Gamelist Review List Song List Watched Journals Forum IRC Gamelist Song List Review List Forum Articles IRC Log Out Add Game Edit Games Add Reviews Edit Reviews Add Songs Edit Songs Log Out Edit Games Edit Reviews Edit Songs Sign Up Log In My Journal My Game Journals Watched Journals All Journals Journal Settings All Journals About Us Staff FAQ
Castle Paradox
Title Bar
Log In Box
 
______  
[more]
    1) Moyos Theme by Obright
    2) Hydra Shrine by Obright
    3) Ode by Obright
    4) Hellas Theme by Obright
    5) Cave Dweller by Obright
A Wizard's life vs. Iblis
A Wizard's life The first NPC I encounter is a palette swap of the main hero. Not promising.
Sparoku
Download: 622 KB
V.S.
Iblis
Play Time: 0 hours and 50 minutes
Review # 10 for Iblis The first NPC I encounter is a palette swap of the main hero. Not promising.
Them's Fightin' Words
    The description for this game states that it is no longer being worked on. I am writing this review to protect the good people of Castle Paradox from this game, so that they do not think "oh it has so many downloads it must be good."

It is not. It is not good at all.


Graphics
    Maptiles: Bland! There's nothing about them that would make you want to look at them. They're not painfully ugly (mostly), but they suck away at what life the game has. If you have ever played a newbie OHR game, you have seen these maptiles. You will know exactly what color the grass and trees and water are before playing it. You will know what the houses look like. Might as well play with your eyes closed (or, better yet, not play it).

Walkabouts: Zero variety. Most towns had one female NPC and one male NPC, but several copies of each one wandering around. The sprites were the same from town to town too, just with palette swaps. Also the walkabouts are not well made anyway. The limbs are tiny and hardly move at all. Really, when they're walking it's hard to tell that they're animated.

Backdrops: Ughhhhhhhhhh! So filtered! So poorly!

Enemy sprites: Done in five seconds. There's a snake, as always, and a couple of things that are probably supposed to be unique but that don't really look like anything. Doesn't every newbie game have these? Well, at least this one doesn't have a slime.

Hero sprites: The same as the walkabouts. I don't have any problems with this technique but since the walkabouts were already ugly I didn't like looking at them so much.

Weapons and attacks: Weapons float in mid-air, as always, and I hardly needed to use any of the spells so I'm not sure about all of those. The ones I saw were kind of okay, I suppose, but nothing great. The only good part is that, since the hero sprites are walkabout sized, the attacks were huge in comparison and that was kinda cool to see the first time.

Oh, and the font. I guess that's part of the graphics. It was a custom font, but a terrible one. I generally support changing the font, but I also support being good at it. The OHR font is a good one and if you can't change it well then don't change it.


 
Storyline
    It was full of confused wandering, plot boulders, lucky coincidences, horrible cliches, and random nonsense. You know the drill.

Kurin starts out pretty much saying that he's gonna wander around (he probably said "explore," but really, to the player that just means wander around aimlessly). This is VERY BAD. Quests should not start for no reason. Kurin should at least have some reason for going out, maybe to run an errand or something. This is not hard stuff to come up with!

You go to some town and there's a psychic there who tells you to go to Terror Rock. First off, apparently psychics are persecuted against in this world cause you mentioned "I thought all the psychics were wiped out!" This confuses me because she reveals her psychic powers immediately. I'd figure that she probably wouldn't want to tell just anyone. Second, since Kurin is your typical newbie game hero who has no sense, he thinks going to Terror Rock is a GREAT idea. Why do so many "heroes" just do whatever they're told? Not ever psychic or sage or prophet is a good person!

Next you go to some town and talk to the mayor (who is just standing around outside) and she decides to join you. It seems she wants to travel and needs a male bodyguard for protection (it hurts me deeply that a girl made this game). She is excited when you say you are a wizard, and decides you will be good enough to protect her. Of course, she doesn't seem to care, or even ask, where you're going. Wherever you want to go is fine! And in a display of extreme stupidity, when you check our her stats and skills and stuff, SHE CAN USE MAGIC TOO! I love how in this world where wizards are dying out, everybody seems able to use magic.

