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I'm an asshole. I think we've established that this is my defining characteristic as a poster. It's not often that I have anything nice to say to anyone unless I've been genuinely gobsmacked by the quality of a work or the wittiness of a post.
I had played around with the idea of reviewing RMXP games for some time, but often found myself frustrated by the fact that only a precious few ever get completed or even gifted with more than one hour of play time. Imagine my joy when I learned that one could still get Aveyond, a commercially distributed game created using the engine. Great, I thought, a paltry investment to better kill time and give me an excuse to tear something to shreds. Why was I all geared up to tear Aveyond to bits, you ask? Read and find out. It's important to note that this review is sort of stream-of-consciousness, and may contain some tense and grammatical inconsistencies. If I receive a good enough response, I'll rework the first post with images and a better format.
Damn you, board software, leave my formatting alone!
I had played around with the idea of reviewing RMXP games for some time, but often found myself frustrated by the fact that only a precious few ever get completed or even gifted with more than one hour of play time. Imagine my joy when I learned that one could still get Aveyond, a commercially distributed game created using the engine. Great, I thought, a paltry investment to better kill time and give me an excuse to tear something to shreds. Why was I all geared up to tear Aveyond to bits, you ask? Read and find out. It's important to note that this review is sort of stream-of-consciousness, and may contain some tense and grammatical inconsistencies. If I receive a good enough response, I'll rework the first post with images and a better format.
If you've been involved in the RPG Maker community even tenuously for any real amount of time, you've probably heard of Aveyond, a game made famous in the community solely by the virtue that Amanda Fitch managed to sell it. Fitch founded the pretentiously named company Amaranth Games, which while supposedly named after a flower symbolizing immortality, brings up thoughts of bored, sulky teenagers naming their Dungeons and Dragons characters in true Tolkien style. In fact, many of the names I've seen just in the game's history remind me strongly of the awkward days of my youth when the crusty young man sitting in the battered patio chair beside me weighed the pros and cons of having a name like Ah'mskinar. It's an uncomfortable, dirty feeling when you're trying to write these names out and convince yourself not to allow the spellchecker to auto-correct them to more sensible words like 'aversion' and 'haddock'.
But that's no serious complaint. Silly, overly complicated names have been a staple of RPG gaming since we typed fragment sentences into the console of the lovable deathtrap called Zork. My only real complaint with Aveyond, before I even double-click the shortcut to begin my epic adventure, is that it's so greatly hyped. I think it goes without saying, now, that I have no soul and am a cynical, hateful shit. It's that quality of my character that leads me to be wary of hyped up games, hyped RPGs in particular. I don't put more than a single iota of hope into most universally loved games, simply because I realized long ago that game reviewers are, on average, either very easy to please or utter ass scabs, pandering to whichever developer throws the most goodies at them. Worse still, many reviewers subscribe to a dangerous sort of relativism when reviewing independent games like Aveyond. Every review I found that wasn't hosted on a spyware farm or written by a drunken Korean using an online translator and Wikipedia praised the game rather highly, flinging around turns of phrase like 'instant classic' at every curve and bend. That's all well and good, but I swear that I hear a tiny voice saying “...for an indie game,†ever so softly after every loving compliment. What I'm getting at is that games are often judged on their origins rather than their merits, particularly by people unfamiliar with gaming in general. It's regarded as either a nice, wholesome game that a lovely young woman created, or proof that Anyone Can Do It Even You. I've often seen Aveyond cited as the ultimate success story for RPG Maker users, a notion that I'd like to heave bodily out a fourth floor window. I don't want to do this because nobody should have dreams, but because it fosters complacency by insinuating that all one need do to achieve success is continue to plug away at an established engine until you can bang out something acceptable.
