Link of Hearts (Android)
Feb. 28th, 2020 09:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroEverything is peaceful, until the Goddess (aka “Administrator”) of the world warns you that a terrible catastrophe is about to occur. It turns out that the truth of the situation is a bit more complicated.
It’s been a while since I played a KEMCO jrpg, and I opted for a WorldWideSoftware one. As with most by this developer, the translation is functional (the dialogue is fine, but in-battles messages are clunky “Mars is now Poison” stuff) and the systems are a little clunky. It reminds me of the Phantasy Star series more than anything else, with a sci-fi/fantasy blend and first-person battle view. The pacing and dungeons are standard; there’s a town with new equipment for sale after pretty much every one, and there’s switch puzzles, tightropes, teleporters and sliding ice in some of the dungeons. The plot is very linear and won’t let you do things out of order.
It’s barely a six-hour game, which isn’t bad for $4. The game has five IAP bonus areas and two bonus characters, though given that it’s pretty easy if you just fight through the main storyline, I’m not sure why you’d need to spend extra money on sidequests. (They cost 120 IAP points each, or about a dollar. You’d need to fight 1,200 battles to unlock each one otherwise, which is about three times what I did playing the main game. So the “full” game would run you about $10.) The character IAP also gives you backstory and motivation for side characters who join your party but never get used because they’d have to replace an existing character in your five-person lineup.
The initial area you’re in is actually the Moon, or a colony on it. After various events, that colony flies to earth and sets down in a lake, merging with the nearby landmasses and letting you combine your two sets of characters. It’s the kind of event that you’d expect to happen with more build-up, but given they don’t have a lot of game to work with…There’s a choice to use a blue or red key in that event; using the wrong one gives you a bad ending. Similarly, there’s a choice near the very end that leads to a bad ending that better explains the main villain's motivation.
The fact that one of your team members is an android is important to the story but ignored by the systems. He suffers from poison, paralyze and sleep just like the human characters, too. Oh, and in one instance, the party is sprayed with poison gas and the android is affected just like everyone else…except the girl who, it’s later theorized, is a miasma-resistant mutant. (They then go to lengths to say it’s not “just” poison gas, but seriously. Use your damn premise, people.)
The game uses a materia-style system to equip special attacks, which you can link together for various bonuses. Though you have new options after every dungeon, you’re probably going to just pick a configuration you like and make occasional edits to it. The boss battles are generally the only “challenge”; you can safely put random battles on Auto. The early bosses are just a matter of running down your MP using special attacks and healing until they die. Putting the hit-all element linked with a Heal spell on Lily eliminated any worries from the later boss battles, though I also use the attack buff and assorted debuffs because they were there (and I suspect they made the battles much faster). Poison was also nice on bosses if you could land it. Defensive buffs weren’t really worth the trouble.
Overall: I’d call this a lower-tier KEMCO game, playable and decently balanced but nothing special. It’s fine, it’s generic. And it was apparently what I was briefly in the mood for.
It’s been a while since I played a KEMCO jrpg, and I opted for a WorldWideSoftware one. As with most by this developer, the translation is functional (the dialogue is fine, but in-battles messages are clunky “Mars is now Poison” stuff) and the systems are a little clunky. It reminds me of the Phantasy Star series more than anything else, with a sci-fi/fantasy blend and first-person battle view. The pacing and dungeons are standard; there’s a town with new equipment for sale after pretty much every one, and there’s switch puzzles, tightropes, teleporters and sliding ice in some of the dungeons. The plot is very linear and won’t let you do things out of order.
It’s barely a six-hour game, which isn’t bad for $4. The game has five IAP bonus areas and two bonus characters, though given that it’s pretty easy if you just fight through the main storyline, I’m not sure why you’d need to spend extra money on sidequests. (They cost 120 IAP points each, or about a dollar. You’d need to fight 1,200 battles to unlock each one otherwise, which is about three times what I did playing the main game. So the “full” game would run you about $10.) The character IAP also gives you backstory and motivation for side characters who join your party but never get used because they’d have to replace an existing character in your five-person lineup.
The initial area you’re in is actually the Moon, or a colony on it. After various events, that colony flies to earth and sets down in a lake, merging with the nearby landmasses and letting you combine your two sets of characters. It’s the kind of event that you’d expect to happen with more build-up, but given they don’t have a lot of game to work with…There’s a choice to use a blue or red key in that event; using the wrong one gives you a bad ending. Similarly, there’s a choice near the very end that leads to a bad ending that better explains the main villain's motivation.
The fact that one of your team members is an android is important to the story but ignored by the systems. He suffers from poison, paralyze and sleep just like the human characters, too. Oh, and in one instance, the party is sprayed with poison gas and the android is affected just like everyone else…except the girl who, it’s later theorized, is a miasma-resistant mutant. (They then go to lengths to say it’s not “just” poison gas, but seriously. Use your damn premise, people.)
The game uses a materia-style system to equip special attacks, which you can link together for various bonuses. Though you have new options after every dungeon, you’re probably going to just pick a configuration you like and make occasional edits to it. The boss battles are generally the only “challenge”; you can safely put random battles on Auto. The early bosses are just a matter of running down your MP using special attacks and healing until they die. Putting the hit-all element linked with a Heal spell on Lily eliminated any worries from the later boss battles, though I also use the attack buff and assorted debuffs because they were there (and I suspect they made the battles much faster). Poison was also nice on bosses if you could land it. Defensive buffs weren’t really worth the trouble.
Overall: I’d call this a lower-tier KEMCO game, playable and decently balanced but nothing special. It’s fine, it’s generic. And it was apparently what I was briefly in the mood for.
