Upon the Graveyard of Humanity

Intro

"Upon the Graveyard of Humanity" was a turn-based RPG being developed by cire using RPG Maker VX that began development back in early 2009. Though unlike a lot of other projects I actually know why this game was cancelled. This is because the developer's hard drive broke in 2010 and a lot of work on this project was lost as a result.

cire
I would like to let anyone who cares know that I rage-quitted the development after losing like 50% of the progress I made due to some sort of hard drive failure in 2010. (up to some encounter with a vampire guild trying to hunt down Lydia or something) It is highly likely that I won't restart the development.

So at least we know why this project died unlike a lot of other games that were forever left to rot as demos on this site. Though I'll admit this demo really doesn't sell me on the game anyway. This is because the demo has a lot of issues that leave it frustrating to play. So much so that I eventually gave up and decided I'd rather devote my time to playing something I actually enjoy.

Story

While the game opens up with us being given two characters we can choose to follow. The only path that has been worked on up to this point is Lydia's so were forced to play as her. Lydia is a vampire whose out to get revenge on humanity for her horrible upbringing as a human. Apparently her mother abandoned Lydia and her husband during Lydia's childhood and Lydia's father took his frustrations on her running off with all of his money out on Lydia both physically and sexually.


This should probably be scaled back since I didn't go into this game thinking it was going to include child rape and incest.

At some point Lydia ran into a powerful vampire and was turned and since that day she has been plotting her perfect revenge. After all, the human race needs to pay for her miserable life in blood. And a lot of blood at that.

Unfortunately her methods of going about this revenge aren't entirely clear in the parts of the demo I got through. For starters we kick off chapter one as an apprentice studying under a famous magician. Apparently Lydia agreed to serve under him in hopes she could acquire his strongest spells as well as steal one of his inventions that allow the user to easily spy on people if they have access to something that was owned by said target. This plan goes awry since Lydia's master is a mind reader. A mind reader who felt pity for Lydia, but wasn't able to heal the wounds in the very depths of Lydia's heart.

At any rate after killing her master she then proceeds to murder an innocent farm girl and hunt down everyone else associated with her master. Though why she hunted them all down isn't clear since it's not like any of them knew she was a vampire. And if I read the dialogue correctly the spy device she wanted was also wrecked during her attempt to steal it. So her wiping out all potential witnesses to her previous life as an apprentice is even more odd. Especially since you'd think a bunch of people associated with a famous wizard all dying of animal attacks would raise some eyebrows.

At any rate Lydia then decides to take up residence in a forest and apparently hunts anyone foolish enough to try and cross. After all, a vampire girl like her is constantly thirsty for the blood of her many enemies. And everyone is her enemy. Of course this eventually leads to her meeting the other lead of this story whose apparently traveling through the forest in order to celebrate his upcoming graduation from school. And luckily for him when Lydia attempts to get close to him she gets attacked by an elemental bird whose ice powers somehow make it impossible for Lydia to transform into her true vampire form. And even luckier for him when Lydia is getting ready to kill him later that night their both jumped by another vampire whose too powerful for Lydia to handle alone in her weakened state and this was as far as I got before I gave up on this project.

Gameplay

On the gameplay front the game appears to rely on the standard combat system that comes with RPG Maker VX for the most part, but does include one notable change up. When you guard in this game it actually does regenerate a small amount of your health. Unfortunately this ability is utterly useless in my opinion for two reasons. The first reason is that the amount health you get back is utterly miniscule. In fact, you get back less than 3% of your health when you guard. And secondly this ability is useless because most of the enemies you'll run across in this game much like the player are glass cannons. So they'll easily hit you through your guard for more damage than you can recover with the guard command.

Continuing on the downward trend the game also suffers from a lot of beginner traps. The game has a lot of stuff you can interact with in the forest that trigger large encounters, but these fights are impossible to win until you've reached level four and gain an area of effect skill. And even that isn't enough to get past the spiders in that one tree since you get hit with not one but two encounters against half a dozen spiders at the same time. And these balance issues aren't just restricted to optional encounters but the first boss as well who will easily tear a level five party into pieces. To make matters worse once Khalim joins your party you can no longer make use of Lydia's bed to recover your health and mana. As a result your ability to grind becomes severely hindered if your strapped for items since the only enemies that drop health potions are rats. And their a semi-rare encounter and aren't guaranteed to drop a health or mana potion when you defeat them either. And by the time you reach level five you'll probably need to win twenty or more random encounters to gain another level. So the game is super grindy right from the outset which really hampers the player's ability to enjoy the game in my opinion. After all, who wants to dump thirty to sixty minutes on grinding every time they go to a new area?

And the bad news just keeps coming with a lot of the skills in this game being way too costly. As a result the player really doesn't want to use special skills, but you'll need to use them in order to deal with bosses in this game. To make matters worse mana potions in this game are percentage based which makes the basic mana potion almost entirely worthless at low levels since you may not get enough mana back to cast a single spell.

Graphics and Sound

On the graphical and sound side of things the game mostly relies on the RTP for both as far as I'm aware. As such I don't have a lot to say about these aspects of the game. After all, the stuff contained within the RTP is fine in my opinion. Though it does mean this game struggles to stand out from the rest of the crowd. In fact, the only unique assets appear to be a few facesets and character sprites. And in the case of the facesets they aren't always consistent when Lydia is involved.

Conclusion

"Upon the Graveyard of Humanity" is a project with it's feet in the grave and in my opinion it deserves to stay there. It's filled with beginner's traps and poorly balanced fights. So much so that you'll be dying constantly in this game even if your a veteran of RPGs. This is because the game doesn't give you a lot of options to work with and is intended to be so grind heavy that you'll get bored and decide to throw yourself at an enemy well before your ready. Add in just how unlikeable Lydia is if your not a fan of vampires or villain protagonists and your left with a game that is hard to enjoy in my opinion.