The same nits who insist that Aveyond has come to carry us all away from our forum-lurking days and into a world of sexy girls and expensive motorbikes also stress that Aveyond uses the RTP sparingly, with only a few dashes of it breaking up the beautifully sprited scenery. This is difficult for me to believe when the RTP assaults me within the first two seconds of the game in the form of a re-colored Civilian20 running from Lancer01, AKA 'MAN', AKA 'Agas'. I won't begrudge the minor grammatical error (a comma in place of a semicolon) in one of the first lines on account of the window skin being so easy on the eyes. If it's one thing I love, it's a window skin that doesn't make me want to sell my corneas on the Black Market. Civilian20 doesn't last long. She's done in by and RTP fireball, and left as a custom death sprite created by skewing her sideways pose approximately 15 degrees and MS Painting one of her skin tone's colors over her eyes. No, wait, I lied. She's actually not dead, as she conveniently informs us in her best Captain Kirk impression. She sends out a Strobe Light Butterfly to find some unnamed Chosen Child, then flops back over in 15 Degrees of Death Mode. The butterfly flies gracefully over Ocean01 as the opening credits roll. The combination of the music, the blinking butterfly, and the endless twitching ocean make it hard to tear my eyes away from the screen simply because I'm easily hypnotized by things like tiled animated gifs and Winamp visualizations. Once it clears the ocean, the butterfly introduces me to what screenshots had already hinted at: painfully inconsistent graphics. The butterfly and I seem to have traveled into a completely different game, one with detail and poorly-executed tiling graphics. When the butterfly finally finds the child after its long and treacherous flight in a straight line, we notice not only that Rhen hardly looks like a child at all, but that her face graphic varies so greatly from her character sprite that I initially thought that the message box belonged to an off screen character. The butterfly sends Rhen and her unnecessary H through an RTP portal (Support07, if you're keeping up) and zaps her over to Civilian20's last known whereabouts. Rhen proceeds to question the situation for all of .5 seconds before gleefully dragging Civilian20's stiff corpse through Support07, the portal to God knows where. Rhen's frankensprited father quickly comes to their aid, because he's a helpful guy like that. He, too, drags this stiff corpse he supposedly knows along, this time back to the cottage he shares with his daughter. It's at this point in time that I'm given control of the game for the very first time, and I feel just great.
The controls seem fine for walking about. Same old RPG Maker move and tap 'space' sort of thing, with the A, S, and D keys used to open the journal, items, and options screens respectively. It's easy enough to find a comfortable hand position where you're touching all the required buttons at once. However, I find myself sorely missing a dash command, which it seems like everyone and their cat has by way of a simple script. You'd think that with something as uncalled for as transplanting commands to different keys in the game, someone would have said “I would also like to be able to be in a hurry.†As an aside, I believe that Clearwater must be a very nice place to raise children, simply because I wasted a good five minutes of precious life walking around the area trying to provoke something into attacking me. I don't do this because I'm a blood thirsty maniac, but because I want to see how the game handles battles. Since I even walked through a cave looking for baddies to toast, I can only assume that it uses the banal system of non-random encounters. I loathe non-random encounters because they're often so poorly implemented that any puzzle or labyrinth area quickly becomes less of a challenge and more of a Benny Hill-inspired chase sequence between my character and goblins numbers 12, 63, 23, and 301 of 805.
My next gripe, which took all of three seconds to form, is about the game's apparent love of mollycoddling the player in this opening sequence. As you step into your Beloved Peasant Village, the game informs you that you are, in fact, about to enter your Beloved Peasant Village. Thank you, Aveyond. I could not have deduced that without you. Nor could I have ever imagined that the same button I've been using to advance text would make people talk to me. It also tells me where Rhen's father lives, which just sort of cuts out the two minutes of gameplay time I could have used to find that out myself. If this game doesn't let go of my hand within the next five levels, I'm banishing it to the depths of the pit labeled “Games for Your Motherâ€. Another RTP character, Civilian06 (uncut and unedited) hangs out in Rhen's Beloved Peasant Village. I'm not interested in him because he's boring, so I make my way to Rhen's home, located beside the scenic Waterfalls to Fucking Nowhere. The interior of the house is a lot like the exterior: a distracting mix of RTP, hand-drawn-style, and recolored graphics.
