Blood Ties Reviews

simple game easy to play. good story line.

I'm gonna level with you, I forgot to review this game and it's been quite a while since I played it but I put almost 6 hours into this which is standard faire for an RPG Maker Game and I do recall some heavy vampire vibes from this one, It also looks about what you'd expect from an RPG Maker game. You work within the limitations of what you have.

It pained me to play through this game. I played another game recently called Oswald's Adventure which was pretty bad, but this game fixed quite a number of those, but it did several cardinal sins of RPG's that are so blatantly awful that this should not have seen the light of day. What do I mean by cardinal sins well let me list them for you: I) The game's story is paper thin. And often times whenever it tries to build more upon the world within the game it creates a bigger plot hole than there was originally. This will be brought up further in later points. II) Every single dungeon is basically a hallway crawler, there are VERY few side paths, and there are no extra dungeons in the entire game. Meaning each dungeon whether its a forest, another forest, a cave, a swamp, a mountain pass (that's the exact same tile set as a forest), a castle, or a tower, you feel EXTREMELY railroaded. Making it seem like far less of an rpg than it should III) The enemies even from starting out usually take 2-3 physical attacks from a character (even your big strong warrior Ven) to kill. And this is a consistent trend throughout the ENTIRE GAME. You will rarely one shot enemies except for Ven, unless you are constantly using your skills, which will be brought up later. IV) You are very rarely ever given chests with good equipment in them, or opportunities to buy equipment. They all feel too spaced out. To the point it feels rather disjointed power wise. V) This is the biggie, the game requires you to backtrack through nearly every dungeon in the game. There are a few which you have to backtrack through 2-4 times! This is the primary way this game pads its runtime. Most rpgmaker games allow a 'quickjump' through an area unless that area you are going through a second time has new story progress within it. This game does not do that and could probably be a 2-3 hr tale instead of a 5 hour tale in that case. VI) There is no sprint button, need I go on? VII) Chloe who is classified as your rogue, learns primary offensive fire 'spells' making her seem like she should have been a mage or something. VIII) Lastly Chloe learns a screen nuke move relatively early (like lv 12) called fire storm this move makes all enemy mooks obsolete, one use wipes out pretty much any enemy party if you are lvled properly, or leaves them with a paltry sum of health. IX) The final boss is a bit of an ass, which completely ruins most of the feel of the game. The screen nuke he has can both poison and silence, do half your health and if he mutes most of your characters especially your healer you are kind of screwed. It's worse that there is no accessory that makes you immune to silence. There is for poison, paralyze, sleep, and one other status, but not silence. So simply put avoid this game.

Humans teaming up with Vampires is an interesting twist of a story concept you'll see in... well... ever really. Hell, this might be the first game I've ever played where Vampires and Humans worked together to save the world. If only the actual story, writing and dialogue was good and not utterly boring. Its especially worse when the only way to know what to do and where to go is by reading through it and trying to pay attention because there is zero direction in this game. Encounters aren't random. They're your Warefare staple of puffy clouds that respawn when you reenter rooms. Because that's the only way to actually grind. Kill everything, leave and comeback because you ran out of encounters and the encounters are all the same couple enemies in varying amounts of said couple enemies at a time. You're going to get lost so you're going to be killing nearly everything you see because a lot of them puffy clouds have 9 billion IQ AI and will attempt to intercept your pathing and deny all laws of RPGM physics just to fight you and die instantly to one aoe. Its sickening. Which leads me to the next concern. This wouldn't be a bad thing if it wasn't a spacebar simulator. Its like playing Spiral Clicker, but with spacebar. Or, if you want to turn your brain on just enough but don't have the energy due to the insane boredom you will receive from this game in general, one shot everything with your rogue spamming aoe fire. Something your actual spellcaster can't accomplish. Because for some reason, your spellcaster is relatively useless outside of the occasional heal or item slaveing and does half the magic damage your melee rogue does. You might be thinking, "well, if its that easy, then bosses must be a cinch! Well. You're wrong. Sort of. This is another one of their games where, mobs die in one shot, but bosses have a billion health and do stupid damage. But at least in this game, you can potentially stunlock every boss to death. If you have the luck and the mp items for your stunner to keep doing their job. Oh, and for some reason, the stun attack does more damage than everything else in the game. Just because I guess. I'm still slogging through, but if the horror stories people have with the final boss being genuinely impossible to kill... based off the boss fights up until my current point has been, I wouldn't doubt it and I'm not going to try and waste my time any further. I think. I don't know, so far I haven't managed to finish a few of Warfare's games just because of how... shovelware RPGM garbage they are and I'm not looking forward to playing the other 20 or so in their bundle if this is the track record of their games so far. Honestly, avoid like.... nearly all of their games from what I've seen. Worst 25 dollar bundle I've ever bought so far. None of their games respect the player's time whatsoever. There are countless other better RPGM games out there. There are lists on google. Just... you owe it to yourself to avoid this developer and publisher.

