Posts tagged Aldorlea Games
The Book of Legends Review
Jul 19th
The Book of Legends is a RPG in the vein of the old 16 bit genre. Created by Aldorlea Games, The Book of Legends brings back that feel of amazing adventures in a doomed world, that old RPGs did so well. With a long playing time and re-playability, this is a game you just need to hear about. I want to apologize if this review comes off as sounding like a fan review, it is hard to help.
Much like other old school RPGs of this genre gameplay is so simple it doesn’t even need to be mentioned in any real detail. Just believe me when I say you will understand the controls. So lets move on to the fun stuff. You have a large myriad of characters that you have the chance to recruit into your party. Although depending on your actions and who is in your party can effect who you can recruit. So you can’t get to play with everyone in anyone play through, I know that is a little disappointing but there are just so many characters that can join your party that I doubt, it will be too disappointing.
Like many of the best old RPG’s This game is a time taker. Don’t expect to finish this legend quickly, With over 50 hours to complete more if you play as pathetically as I do. You will have plenty of time to get to know the characters and experience a thrilling old school style RPG.
One change from the old RPG and most RPG’s is the characters dialogs. They are amazing, the things they say are funny, yet don’t diminish from the series atmosphere the game has produced. Jordan the first member of your party and in my opinion your main character is a jerk to put it nicely. I would use another term for him, but his comments are great and the response from his party members are a treasure. This is one of the major reasons it is worth playing more than once as well. Different characters means different interactions.
The story continues to put more pressure on the characters to the point that things get bad enough that you will actually split into multiple parties to fight bosses. This allows you to really experience more than just your main powered up line-up. Every character whether it be human or animal becomes an asset and worth leveling up. All characters have special skill sets and specific weapons they can use so with just over 30 characters in all in the game you may have quiet the variety of weapons and armors needed to fully equip all the characters.
The Book of Legends even has multiple endings, a bunch of side quests and secrets. The artwork on both the characters pictures and the monsters is fantastic. The music works really well with the game and doesn’t get annoying or drive you to mute it. The only thing that was a little saddening was that you can’t get all the characters in one playing, although the fact that choices affect which characters end up on your team makes the game feel more involved.
This game is fantastic and absolutely hysterical dialog between Jordan and Jasmine and once Clea joins the group it only gets better. This is a don’t freaking miss it, RPG. I thought Laxius Force was the best Aldorlea Games could bring to the table but the Book of Legends really is legendary.
Without a doubt 5 out of 5.
Indie RPG Laxius Force Review
Mar 15th
Aldorlea Games‘ Laxius Force is the indie RPG for review today. This PC title is the first in the Laxius Force games of which there are 3. The Laxius Force saga is comprised of 3 free games the Laxius Power trilogy and 4 purchasable games Laxius Force trilogy and 3 Stars of Destiny. Starting off with Laxius Force and having never played the Laxius Power trilogy had me worried I might be a little lost, but that ended up being pretty unfounded.
First of all you need to know for Laxius Force’s story and the back story of the characters is told through characters talking about their past and the events that transpired. A nice aspect is that it is done in a way that you don’t feel lost about stuff or filled with way too much info at any given time. So the game is able to stand on it’s own and act as a great first game to the Laxius universe. Now lets get on to the good and the bad of Laxius Force.
Let’s start with the good. It is a 16bit styled RPG that unlike the other two games by Aldorlea Games that I reviewed, “Sylia” and “Dreamscape“. This game focuses more on the traditional and serious aspects of Fantasy RPGs. Don’t get me wrong there is humor in the game, just not to the degree that the other 2 games had. During battles your characters aren’t visible as the enemy stands in front of you. Battles are turn based, you set your team’s attacks and when you’ve set the last characters attacks they will perform them based on their speed while the enemies attack will occur during same phase, much like most standard RPGs.
Another good thing about this game is the story and the characters in it. Nope you won’t be fighting with a team of pets or farm animals this time. It is hero’s, werewolves, skeleton warriors and the like. With a strong story you begin with one group, but soon switch to the characters you will mostly play as the retired heroes Random and his Elven girlfriend Sarah. They come out of a 7 month retirement after having saved the deport and want to see what has happened since they pretty much went off the grid. They have both gotten rather rusty in the 7 months, so they are back to starting from scratch to work up all their skills. As they talk to people and complete quests they meet people who will join your team. The story seemed to drag me into it and I found the writing for it pretty good to boot.
Now there was only 1 thing I didn’t quite like about the game and that was some of the artwork for the villains during battles. Don’t get me wrong the artwork for the character portraits has a nice look to it. As far as the enemies appearance in battle not all of them look sketchy, just some. Overall though this didn’t ruin the game experience or anything near that level. It’s just not as refined as some of the other games they have made.
In the end I rate this game a 4.5 out of 5. It’s solid story, interesting character conversations, and numerous playable characters make this game well worth playing.
Indie RPG Dreamscape Review
Nov 17th
Dreamscape is a lot like Alice in Wonderland, in its own way. You’ve got a snide talking cat, a viking rat who may be as close as you get to the mouse at the Mad Hatters table and you even have a talking flower to boot. With the main character feeling pretty lost and confused about the worlds in which she travels, I couldn’t ignore the similarity. The premise of Aldorlea‘s Dreamscape is that Erin’s boyfriend has disappeared into the land of dreams, but not before he gave her a device to enter others dreams. With this device you must find your boyfriend and return back to the real world, until then on with the fanciful adventure.
