Gameplay

I'm Way Too Full of Duke Quotes

The story revolves around the Tyrant Emperor, Silver, who has decided to take all the women in his land to him and pick himself a wife. The main character, David, has his wife stolen and is naturally quite upset. He and "Granpa" start chasing after Fuge (Silver's son, who has a certain history with Granpa) but Fuge's men get in the way and delay the heroes long enough for Fuge to take David's wife aboard the ship with the rest of the women.

And their secret rebel base!

Stats screen - it contains everything you need to know about yourself.

The first chapter is basically a training sequence. You learn the basics of combat and some simple puzzle solving. Combat is handled real-time and depends on the player's actions. You click on an enemy to hit him, and if you do certain mouse motions (all simple) you make different kinds of strikes. Also in the first chapter, your NPC (non-player character) partner (Granpa) is handled by the computer - a luxury you will be yearning for later on.

The first special move you learn!

Impressive lights

It's too bad that some things aren't covered in the tutorial part. You'll get a sword/wand near the end of the chapter and it will either make a normal strike against an enemy if you're close, or it will fire a bolt of ice at a distance. Now, it's not explained whether this wand has limited charges, or whether it recharges by itself or needs to be recharged… nothing. I was left to my own devices to see that "oh… don't fire it for a while and it'll recharge. How nice of them to tell me."

That water flowing effect is impressive

Those artists are really something

If you're going to treat the end user like a complete newbie and not let him skip the training parts (which get tedious if you're playing through a second time, or avid gamer), at least do it right and explain everything.

A Few Issues

Remember how I said that the NPC AI is a luxury? It is. Later on as your party grows, you'll have to control each character in combat. Now, considering that if you want to be at all effective, you'll be doing the arcade-moves with them, it's pretty hard controlling more than one at a time.