Phantom Legacy (Part 1)

A few weeks ago I wrote a review of the game Demon Legacy by Nightblade, which is this game prequel in case you did not know, and awarded it a 4/5 appreciation score with a 2.8/5 arithmetic score. The game was great. Better than most amateur games actually but a few negative points slightly tarnished the experience in my opinion.
So here I am today to review it's sequel, Phantom Legacy. Is it a worthy successor ? Have the negative points from the first game corrected ?

Graphics 4/5
The graphics were mostly rips... but they were beautiful rips. The whole game pretty much felt homogene graphically and was pleasant to the eye. I really enjoyed the additional work put in this section by the creator, it is a great improvement over the previous game. The new character style (romancing saga) is a nice choice and like most of the rest of the graphics, it wasn't an overseen choice of rips.
Some additional effort to spice things a little like different animations for some characters, maybe some custom character sets for some npcs to put some life in towns would have probably increased the score to a 4,5.


Audio 3/5
The music used in the game wasn't that memorable. It did it job covering the sound of silence but the songs weren't the kind you remember days after playing the game. On the other side, no song annoyed me which is a great thing. Not great, not bad.

The sound effects were fine. In some parts of the game multiple good sound effects were used and gave some dynamisms but the moment after there was a small lack of them. That was noticeable sometimes.

Gameplay 4/5
The gameplay was greatly improved over it's prequel.
The puzzles even if less present were well balanced, the objectives were obvious and the whole thing was fun.

The battles we're quite fun. The fact that Nero could pretty much heal infinitly pleased me as I didn't have to stress over my supplies and could focus on the battles itself. The animations were dynamic and the enemies were interesting enough. One slight bug for me here, I didn't like the fact that Nero couldn't use item, had me go paranoid of the girl dying. Aside from that I really enjoyed Alistar's battle mechanics. It was a fresh idea and really made it fun for me.

There was several cutscenes but they were short and straight-to-the-point which was a good balance between giving information to the player without boring him. Good improvement here as it also helped to keep the pace of the game.

Once again the game featured visible enemies instead of random encounters which is great. The number of fights was quite balanced and never felt annoying.

Design 4/5
The character design was once again great ! The whole mystery surrounding Nero, the link between Lilith and characters of the previous game and the nice personnality of Alistar really stood out ! No character felt over-exagerated in it's personnality.

When I reviewed Demon Legacy I disapproved the dungeons design. As I played it's sequel right after it, I was greatly surprised that the structure of those said dungeons was a bit more diversified. Nightblade's mapping skills improved too.

Environments were also diversified and each of them felt unique. I appreciated seeing some environments that are rarely seen in amateur RPG maker games as a desert town.

Balance 4/5
Biggest improvement from Nightblade. Where Demon Legacy felt unbalanced to me, Phantom Legacy was spot on. As said in the gameplay section, puzzles and fight were balanced and there was a good number of them.
The infinite heal gimmick of Nero probably made it really easier for Nightblade to balance the fights but it wasn't only that; thanks god enemies were doing normal damages and I didn't felt the need to heal every turn, giving the battles a good rythm. Maps were also reduced in size which means that I didn't get lost even once in the game.

Story 3.5/5
The story was fine but if I think about it we didn't get much info. Things will probably get explained in the next parts but we met characters from the previous game several times during the playthrough and they were very different from before. Actually, pretty much the whole part is left unexplained. But I feel that it is not just put there like this and that Nightblade will think of the rest on the spot, it feels like it's well thought and that something is coming. The ending was a cliffhanger which is cool with me as it's only the part 1 of the game ! I'm pretty much excited about the part 2 ! I want to get answers !

Miscellaneous
The opening sequence with Slade in the castle was excellent. There was a great atmosphere, it felt dramatic it felt important and the scene with Shadar was just absolutely wonderful. I shivered when his red eye under his hood, Shadar is back !

Arithmetic overall 3.75
Overall real appreciation 4
Phantom Legacy is a nice improvement over it's older brother, Demon Legacy. It's a great game I'd suggest to anyone. But I think it'd be wise to play through Demon Legacy before, it'll just make the sequel better ! So, it's a nice start, let's hope Nightblade can keep the quality and give us a perfect part 2 filled with answers to our question.