Ara Fell, Chapter 1: The Stone Curse by Badluck |
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Impression This is a game that makes me long for what could have been. It's gorgeous, in a lot of ways, and I'm not just talking about the graphics. It's visionary, it's classic, and it's cutting edge. And it's absolutely FULL OF BUGS. Towards the end, this turned out as one the most unbalanced RPGs I have *ever* played, commercial or not. If more thoroughly tested (I'll get back to this later), it could have been one of the top RM2k3 games ever released. And what good timing, at the release of RMXP, Badluck could have had to release the great RM2k3 game. Unfortunately, he ended up with something that should be played, and should be remembered, but not remembered as a pillar of how to make an indie game. Allow me to explain one reason why I feel this way:
Bugs. Do you see those beautiful screenshots? Those absolutely stellar maps? And do you see that I had to hack the game in order to play it? I encountered two or three fatal errors while playing through the game. And one of them was inescapable without hacking my way through the game (the screen on the right). The screen on the right is the product of my enduring a fight against a boss who was not hard, but took an absurdly long amount of time to beat (he could take out at most 70 HP from my guys per round, and I could take out about 75-100 of his. He had 7000 HP, and my party had a total of 1300 or so). I was NOT about to be jipped out of my reward after that.
Those sorts of things are what characterized my experience playing Ara Fell, and left me feeling disappointed not because the game was of low quality, but because of the errors permeating the surface of something that could have been great.
Okay, I've got the bad out of the way. Let there be no more bad things said about Ara Fell in this review. Let's gawk at another screenshot before commencing with the lavish praise it, in many respects, deserves.
If you were to describe Ara Fell with one word, it would be: baroque. The presentation in Ara Fell is so detailed and thick that it is sloppy and lovely at the same time, much like anything else from the baroque period. There are tons of needless decorations everywhere, like cute little animations added to sprites, a guy playing a pipe organ in a particularly impressionistic scene, butterflies and rabbits and mice darting all over the screen, and snow everywhere. While I haven't the faintest why it is always snowing, all the time, everywhere, it makes for a nice, otherworldly effect. Some people have criticized Ara Fell for being too detailed, that there is too much happening onscreen, or that it's hard to make sense of the surrounding area. But that, gentlemen, is precisely the idea. And it's hard to actually capture the feeling of the game in screenshots, since they can't convey movement, but you can get an idea by looking at this:
The gamplay of Ara Fell is baroque, too, containing tons of needless little sidequests and extra treasures and the like. And that's exactly what makes it great. Between plot points, I'd spend an enormous period of time just exploring, looking for some extra thing to do or some extra power-up item hidden in a bizarre place. For several hours, I was spellbound by this game. Ara Fell is full of charm, as well. The character of Lita (the central figure) was so full of spunk and spite for absolutely everything that you can't help but love her (or hate her, but hate her only because you love how cute she is). Her companion, Adrien, just doesn't know when to quit, and I like that about him. Unfortunately, later in the demo, the other characters kind of sit off to the side, and simply participate in battles while Lita does all of the talking. That's okay, though, since this is, after all, Lita's story; the other characters are involved more or less for no better reason than protecting her. I would have liked it less if Badluck pretended they were important and did a poor job of it.