Then you go to a temple, where they were expecting you of course, and apparently you're THE CHOSEN ONE! Okay, now, that's never surprising to hear in a newbie game. But you know, it might have been a bit less expected if the intro to the game hadn't already told you this. Important plot points should not just be force-fed to the player in the introduction. Also, after telling you about this, the wise old man vanishes. He doesn't cast a spell and go away, and when he disappears the heroes don't even notice. He was just a one-time NPC who didn't get a replacement. Laziness!

So then you randomly decide to visit the psychic again, and luckily the way back to the town is no longer blocked by a plot boulder! And then when you get to the town, ANOTHER plot boulder is surprisingly gone! WOW WHAT LUCK! So, in the town you find a place called "Rainy Cliff." I am not kidding, that's really the name of the place. Not only is it horribly cliched, but there is NO WAY there could be a cliff next to that town. It's surrounded by flat grasslands on all sides.

So then your travelling partner gets a random SURGE OF POWER and you get transported to another world. This is never explained exactly. In the other world you have to free her from a crazy rapist and then she's asleep and then disappears and wait, what? I was supposed to cure her of this sleeping spell but then she disappeared and nobody noticed. I love NPC bugs!

Luckily though you go to some temple in this other world and she's there and no longer asleep somehow! Some spirit has to take over her body, but then you offer it your body so it takes you. But then she offers her body so it goes back to taking her again, and you have no complaints about it this time. What? Randomly switching back and forth between options is not good drama.

So I don't really need to go on at this point. Not a whole lot else even happens after this and it's even more obviously rushed and makes less sense.

 
Gameplay
    The gameplay had no reason to exist.

At first I was anxious at the fact that there were no inns, but then I realized they weren't too necessary. Just sleeping at the various save-points (which were one-use only, by the way) was more than enough.


 
  Battle
    Battles were dull and monotonous. Regular fights with random enemies only required a couple attacks, and in boss fights I just cast "Absorb" repeatedly. It hurt them and healed me enough that I didn't get hurt and they died pretty fast.


 
  Map Design
    Terrible. The worlds map were cut off at what seemed like arbitrary places. The player should never get a chance to hit the edge of the map unless they're leaving that map. There should not be an invisible barrier in the middle of the grass. It wouldn't have been hard to have just continued the mountains down to the coastline so that I wouldn't reach this barrier.

Towns were small and uninteresting. Nearly 100% of the houses were just locked, and served no real purpose. The towns were filled with NPCs who said things such as "Hi there" (one town only had NPCs that said that). There were no "shops," exactly, there was just a wandering salesman who you ran into in every town and some dungeons. He was one-time only though, which was weird. I mean you buy stuff from him and then he disappears. Why?

Dungeons were linear and generally felt pointless. Terror Rock was the worst though, because the maptiles were very dark and the walls looked a whole lot like the floor. Luckily it was a small map and didn't have any twists and turns or anything, but it was annoying to bump into things I could barely see.


 
  Balance
    Very, very easy. Really no effort put into the battles.


 
Music
    It was almost okay. Most, if not all, was ripped. I was happy at first to hear some music from Zelda 2 (that game is completely underrated, fools), but then the first battle had the FF7 battle theme which made me lose hope entirely. Luckily that's not the regular battle theme, but then, the regular battle theme isn't very good anyway.


 
Enjoyment
    There were a couple parts that were so bad that I laughed at the game, but there was no place in this game that I enjoyed as it was meant to be enjoyed.


 
Final Blows
    Why should anyone play this game? They should not.


When I look at your backdrops, I should not be able to see which filters you abused.

When I look at your backdrops, I should not be able to see which filters you abused.
Final Scores
Graphics: 2.5/10.0
Totally lacking in interest, but generally not pain-inducing.
Storyline: 1/10.0
It made very little sense and did not make me want to keep playing at all.
Gameplay: 1/10.0
The gameplay was entirely pointless.
Music: 4/10.0
Not terrible.
Enjoyment: 1/10.0
Bland BLAND BLAND!
Overall Grade: F
Final Thoughts
    A wizard's life should be more exciting than this!  


All games, songs, and images © their respective owners.
Terms of Service
©2008 Castle Paradox