My first task in the game is a fetch quest, for an herbalist to help heal this random woman. I don't see why Rhen's father can't damn well do it himself, but who am I to question one of the founding principles of wasting a gamer's time? Anyway. The journal system works exactly as you'd expect it to, which is a relief and a disappointment at the same time. I'm relieved in part because I now have a place to view my quests when I forget where the Hell I was going. However, I find it disappointing because the journal is like the game as a whole at this point, taking no chances and trying to be everything you'd expect from this sort of game. Eager to test this trend, I immediately went as far north on the map as I could in order to find the herbalist. Why are things in RPGs often located due north, as far away as you can manage? Nearly anything important can be located simply by going up as fast as you can. It worked splendidly, of course. The herbalist gets right to work after I make my slow-ass trek back, and applies pigwood salve to Civilian20's wounds to help her heal. Just say pigwood salve to yourself until you realize why I decided it was necessary to mention it.
I'll leave with that as our introduction, because I can't really go on doing a blow-by-blow of this game right now. I just can't. A more general review to follow in a week or two.
But that's no serious complaint. Silly, overly complicated names have been a staple of RPG gaming since we typed fragment sentences into the console of the lovable deathtrap called Zork. My only real complaint with Aveyond, before I even double-click the shortcut to begin my epic adventure, is that it's so greatly hyped. I think it goes without saying, now, that I have no soul and am a cynical, hateful shit. It's that quality of my character that leads me to be wary of hyped up games, hyped RPGs in particular. I don't put more than a single iota of hope into most universally loved games, simply because I realized long ago that game reviewers are, on average, either very easy to please or utter ass scabs, pandering to whichever developer throws the most goodies at them. Worse still, many reviewers subscribe to a dangerous sort of relativism when reviewing independent games like Aveyond. Every review I found that wasn't hosted on a spyware farm or written by a drunken Korean using an online translator and Wikipedia praised the game rather highly, flinging around turns of phrase like 'instant classic' at every curve and bend. That's all well and good, but I swear that I hear a tiny voice saying “...for an indie game,†ever so softly after every loving compliment. What I'm getting at is that games are often judged on their origins rather than their merits, particularly by people unfamiliar with gaming in general. It's regarded as either a nice, wholesome game that a lovely young woman created, or proof that Anyone Can Do It Even You. I've often seen Aveyond cited as the ultimate success story for RPG Maker users, a notion that I'd like to heave bodily out a fourth floor window. I don't want to do this because nobody should have dreams, but because it fosters complacency by insinuating that all one need do to achieve success is continue to plug away at an established engine until you can bang out something acceptable.
The same nits who insist that Aveyond has come to carry us all away from our forum-lurking days and into a world of sexy girls and expensive motorbikes also stress that Aveyond uses the RTP sparingly, with only a few dashes of it breaking up the beautifully sprited scenery. This is difficult for me to believe when the RTP assaults me within the first two seconds of the game in the form of a re-colored Civilian20 running from Lancer01, AKA 'MAN', AKA 'Agas'. I won't begrudge the minor grammatical error (a comma in place of a semicolon) in one of the first lines on account of the window skin being so easy on the eyes. If it's one thing I love, it's a window skin that doesn't make me want to sell my corneas on the Black Market. Civilian20 doesn't last long. She's done in by and RTP fireball, and left as a custom death sprite created by skewing her sideways pose approximately 15 degrees and MS Painting one of her skin tone's colors over her eyes. No, wait, I lied. She's actually not dead, as she conveniently informs us in her best Captain Kirk impression. She sends out a Strobe Light Butterfly to find some unnamed Chosen Child, then flops back over in 15 Degrees of Death Mode. The butterfly flies gracefully over Ocean01 as the opening credits roll. The combination of the music, the blinking butterfly, and the endless twitching ocean make it hard to tear my eyes away from the screen simply because I'm easily hypnotized by things like tiled animated gifs and Winamp visualizations. Once it clears the ocean, the butterfly introduces me to what screenshots had already hinted at: painfully inconsistent graphics. The butterfly and I seem to have traveled into a completely different game, one with detail and poorly-executed tiling graphics. When the butterfly finally finds the child after its long and treacherous flight in a straight line, we notice not only that Rhen hardly looks like a child at all, but that her face graphic varies so greatly from her character sprite that I initially thought that the message box belonged to an off screen character. The butterfly sends Rhen and her unnecessary H through an RTP portal (Support07, if you're keeping up) and zaps her over to Civilian20's last known whereabouts. Rhen proceeds to question the situation for all of .5 seconds before gleefully dragging Civilian20's stiff corpse through Support07, the portal to God knows where. Rhen's frankensprited father quickly comes to their aid, because he's a helpful guy like that. He, too, drags this stiff corpse he supposedly knows along, this time back to the cottage he shares with his daughter. It's at this point in time that I'm given control of the game for the very first time, and I feel just great.
