PYSCHO

Oh no, what am I doing with my life?
Uhm, sorry, nevermind! Time to write this review!

Let's play PYSCHO! A Rpgmaker2000 game made by Slimeysickalien in 2008. A very old game, but hey there are LOTS of other good old games, such as The Way, also done in 2008 or Three the Hard Way made in 2003... I like old rpgmajrr games and that's why I still play them. But in this case I guess you know what happened... anyway let's start from the beginning!

PYSCHO (probably a misspelling of Psycho, there are many other typos inside the game so it would not surprise me) is the story of Garf: in the far future after the third world war the Earth was nearly destroyed and the continents were rearranged, but despite this the human race survived. Despite this they did not learn to live in peace and kept fighting! Garf is an assassin and mercenary that works for the Queen, one of the noblemen that rules one corner of the earth. She's a rather arrogant woman, but Garf is a proud and ruthless warrior, so if you're looking for a heroic "good guy" you're in the wrong place.


To be honest I started the game ten minutes ago and I do not even know WHO IS this General Lang!

This game is a demo, but despite that it's quite long, and will let you travel all around the world, stopping before exploring the 10%-15% of what's left unexplored, even if to be honest the world map is large but rather empty.

Now the game is a linear adventure: Garf will have to partecipate to a tournament, go to see the Queen and get the assignment to assassinate a traitourous general, then visit his hometown and later go back to the castle to learn that it was attacked by a rival nations. After being rewarded with a noble title he is tasked to lead a small party through a secret path that leads to the enemy castle and... well I do not know since the demo ends here. Would he defeat the last opposing enemy and conquer the world under the Queen's banner? Or will he change his allegiance and try to depose the foolish arrogant Queen? Or will instead defeat every opposition and rule the world? We'll never know!

In any case when I wrote that this game is linear I should have said EXTREMELY LINEAR: in many occasions you cannot actually enter other buildings/rooms except to visit the places that the game wants you to visit to go on with the story. And in some cases there are also obligatory narrow "corridors" with enemies (sometimes are avoidable, sometimes they aren't, but there are also locations with random encounters) you will have to traverse. One of the problem of this game is that there are NO shops and you have to rely on loots and rests, but the another problem is that there are no ethers or other potions used to recover mana points, at least I did not found any!


Three against a whole village who do not stand a chance against us. That's sure!

But the problems with the gameplay will reach the peak in the final part where you will have to traverse endless maps fighting random battles and there's a good chance that most players won't reach the end of the demo. That part is intolerable, too long, boring and difficult, not that enemies are hard to beat, it's just a battle of slow attrition, but with limited resources sooner or later the defeat will be probably inevitable.

The story isn't unfortunately much better: be are thrown from a situation to the other without really any explanation, also characters appear and disappear with few words: we get to meet Garf's uncle, but what about his parents? And after few words is gone. Then when Griffous joins the party, but who is him? Good question, did Garf know him from some previous adventure? Why does he immediately trust him? Well I MAY have missed some passages, unfortunately the game is always like this. Characters are also rather shallow and some dialogues are actually ridiculous.

Anyway luckily concerning the graphics... no, sorry these are terrible too! RTPs used with wild abandon, and I must say that some maps are even so complex that it surely took some time to make them, despite looking awful I cannot make examples since there are so many, starting from Garf's fortress (why does he live in a fortress? Uhm we'll never know, of course but probably there is no real reason). The ONLY things I can say are a merit are some edits that are actually decent: Garf changes his outfit in some occasions and these aren't too bad. But that's it. Music is... meh, but it's not even the worst thing here.


We're near the end but IF you will stop playing at this time I won't judge you. Twenty screens of mountains with random battles, no shops or way to rest will make this part not only boring but also a real pain... and nearly impossible to complete!

Final Verdict
Ok, ok I know that's a demo, but it's a pretty long one and I wonder how I was able to play it entirely! In any case the game has the merit to be playable without bugs or serious errors, despite being a feast of typos and passability errors. Even if it's a demo I cannot excuse these issues when you have an entire world where you can travel, actually some locations shows that a lot of time was spent on them, like on the rest of the game. But the resul is meh! You really do not have to play this game, I did it for you but if you really want I will never stop you!