All said, I am not generally disappointed with Ara Fell. It's quite a bit of work, and deserves attention, particularly if he irons out the kinks. The good news is, he plans to. I had a conversation with Badluck yesterday where he explained he had edited the game a bit after the testing phase, and that nearly 100% of the complaints anyone had with Ara Fell related to things he had edited without having other people test them. I await the upcoming patch with great anticipation. Technical Graphics I think you've seen enough of the graphics to understand that we're dealing with a powerful force here. From a technical standpoint, there's a lot to appreciate in the graphics of Ara Fell. There are overlays on nearly every map, and they look fantastic. There are literally hundreds of decorative sprites to be found in every map on average, such as birds or butterflies or the like, that make everything look very polished and beautiful. There is a lot of movement and a lot of color, and after this, I don't think anyone's going to be able to get away with using the Mack and Blue graphics set ever again. I'd be really surprised if someone topped this. The animation also is superb . . . most of the time. There is a lot of good animation for Lita on the map for actions like running, jumping, swimming, and crawling. While there is not very much reason to be able to do any of this (other than running and jumping) at any point in the game, it's still well-animated and deserves props for that. Code
Bravo! That's all I have to say about the extra coding in Ara Fell. Badluck is something that very few indie game designers ever are: practical. He knows which systems Ara Fell has by default, and knows which ones he needs to use and which ones he has to add. There's a system for weapon upgrades that is absolutely genius; you find an upgrade sphere for performing a remarkable deed like beating a boss or completing a sidequest, and then you go and get a weapon of your choice upgraded. It's a little bit Secret of Mana, and a little bit Suikoden, but it's definitely well-implemented enough for me to overlook the "inspiration." There's a custom menu that adds a few extra features to the game, but it links to the default menu because the default menu does the job. He uses the RM2k3 default combat engine, but it's modified to high heaven and plays the way he wants it to without sacrificing functionality (*cough cough OBLISHBLOT cough cough*). The custom systems all *work* without a hitch. And that's very, very good, since if the core of your game's function is bugged then your game is probably unplayable at some point. They don't seem extraneous and they all serve a function. Again, bravo on Badluck's creative insight and practicality. Sound Very well done, and very atmospheric. There are a lot of sounds like running water, the sound of a crowd making its usual crowd sounds, and creepy bangs and booms in dark scary caverns. A few of Badluck's samples were really grating, but everything was appropriate. The goods outweighed the bads by a long shot. The only real strong negative criticism I have for the sound is the poor use of some RTP sounds. That can't be escaped, really, as the RM2k3 RTP sound effects are for the most part really terrible. It's okay, though; most of the bad sound use fades into the background, where the good use flourishes front and center along with the rest of Ara Fell's decoration. You'll come away appreciating the way the sound was used in Ara Fell. Artistry
Badluck shows us with Ara Fell what it means to create atmosphere in an RM2k3 game. The only RM2k3 game I've seen with a better sense of atmosphere was Sunset Over Imdahl. There's a huge contrast from area to area as far as atmosphere is concerned, and the screenshots above are a good example of that. At one point, you have Lita's homemade map, which is terribly drawn and very cute. At another point, you walk in on a vampire playing pipe organ in a dark chapel with a dim light pouring in at a dramatic angle from stained glass windows overhead. Allow me to digress on the Blood Forest. Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. It was RM2k3, and it was Mack and Blue, but it was scary. The creepy little spiders that I could hardly see genuinely intimidated me, and the idea of firing arrows into gigantic floating eyeballs gave me mental images that were pretty sick. Fighting vampires at the end of the dungeon, whittling down their numbers one by one, was really exhilerating (in part due to the fact that those particular battles were perfectly balanced). And hearing a cry of agony as a mortally wounded vampire falls to his knees, at the mercy of my stake, is beautiful. I can only hope Badluck expounds upon the vampire theme in later chapters, since I would recommend the game for that area alone. Just make sure you don't enter the area with the Strange Necklace equipped. There is a cave called Loni's Flute that has some particularly creepy sound design (which is sadly dulled by the generally bright and mysterious air of the place) that struck me as dramatic, but otherwise, Ara Fell embodies a single concept: a classical sense of adventure. There is an enemy that is very real and beatable, and scary and incredibly powerful. It's a great balance that makes for a rather gripping story. And all of this artistry, all the beauty of Ara Fell: sucked up by a couple of bugs. A gripping story whose grasp I was ripped from because of a couple of bugs. A bit of extra work. It is, for that reason, why the design of Ara Fell is a story that I consider a great tragedy. Let us hope for a happy ending with a patch. Play or Not? Play. You might want to wait for a patch. Reviewer's Notes PLAY SESSION ONE 3:25 PM END SESSION 12:00 PM |