Story: 3/10 There are a lot of grammatical errors, NPCs don't have a lot to say, and while Vampires are a big part of the story, they behave no differently from regular feudal houses just with extra powers tacked on. There's interesting development between the MC and her terminally ill mother, with some vague theme being drawn in contrast to the immortal vampires, but the potential of this plot point is left unrealized. (Spoilers:) At the time of this review, I've defeated what appeared to be the main antagonist and recovered the macguffin, and then a new, previously unmentioned antagonist is pulled out of nowhere. The MC becomes a vampire herself and that part is pretty interesting, though she doesn't seem to take it particularly hard, which blends into the broader issue of vampirism in this story not being particularly menacing nor impactful. Vampires get along with the human church for crying out loud. Gameplay: 1/10 As soon as Chloe learns her area attack fire spell, every encounter becomes a routine of using it, then setting all other party members to basic attack for picking off any survivors. Then Melissa learns her stun spell, which most bosses aren't immune to and are rendered helpless by. Chloe's fire magic and Melissa's stun spell are both hideously overpowered, and it shows how little this game was play-tested. The most interesting part of grinding were the occasions when Chloe ran out of MP and I got to see what enemy groups could do when they weren't wiped out in the first turn. Conclusion: There is definitely other, better RPG Maker-made content out there.

A very very very very very very very mindless turn based RPG that I picked up because it didn't look to bad for a discounted price of 54 cents. For that price it wasn't that bad I guess, but I definitely see why people would be mad to pay more than a dollar for this. The fights are super lackluster. They don't change the character sprites at all once you're in the battle, so what you see of the character is what you get with them 100% of the time. Enemies are boring too, once you get into a battle with a boss it just feels like a more durable version of any other enemy because they aren't anything special. My final complaint about the fights is there's no type of animation for the characters when using an attack. They'll just move forward and you'll see a slash or fire or light etc. BTW, Chloe is absolutely OP as all hell with her Fire Storm attack. I was rolling through enemies just trying to reach the end of the game faster That being said I think I beat the game and got all the achievements in roughly 7 hours. So it's not like it was a big waste of my time. (I also played this on the Steam Deck and it was very compatible compared to playing it on PC) I would really only recommend this if you're an achievement hunter looking for a quick 5 whole achievements or if you're looking for a game that you don't have to use your brain for even in the slightest.

As always, I've completed the whole game. This is a typical jRPG, where a bunch of heroes ( here squad contains 4 characters ) are traveling to complete quests. Game is short, completing whole took me ~ 7 hours, so you will not have a lot of gameplay as a typical one. For me, the game wasn't challenging at all. Heroes level up fast, normal opponents aren't challenging, bosses might have been, but there is a safety crystal healing your whole team before fight. Since there is no tutorial, you use Space as action key / action confirmed, 'X' button for cancel and arrows to select target. Story was OK for me, but it's a typical one. However, soundtrack is strong point of this game. I would recommend it only to people which didn't play jRPG's before and want to try out this kind of games.

