse that you can't flee from most encounters, see below). Boring/confusing game design is one thing, but constantly having to look over my shoulder so that the game doesn't scr*w me, that's where I draw the line. I already complained about battles taking forever, but it gets even worse. Fleeing from battles is possible in the first dungeon area, although only with a low success rate (and if your escape attempt succeeds, your enemies will even taunt you). In the second and third areas, though, fleeing isn't possible anymore (to avoid any confusion, I'm talking about battles with random mobs - almost every other JRPG in existence enables you to flee from them). That was when I decided to call it quits, because there aren't any redeeming features that I could mention to the game's defense. Story/dialogues are so boring that I won't even get into details, the first dungeon area - with all the running soldier NPCs that constantly get into the party's way - is a mess, and the maps are small and sometimes even consist of barely edited "sample maps" (maps that are part of the software used to develop this game and that can be used by anyone who bought the software). The only thing that's extravagant with regards to this game is its title. If you want to satisfy your JRPG indulgence, I suggest you look elsewhere. I gave this game a chance despite knowing early on that I would rage-quit at some point (of course only shortly after the point at which I couldn't refund the game anymore), so don't make the same mistake, and don't let my (wallet's) sacrifice be in vain.