The Thorn of Warldia

A charming indie gem in the gameplay style of Fire Emblem. It is fun to follow the adventures of Thorn and his friends that he meet. The game was created by only one person, which shows in some areas but nonetheless I have a fun time with it. Two things the game should have mentioned somehow though is that it autosaves after every level that has been cleared, and to go back in menus you have to click the right mouse button.

Bad Fire Emblem clone with a very dubious original engine and questionable art - it doesn't really do anything your generic SRPG Studio game doesn't do, while being jankier and uglier, with a few notable bugs (buying multiple of an item from stores creating glitched items, enemies' attack ranges including attacking from squares they can't move to, etc.), no text skip or in-battle saves despite unforgiving and occasionally RNG-based gameplay due to the combination of "any character dies = Game Over" and critical hits existing as per Fire Emblem standard, and just a general lack of quality. Anyway on stage 8 I got tired of restarting stages because someone in the horrible press of enemies - it's the kind of game where they basically all rush you from the start of the stage, another thing that reminded me of SRPG Studio - crit-killed one of my fairly useless characters and ended my run, and decided to throw in the towel on this one. Not recommended, it's as bad as it looks. (Note: As implied in the text, I absolutely did not finish this game, quitting on stage 8 of a supposed 17.)

It's a pretty basic game but worth the price. You follow Thorns party on his travels through many levels solving tactical combat situations on the way. I had fun for the duration at least, there's some coom-bait character art to look at as well.

Before giving a review, I wanted to congratulate the developer on their first published game! It's a decent accomplishment and I hope you improve in this line of work. That being said, I have come into this game with an open mind, since I am a fan of tactical RPGs and Fire Emblem, and the artstyle seemed fun, if not competent. Unfortunately, the gameplay itself takes a lot of negative aspects of the Fire Emblem series. The enemies become too tanky and are able to take down your characters in two hits. At the beginning of every battle, all enemies essentially zerg-rush you, not leaving any room for actual tactics. There is no quick-save feature or ability to skip all dialogue and go straight to the battle. The maps are quite barren, lacking choke points where you can stand against the enemy forces (especially level 8). These problems, coupled with balancing issues, make the game downright unplayable in later levels. That is a shame, because you as a developer, have put some thought and heart into this work. If you made this just as a scam, making a cookie-clicker ripoff would have been easier and more profitable. So I assume you wanted people to experience the story of Thorn. For your future endeavours, I suggest that it's best to make the game easier rather than harder. A hard game implies giving a lot of thought to balance and game design, something you have not done well in this game. Try playtesting your games in the future, as well. All in all, this is a good first attempt. The story is interesting and would have been nice to see to the end. The bad gameplay is a direct detriment to the story you wanted to tell, so please take it more seriously in your next game. Good luck!