TLDR: Blood Ties is a very linear rpg made in RPGMaker. The hardest part of the game is likely to be until you get an aoe fire spell for your hero which you can then exploit at any crystal at the end of a dungeon and just spam your way through all mobs gaining fast items and xp. Story was predictable and as others have said I also felt no connection to my party throughout the game. There are better RPGMaker titles to play, this one is a pass. In-Depth: Story: The story intrigued me at first but quickly became predictable and turned into an incredibly linear plot line to the point the game would not let/encourage exploration of your surroundings by barring you from entering cities/dungeons ahead of time. After about an hour and a half in I no longer cared about the story and was just going for completion. Art: Artwork present within the game is pretty standard of RPGMaker and nothing really to look at. There are free games like Capella's Promise that uses beautiful original art in the exact same engine. Achievements: If you can manage to sit through 5-6 hours of back-tracking and fighting the same two groups of monsters native in each new dungeon (of which never seem to vary) then you'll get all achivements by the end of the game or very close to all. But again, this requires you to do hours of grinding due to back-tracks, a lack of equipment variety (or equipment in general), and the brain numbing no brainer fights. Misc: As others have said, the plot is very thin and often lends itself to more plot holes than a believable story. This story also could be told in way less than 5-6 hours but due to the heavy grinding aspect the playtime is padded way out. The final boss can be afflicted with status ailments and is how you beat him. Till the final boss you're able to cheese your way through any enemy mob group with an aoe spell and normal attacks. The little bit of exploration present in dungeons becomes repetitious after the first two or three as the branches will always lead to a chest and the exit to a new section. Overall, the game is a hard pass. If I wasn't a completionist and knew that I could get all achievements I would have dropped this after the first couple dungeons. There are much better (even free) titles out there you could play instead of this. Save your time and energy for something else.

Got this game for 20 cents, but even that was too expensive for how [i]awful[/i] it is to play. __________________ [h1]Main Complaints:[/h1] __________________ - Strategy consists of mindlessly, repeatedly hitting spacebar - Completely linear gameplay, any attempt at exploration grants trivial or no rewards - No full screen, only one resolution (which is a very tiny window) - Random encounters (always represented by the same purple cloud) make up 95% of the gameplay - Dialog is so boring it makes me want to die __________________ [h1]Minor Complaints:[/h1] __________________ - 2 enemy types in any area. Every enemy is so unoriginal and easy to kill that they do not deserve an encounter - No atmosphere. Story takes place with medievil-fantasy theme, even though there are: * guns that deal almost no damage * dinosaurs?? - Map is unclear: * every type of location has the same symbol and no label (e.g. every castle looks the same, every village looks the same, etc.) * Forest entrances are not labeled * No markers indicating where to go next, meaning you are forced to read through the terrible, non-reapeatable dialog. - Shops are a waste of time - NPC's have dialog, but add nothing to the game in any way and should be ignored ____________ [h1]Summary:[/h1] ____________ This game is garbage. It's so boring you will have an existential crisis while playing it, wondering why you waste your life away playing videogames when you aren't even enjoying the one you are playing. If I had to choose between being locked in isolation in a straight jacket or playing this game, isolation would be hugely more entertaining. Look at the time any positive reviewers have actually played this game, most if not all of them have not even finished it. No sane person could finish this game and describe it as a good experience. Look at the global achievements for this game, only 1 in 50 people could bear to play this game for more than an hour. In conclusion, this game is so bad that people should get paid for playing it, rather than the other way around.

I love RPG Maker games and usually give very positive reviews. However this game may be the only exception so far. The last boss, Gendall, is overpowered and cannot be killed. I played this game from beginning to end and took me more than 7 hours. Most of the combat is easy, but the final boss is terribly overpowered and impossible to kill. I keep grinding all my team until they are at an extremely high level of 36. I equiped my guys with the best gears in the game. I do every single quests possible. I explore every single map and pick up every item to make sure that I did not miss anything. When I reach the final boss, he used Shockwave and paralyzed either 3/4 or 4/4 of my team. Then he used Plague and kill all my team. I have replayed the final battle more than 10 times, but there is no way to kill the boss. Have there been any testing and balancing done with the final boss? I do not recommend this game if there is and balancing problem and there are no ways to kill the final boss.