The controls seem fine for walking about. Same old RPG Maker move and tap 'space' sort of thing, with the A, S, and D keys used to open the journal, items, and options screens respectively. It's easy enough to find a comfortable hand position where you're touching all the required buttons at once. However, I find myself sorely missing a dash command, which it seems like everyone and their cat has by way of a simple script. You'd think that with something as uncalled for as transplanting commands to different keys in the game, someone would have said “I would also like to be able to be in a hurry.†As an aside, I believe that Clearwater must be a very nice place to raise children, simply because I wasted a good five minutes of precious life walking around the area trying to provoke something into attacking me. I don't do this because I'm a blood thirsty maniac, but because I want to see how the game handles battles. Since I even walked through a cave looking for baddies to toast, I can only assume that it uses the banal system of non-random encounters. I loathe non-random encounters because they're often so poorly implemented that any puzzle or labyrinth area quickly becomes less of a challenge and more of a Benny Hill-inspired chase sequence between my character and goblins numbers 12, 63, 23, and 301 of 805.
My next gripe, which took all of three seconds to form, is about the game's apparent love of mollycoddling the player in this opening sequence. As you step into your Beloved Peasant Village, the game informs you that you are, in fact, about to enter your Beloved Peasant Village. Thank you, Aveyond. I could not have deduced that without you. Nor could I have ever imagined that the same button I've been using to advance text would make people talk to me. It also tells me where Rhen's father lives, which just sort of cuts out the two minutes of gameplay time I could have used to find that out myself. If this game doesn't let go of my hand within the next five levels, I'm banishing it to the depths of the pit labeled “Games for Your Motherâ€. Another RTP character, Civilian06 (uncut and unedited) hangs out in Rhen's Beloved Peasant Village. I'm not interested in him because he's boring, so I make my way to Rhen's home, located beside the scenic Waterfalls to Fucking Nowhere. The interior of the house is a lot like the exterior: a distracting mix of RTP, hand-drawn-style, and recolored graphics.
My first task in the game is a fetch quest, for an herbalist to help heal this random woman. I don't see why Rhen's father can't damn well do it himself, but who am I to question one of the founding principles of wasting a gamer's time? Anyway. The journal system works exactly as you'd expect it to, which is a relief and a disappointment at the same time. I'm relieved in part because I now have a place to view my quests when I forget where the Hell I was going. However, I find it disappointing because the journal is like the game as a whole at this point, taking no chances and trying to be everything you'd expect from this sort of game. Eager to test this trend, I immediately went as far north on the map as I could in order to find the herbalist. Why are things in RPGs often located due north, as far away as you can manage? Nearly anything important can be located simply by going up as fast as you can. It worked splendidly, of course. The herbalist gets right to work after I make my slow-ass trek back, and applies pigwood salve to Civilian20's wounds to help her heal. Just say pigwood salve to yourself until you realize why I decided it was necessary to mention it.
I'll leave with that as our introduction, because I can't really go on doing a blow-by-blow of this game right now. I just can't. A more general review to follow in a week or two.
Damn you, board software, leave my formatting alone!
