Tales from Zilmurik Reviews

Duragon gam

It likes to jump around a LOT. But while the jumps seem random, there's a small bit of cohesion there. There's always a movement forward as far as the bigger picture plot. Not a bad game by any means, but it does like to be a bit more long-winded than other RPGs like this. Still, worth the money IMO.

Many RPG Maker 2003 games have been in development (and temporarily abandoned) for more than 15 years. Now that games like "Ara Fell" have proven that people are willing to pay money for these games (if they're good enough), all the stragglers have begun to crawl out of their holes, trying to fulfill their childhood dreams. Some amateurish projects better remain unfinished, though; unfortunately, this game is one of them despite some visible effort. Bottom line: Unless you're in desperate need of another classic old school RPG Maker 2003 JRPG, I can't recommend this game. There are far better games (for free) out there (check out "Theia: The Crimson Eclipse", for example). The story is presented in the most boring way possible (just read the pseudo-epic babble on the game's store page and you get a glimpse of what I mean), and the developer fails to make the party members and antagonists appealing and interesting. There's too little dialogue of relevance, and all events leave open too many questions (maybe the developer forgot that the player doesn't know as much about the game's universe as he does). Just being able to present one's lines without too many spelling and grammar mistakes doesn't make one a good writer. Some of the party members even get awkward exposition info dump flashbacks right at the beginning. Yeah, I want to travel with you and fight by your side, and I want to get to know you better, but that doesn't mean you have to tell me your life story after we've just met. Without their not very relatable back stories, though, all party members are blank slates and utterly interchangeable. Unfortunately, the ATB (Active Time Battle) system only features a press Enter wait function, not a fully automatic one, so that battles feature even more button mashing. While weapons and shields incorporate certain elements and status conditions, none of them are explained (there's an in-game manual that should cover them, but it doesn't work as of writing this review). None of them matter, though, if the player takes the time to acquire the powerful arena weapons (early). The current level cap of 25 is way too low (RPG Maker 2003 allows up to level 99), I reached it (after a bit of grinding) after the second dungeon. Why develop a classic old school JRPG with this engine and then cripple the expected meaty hardcore experience? I mean: When I see all these elemental skills that can be bought at the Mages Guild, it's perfectly natural wanting to acquire them as soon as possible if this task only requires reasonable effort. Why should I expect to reach the peak of fighting prowess after slaying a few slimes, pigs and brigands? To make matters worse in terms of balance, many enemies have a low chance of dropping "Herb Satchels". Opening one randomly provides the player with up to three Herbs of one type, all of them permanently raising certain categories of stats, including the Golden Herb which raises all stats by two. Due to the random nature, abusing save & reload can easily provide the player with enough Golden Herbs to become practically invincible, and then the arena offers an even easier way to obtain an unlimited number of Golden Herbs. I'm not complaining per se; I like abusing save & reload and getting stronger in general. But why cap the level at 25 and then let the player run wild with abusing Herbs? I can't wrap my head around this sort of contradictory game design. While the dungeon design and the mapping are tolerable (despite some glaring obstruction mapping errors), towns suffer from "big map syndrome", featuring large, irrelevant areas (with many buildings that can't be entered), offering nothing to explore, with too few NPCs (compared to the towns' size) that also have nothing interesting to say. Some buildings can be entered, but shops are menu-based. Sleeping at an inn spawns the player on the top floor instead of near the entrance. Inconsistencies and inconveniences like these ones permanently annoy the player. While I don't criticize developers for mostly using the resources provided by the software (RTP - Runtime Package), since that's what the software is there for, the lack of custom resources doesn't help to mitigate the aforementioned issues. Speaking of exploration: Most objects can be examined, but identical objects all show the same evented message and contain nothing. That means you get the same message (and find no items) no matter which bookshelf or jar you examine. This design choice is terrible, since the pure existence of these messages compels the player to examine all objects nonetheless, despite there being nothing to find, and the messages are meaningless and don't incentivize the player when they're all the same and don't yield any items. To make matters worse, the third dungeon suddenly forces the player to examine all objects to advance, and one riddle even expects the player to examine a certain object from a specific angle, while only providing a very vague hint about that ("greeting the sun" or something like that, meaning to face east). Seriously, I love examining objects and finding hidden items in JRPGs, yet I would prefer the complete absence of object descriptions/events over this player expectations betraying mess. I usually don't write reviews for games I haven't completed yet, but it's very unlikely at this point that I will change my opinion, because the game is simply a too generic and ham-handed representative of the genre.

I don'y care how old school something might appear if there's no manual i have no interest, I'm disappointed since i was looking forward to an old school RPG with a story. But i'm not interested in learning game play on the fly when it's not an action game.

I think the story line is well thought out and the grafics are well done.

I want to thank you for taking the time out in fixing areas where they did not work like Scripts etc. I like the story line and just grinding out stuff so overall i give this game a thumbs up

It just lacked something that I found kinda dry? Something about the game didn't really pull me in like I wanted to play it, which is hard to do with an RPG Maker game. I don't really feel like it was worth 5.99 maybe more 2.99. I was turned off by it.