Kim
04-26-2013, 02:09 AM
If you truly consider yourselves heroes…
I will take on the role of the demon king and destroy everything.
Demon King Chronicle (http://www.playism-games.com/games/demonkingchronicle/), a free RPG recently translated by Playism, is a very different sort of Japanese RPG. I do not mean it avoids turn-based combat, as that is the style of play in the game. I do not mean it is grind free, as it is a very grind heavy game. What I mean is that it abandons the cliché of cutscene heavy sixty hour games about saving the world.
To quote the creator of the game, “I wanted to create a game where you would get to know the world and the background story without the gameplay being interrupted by annoying cutscenes.”
This is not a game where players must wait before playing or set aside huge blocks of time to play. After a quick line of dialogue asking the player to finish the story, the game starts. You take control of your character, a woman named Camil. You’re ready to adventure.
There are few non-player characters in the game, and your interactions with them are minimal. Never do they tell you where your next quest is. You aren’t guided by plot points, simply encouraged to visit certain places before others by the difficulty curve. The cast doesn’t have a long list of sidequests they need you to do for them. In fact, there aren’t really any sidequests at all, barring a single, optional hell dungeon.
If I seem to be spending an unnecessary amount of time emphasizing just how play focused this game is, I do so only because it is so rare for the genre and is one of the biggest barriers to entry for many who might otherwise give these games a chance.
As for the play itself, I found myself thoroughly surprised by the things it did, simple though they were. Combat was an exercise not just in the being strong enough to tackle the hurdles enemies represent, but making sure to be swarmed by as few enemies as possible. It’s possible to avoid enemies, but by not fighting them, players will leave themselves more vulnerable to being swarmed by them. There’s a careful balancing act in how one chooses to avoid combat versus strategically eliminating foes.
When players do fight multiple foes at once, they can influence where those enemies are positioned. If enemies are close enough one another, attacking one could also do damage to another as well. How battles will play out can end up being decided before they’ve even begun.
The game is hard. Painfully, frustratingly difficult without any sense of mercy. Through design, a simple misstep can end up destroying a player. It’s important to save often. Yet, the game was so play-focused, and the combat so well-executed, that this was actually tolerable. The game was cruel, but not unfair. If I died, it was clearly due to my own mistakes, less than random chance.
When I did lose a lot of progress, surprisingly rare given the difficulty level, it was always my fault then, too. I hadn’t saved when I should have. I hadn’t refilled my glass bottles at a spring. I grew overconfident and kept pushing forward when I should have turned back. When these things are the result of player behavior, they’re much less frustrating. I can always change my behavior. I can learn from my mistakes. It’s a very different experience from a game that’s poorly designed.
Additionally, stat management is something that is in the player’s control more than in most games, while avoiding the trope of simply deciding what to put points into. There are three slots into which players can equip quite literally any item the game provides. Every item boosts stats differently, and even armor or weapons, which still have a slots of their own, can be equipped in the anything spots. The collecting of items becomes more than just stuff to sell. Every item, no matter how trivial it may seem, becomes a potential boon to your survival.
There are more pieces to the play of Demon King Chronicle, but lest I bore you I shall now talk on the game’s story. Demon King Chronicle is a story about storytelling. A book in three chapters washed ashore in a small village, but the ending is missing. Each chapter gives birth to a new story involving the people of the village, and by seeing those stories to their conclusion you come closer to the truth of the Demon King Chronicle and just what sort of ending it was supposed to have.
The commentary on storytelling is fairly light but powerful. Thoughts about “reading too deep” into stories and the purpose a story might have are addressed in merely a few sentences. Yet, because there is so little talking in the game, the talking that is present stands out all the more. You can say a lot in only a few words, provided you don’t distract from those words with too many others.
Demon King Chronicle took me a bit less than fifteen hours to beat. For a Japanese RPG, that’s a pretty short amount of time, though perhaps rather long for a game lacking a major publisher. Though I was regularly surprised by just how much more game there was to play, I never felt like it was wasting my time or dragging on too long. It seemed just about right.
Sparing a moment for the presentation, while the game’s maps were somewhat lacking, both the music and the enemy art was stellar. The enemies look nice without trying to impress or seem too fantastical, and the moments the game’s art does tread into fantasy territory stand out all the more for that.
To sum it all up, Demon King Chronicle is a game worth playing. It’s free, it’s well-written and beautiful, and it’s actually really fun to play. While the game’s difficulty may be too large a barrier to entry for many players, the lack of time-wasting before players can find out just how hard it is makes it very easy to recommend. You can tell almost immediately whether or not it is a game for you.