Dreamscape plays pretty much like any 16Bit style RPG does. As you play you gather more team members each with there own unique abilities and preferred weapons and equipment. Although this isn’t a merry band of Humans, Elves and Dwarfs off to save the world. Nope it is just Erin and a strange collection of people/beings you meet in the dream worlds. You will jump into the dreams of people you meet and can exit the way you came in or jump into the dream of another person you meet or person within your party. This allows a lot of back and forth into different landscapes, something you will need to do to advance farther in certain realms. You won’t be worrying about random monsters though, they appear on the screen for you to avoid or confront depending on you.
An interesting aspect that adds some difficulty to the game is the lack of a healing item inventory. Within the dreams you will find food of all sorts that will heal your party. Certain characters more than others depending on the food type. The true kicker is once you pick it up it is used immediately and removed from the map. So you need to use them sparingly and make sure it is the right item for the character needing healed most. There is a bit of a safety net as far as healing goes. You can use a fairy that appears near where you start, at a cost. If she heals your party the dreamworlds will react and make the game more difficult. So using her can be more headache than help.
The scenery is great, one minute your in Egypt’s desert then the next minute you could be in London at night while it rains, or a mouse cave full of cheese. All this adds to not only the atmosphere, but the freedom of the game. Between the cute jokes, character banter and ever shifting atmosphere things always feel fresh and interesting. The story may seem to fade out at points, but your still roped in to seeing what the next dreamscape will be like or who/what will be the next character or danger you’ll face.
This RPG may seem a little bit too cute for some, but that doesn’t make it easy. Even if you put it on the easier modes. With tons playtime hours of adventuring it’s also not your quick indie RPG romp. You’ll be setting aside a fair amount of time to uncover the mystery of the dreamscape and what your boyfriend was so afraid of.
I never felt to lost in any particular dungeon, nor did I find it impossibly complex to advance through things. I give this RPG a 4 out of 5 for the interesting story and area layout, not to mention the diverse worlds you enter as well as it’s old school game play, and the hours of playtime you will get out of it.
Sylia the RPG Review
Jul 27th
Aldorlea Games the makers of the Laxius Force and the Millennium RPG series published Ensorcelled Games‘ Sylia. Sylia is an RPG of the SNES style JRPG with turn based combat. Though it does have a few differences from your standard fare. Sylia left me with a number of mixed feelings.
Sylia starts off with a pretty standard storyline. You have four hero’s; a sword and shield knight, an axe wielding knight a white mage and a black mage. It is there job to stop the alien queen from taking over the planet, and although you start this game feeling like you missed the whole war. Which you have they have not succeeded yet, but the humans are celebrating their heroes before they go off on their last and most dangerous mission, to kill the queen alien. I’ll tell you this much, there hasn’t been a bunch of heroes I wanted to fail more than these cocky and ignorant heroes. Their conversations amongst each other was more painful than Tidas and Yuna’s mock Casablanca whistling scene in Final Fantasy X. Luckily we don’t have to listen to this group for very long.
They fail and they doom the world. With all of the human race stoned a very unlikely and completely unexpected set of heroes rise to save the day. Basically the animals of the world go after the aliens, it’s either that or let the aliens destroy the planet. Now the conversations between your new team are no longer annoying although they are nothing to get hyped about. Sylia has a good number of rpg cliches, but the animals do have some interesting abilities. This can make for some interesting parties, and you really do have a selection. It isn’t hard to get a decent team together.
What is hard is the game. Where the story seems like it could be great for all ages the puzzles will have even the best of RPG players scratching their head. The forum on Ensorcelled’s site may be your only hope of completing some of the side quests. Most Quests are handed to you with only one short line as to what they want. Telling you nothing about where you need to go or even the direction. These incredibly vague quests are definitely for the hardcore RPG fan.
The same can be said with the dungeons. They are all difficult mazes that may have you walking in circles with few rooms that contain something that breaks the pattern of the walls and floors of that dungeon. Don’t get me wrong I liked the added complexity, but there were definitely points even in the first dungeon with the new team that I got lost. Ended up leaving and re-entering the dungeon a few times before I figured out what I needed to do to get through it.
As far as the music goes, I would say it is average and there is a nice option in game to set your own battle music between a few choices. This makes the music a bit more enjoyable. As far as art, much of the games art work is repetitive patterns. Much like many old SNES and NES games so this only bothered me while searching for definable land marks. The controls for the game are incredibly simple and take no real skill to learn so that is a plus when you are wanting to just jump right in.
Now let me tell you why my feelings are so mixed on this RPG. When I first started, I had to force my way past the prologue and even a little into the story. I had some real difficulty getting into the story, once I did though I really started to get going and the next many, many hours I was having a pretty good time, even when I was looking for the solution to a quest with basically nothing to go on. Then came the wall. I hit it so hard I didn’t know what to do. I looked in the forum and things pointed towards a object I had seen once but didn’t go and click on it left the room and noticed it right before the screen changed to the next room. I immediately had went back, but it was gone. When reading over what I needed in the forum it appeared that this object was the key. So I spent hours going into the room, out of the room and back into the room to get this randomly spawning object to respawn only to find out according to another response in a different forum thread that you only find it once. So because of that I know I missed my chance at it and found out that it wasn’t the thing I needed either.
I seem to be lost once again in the game and I don’t think I can bear any more hours wasted on just trying to find my way out of this dungeon. I felt I spent way too much time with one issue already that I don’t have the patience to do it again any time soon. Do I think this game is good? Yes. Do I think it is hard? Yes. Do I think the non-RPG player would like it? Honestly, I think the game is more directed to the hardcore RPG audience.
I give this a 3 out of 5, There is a lot to like for the skilled RPG player, but a bunch to infuriate most other style gamers. Download the demo first.
