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chuckroThousands of years ago, mankind was ruled by an empire of machines. With the help of the elves, they defeated their oppressors and banished the machine to the land of darkness. Now, Effat and his friend Harty discover that the machines have returned.
More grinding at the outset (and in general) than the other KEMCO games: The very first dungeon has zombies that always inflict poison, and antidotes are in short supply. The overall difficulty level is definitely higher—other KEMCO games have required little or no grinding; this required a decent amount. I was regularly arriving at towns without enough cash to buy the newest upgraded equipment and skills, and not being able to tackle the next dungeon without them.
They made an effort to have a few dungeon gimmicks: Caves and similar places are dark unless you light the candles you find along the way; switches to press to open doors; that sort of thing. The problem is, there aren’t actually that many different locations and the length of the game is artificially padded by the grinding.
Also of note, the battle speed is slow (even when set to “fast”) and random enemies have too many hit points.
But I think the real kicker for me was that you need gems to upgrade your skills, which are in limited supply—and you can’t actually see any of the skill trees. So you end up blind guessing for what it makes sense to upgrade. You can use store-bought gems to change hit-one into hit-all attacks and vice-versa, but that’s just another money sink when you’re already cash-strapped constantly.
Combine that with the fact that the plot is a trope-y retread of better games about monster machines coming back for humanity (cough Wild ARMS cough), and I can’t say this is worth my time.
Overall: I actually started this, got bored with it, and played all of Symphony of the Origin before finishing my review. I didn’t want to go back because I wasn’t actually enjoying it. It effectively cost me a buck—I’m not finishing it.
More grinding at the outset (and in general) than the other KEMCO games: The very first dungeon has zombies that always inflict poison, and antidotes are in short supply. The overall difficulty level is definitely higher—other KEMCO games have required little or no grinding; this required a decent amount. I was regularly arriving at towns without enough cash to buy the newest upgraded equipment and skills, and not being able to tackle the next dungeon without them.
They made an effort to have a few dungeon gimmicks: Caves and similar places are dark unless you light the candles you find along the way; switches to press to open doors; that sort of thing. The problem is, there aren’t actually that many different locations and the length of the game is artificially padded by the grinding.
Also of note, the battle speed is slow (even when set to “fast”) and random enemies have too many hit points.
But I think the real kicker for me was that you need gems to upgrade your skills, which are in limited supply—and you can’t actually see any of the skill trees. So you end up blind guessing for what it makes sense to upgrade. You can use store-bought gems to change hit-one into hit-all attacks and vice-versa, but that’s just another money sink when you’re already cash-strapped constantly.
Combine that with the fact that the plot is a trope-y retread of better games about monster machines coming back for humanity (cough Wild ARMS cough), and I can’t say this is worth my time.
Overall: I actually started this, got bored with it, and played all of Symphony of the Origin before finishing my review. I didn’t want to go back because I wasn’t actually enjoying it. It effectively cost me a buck—I’m not finishing it.