I will take on the role of the demon king and destroy everything.
Demon King Chronicle (http://www.playism-games.com/games/demonkingchronicle/), a free RPG recently translated by Playism, is a very different sort of Japanese RPG. I do not mean it avoids turn-based combat, as that is the style of play in the game. I do not mean it is grind free, as it is a very grind heavy game. What I mean is that it abandons the cliché of cutscene heavy sixty hour games about saving the world.
To quote the creator of the game, “I wanted to create a game where you would get to know the world and the background story without the gameplay being interrupted by annoying cutscenes.”
This is not a game where players must wait before playing or set aside huge blocks of time to play. After a quick line of dialogue asking the player to finish the story, the game starts. You take control of your character, a woman named Camil. You’re ready to adventure.
There are few non-player characters in the game, and your interactions with them are minimal. Never do they tell you where your next quest is. You aren’t guided by plot points, simply encouraged to visit certain places before others by the difficulty curve. The cast doesn’t have a long list of sidequests they need you to do for them. In fact, there aren’t really any sidequests at all, barring a single, optional hell dungeon.
If I seem to be spending an unnecessary amount of time emphasizing just how play focused this game is, I do so only because it is so rare for the genre and is one of the biggest barriers to entry for many who might otherwise give these games a chance.
As for the play itself, I found myself thoroughly surprised by the things it did, simple though they were. Combat was an exercise not just in the being strong enough to tackle the hurdles enemies represent, but making sure to be swarmed by as few enemies as possible. It’s possible to avoid enemies, but by not fighting them, players will leave themselves more vulnerable to being swarmed by them. There’s a careful balancing act in how one chooses to avoid combat versus strategically eliminating foes.
When players do fight multiple foes at once, they can influence where those enemies are positioned. If enemies are close enough one another, attacking one could also do damage to another as well. How battles will play out can end up being decided before they’ve even begun.
The game is hard. Painfully, frustratingly difficult without any sense of mercy. Through design, a simple misstep can end up destroying a player. It’s important to save often. Yet, the game was so play-focused, and the combat so well-executed, that this was actually tolerable. The game was cruel, but not unfair. If I died, it was clearly due to my own mistakes, less than random chance.
When I did lose a lot of progress, surprisingly rare given the difficulty level, it was always my fault then, too. I hadn’t saved when I should have. I hadn’t refilled my glass bottles at a spring. I grew overconfident and kept pushing forward when I should have turned back. When these things are the result of player behavior, they’re much less frustrating. I can always change my behavior. I can learn from my mistakes. It’s a very different experience from a game that’s poorly designed.
Additionally, stat management is something that is in the player’s control more than in most games, while avoiding the trope of simply deciding what to put points into. There are three slots into which players can equip quite literally any item the game provides. Every item boosts stats differently, and even armor or weapons, which still have a slots of their own, can be equipped in the anything spots. The collecting of items becomes more than just stuff to sell. Every item, no matter how trivial it may seem, becomes a potential boon to your survival.
There are more pieces to the play of Demon King Chronicle, but lest I bore you I shall now talk on the game’s story. Demon King Chronicle is a story about storytelling. A book in three chapters washed ashore in a small village, but the ending is missing. Each chapter gives birth to a new story involving the people of the village, and by seeing those stories to their conclusion you come closer to the truth of the Demon King Chronicle and just what sort of ending it was supposed to have.
The commentary on storytelling is fairly light but powerful. Thoughts about “reading too deep” into stories and the purpose a story might have are addressed in merely a few sentences. Yet, because there is so little talking in the game, the talking that is present stands out all the more. You can say a lot in only a few words, provided you don’t distract from those words with too many others.
Demon King Chronicle took me a bit less than fifteen hours to beat. For a Japanese RPG, that’s a pretty short amount of time, though perhaps rather long for a game lacking a major publisher. Though I was regularly surprised by just how much more game there was to play, I never felt like it was wasting my time or dragging on too long. It seemed just about right.
Sparing a moment for the presentation, while the game’s maps were somewhat lacking, both the music and the enemy art was stellar. The enemies look nice without trying to impress or seem too fantastical, and the moments the game’s art does tread into fantasy territory stand out all the more for that.
To sum it all up, Demon King Chronicle is a game worth playing. It’s free, it’s well-written and beautiful, and it’s actually really fun to play. While the game’s difficulty may be too large a barrier to entry for many players, the lack of time-wasting before players can find out just how hard it is makes it very easy to recommend. You can tell almost immediately whether or not it is a game for you.