Aldorlea RPGMaker Games #4 - Dreamscape
Jul. 29th, 2019 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroErin’s boyfriend Terry has a magical set of headphones that let you enter the world of dreams! Unfortunately, in showing them off, he’s gotten himself trapped there. Erin and a cadre of talking animals need to traipse across the dreams of dreams to rescue him.
Given my previous experience with Aldorlea games, I didn’t come into this with high hopes. That said, it’s interesting. You use the magic headphones to enter different people’s dream worlds, including your party members and—in an inception sort of twist—the NPCs you meet in those dreams! From there, it takes on a Metroidvania sort of flavor, as you need to find keys and power-granting items (block-breakers, jump shoes, protective items) that will allow you to progress further in various areas.
There’s very little equipment early on, and you need to scour the first few areas (which also loads you up with lots of party buffs and gold) for enough loot to outfit your party and make them useable. (Unequipped, party members do single-digit damage. The weakest monsters in the game have triple-digit hit points.) Neither monsters nor healing items respawn, so you’re in a weird place where you need to try to kill everything for the experience and gold, but you also need to conserve HP and MP as much as possible. And there are skull and poison mushroom floor tiles that you’re sometimes forced to pass. There’s a full-heal spot in the hub area, but using it locks you out of a game-clear bonus.
Among the other problems: There’s no minimap, and only a few fast-travel items (though thankfully, two of them are specifically for getting around the endgame quickly), so you might end up wandering through previous areas a lot trying to figure out what to do. A bunch of the puzzles are fairly obtuse, and it turns out that there really aren’t any optional areas—you need to do several things that seem to be sidequests in order to access the ending at all. For that matter, there’s an insanely obtuse “spot the differences” set of puzzles (12 in all, but a mistake on any one sends you back to the start) that gates the final area.
And like the other Aldorlea games, the battle system is wonky and the power curve is nonsensical. Monsters in a given area might not be able to scratch you except with their one instant-kill power; but the trap tiles in that same area might leave you struggling with barely any HP. Venom is a death sentence until the plant-woman learns the spell to heal it; then it’s a minor inconvenience. There are consumables you can buy that boost stats; they cost virtually nothing but you need to buy and use 60 of them at a time. Similarly, there are a few rare points where you can buy items that restore 40 HP; your characters are at 1,000+ but the late game. Oh, and your main character’s counterattack power (which, thankfully, you can manually disable) will get into infinite-hit wars with any enemy who also counterattacks. This was actually how I beat a few bosses after loading her up with my best equipment.
The game only runs about ten hours, but it has four different difficulty modes that each unlock different bonuses for later playthroughs. Apparently there’s also a bonus nightmare dungeon, though I feel no need to go hunting for it.
Overall: This is the best of the Aldorlea games that I got for less than a dollar each, though that’s not saying much. As RPGMaker games go, there are far better developers out there.
Given my previous experience with Aldorlea games, I didn’t come into this with high hopes. That said, it’s interesting. You use the magic headphones to enter different people’s dream worlds, including your party members and—in an inception sort of twist—the NPCs you meet in those dreams! From there, it takes on a Metroidvania sort of flavor, as you need to find keys and power-granting items (block-breakers, jump shoes, protective items) that will allow you to progress further in various areas.
There’s very little equipment early on, and you need to scour the first few areas (which also loads you up with lots of party buffs and gold) for enough loot to outfit your party and make them useable. (Unequipped, party members do single-digit damage. The weakest monsters in the game have triple-digit hit points.) Neither monsters nor healing items respawn, so you’re in a weird place where you need to try to kill everything for the experience and gold, but you also need to conserve HP and MP as much as possible. And there are skull and poison mushroom floor tiles that you’re sometimes forced to pass. There’s a full-heal spot in the hub area, but using it locks you out of a game-clear bonus.
Among the other problems: There’s no minimap, and only a few fast-travel items (though thankfully, two of them are specifically for getting around the endgame quickly), so you might end up wandering through previous areas a lot trying to figure out what to do. A bunch of the puzzles are fairly obtuse, and it turns out that there really aren’t any optional areas—you need to do several things that seem to be sidequests in order to access the ending at all. For that matter, there’s an insanely obtuse “spot the differences” set of puzzles (12 in all, but a mistake on any one sends you back to the start) that gates the final area.
And like the other Aldorlea games, the battle system is wonky and the power curve is nonsensical. Monsters in a given area might not be able to scratch you except with their one instant-kill power; but the trap tiles in that same area might leave you struggling with barely any HP. Venom is a death sentence until the plant-woman learns the spell to heal it; then it’s a minor inconvenience. There are consumables you can buy that boost stats; they cost virtually nothing but you need to buy and use 60 of them at a time. Similarly, there are a few rare points where you can buy items that restore 40 HP; your characters are at 1,000+ but the late game. Oh, and your main character’s counterattack power (which, thankfully, you can manually disable) will get into infinite-hit wars with any enemy who also counterattacks. This was actually how I beat a few bosses after loading her up with my best equipment.
The game only runs about ten hours, but it has four different difficulty modes that each unlock different bonuses for later playthroughs. Apparently there’s also a bonus nightmare dungeon, though I feel no need to go hunting for it.
Overall: This is the best of the Aldorlea games that I got for less than a dollar each, though that’s not saying much. As RPGMaker games go, there are far better developers out there.
