I will review your RPGM1 games.

[Czechs Mex]

Note: Requests have been frozen for the time being. You can continue making review requests, but I can't promise to do more than what's currently on the list.

Okay, I've got a dex drive coming in about a week, and I'm ready to start up RPG Maker again. THE NOSTALGIA IS OVERWHELMING ME. So here's my offer: if you've got a game that you want me to play, state its name, and I shall play it. When I'm done (i.e. once I finish it or decide I absolutely can't stand it), I'll write a review and post it here. I'm taking requests in the order they're given. Fire away.

If your game isn't on the Pav or some other website, you can email it to me at czechsmex31@hotmail.com.
If you can, make the subject be "RPG Maker: <title of your game>", and that will make it much easier to find. Thanks!

Also, so you don't have to dig through this entire topic, I'll post the final scores here. Games with no scores have yet to be reviewed. Here they are:

1. Patrick's Journey (http://www.rpgmpavilion.com/pages/rm1full3.html) by Hedrum - Overall Score: 7/10 (http://www.pavilionboards.com/forum/showpost.php?p=8036&postcount=47)
2. Jester's Hunt by Draygone
3. Dash Handsome by Gustaff
4. Dective Lavere Murder Mystery by Vonwert
5. Black Ribbon by Yeaster
6. The Seinfeldinator by Shawn Forbes
7. Defenders Of Light by Shawn Forbes
8. Michael's Homosexual Adventure 1+2 by Master Slowpoke
9. Michael's Homosexual Adventure 3 by Master Slowpoke

[Valkysas]

we're accepting reviews on the pav site again now. can I upload the reviews that you do?

[Czechs Mex]

Certainly.

[Hedrum]

Heh. Review my game, Patrick's Journey (not really expecting a good one, but review anyway). :lol

[Draygone]

Jester's Hunt

(If you need a guide for it, there's a link in my sig. But don't use it unless you absolutely HAVE to.)

[Gustaff 13]

Please try Dash Handsome. Email me if you get stuck.

[Valkysas]

DASH HANDSOME IS NOT ON THE PAVILION.

SUBMIT IT NOW.

submissions@dzarchive.com with a short description!

[Gustaff 13]

It is. http://www.rpgmpavilion.com/pages/rm1demo/demo-dash.zip
And while it is actually a demo, it's longer than most full games. It ends at where the second scenario was supposed to begin.

[Valkysas]

ah, I thought it was a full game. I seem to remember playing it as a full game.

[Czechs Mex]

Alright, Hedrum, before I review your game, I think I need to ask:

I'm at that witches castle. Is this switch...
[picture removed]

...supposed to open this door?
[picture removed]

Because right now, that switch isn't doing anything that I'm aware of.

Also, am I supposed to be able to kill what comes out of here?
[picture removed]

Basically I'm stuck right now. Is there a glitch here or am I missing something? Thanks.

[Vonwert]

I got my contest game completed. You can review it if you like :)

[Draygone]

Those are some dark screens. Heck, that first one is black for me.

[Czechs Mex]

Geez, I'm looking at it from a different monitor now, and those ARE really dark. Hed, I'll PM you with some bigger (hopefully lighter) pics if you can't figure out what those are supposed to be. (That top one is in the easternmost room, where there's a switch in the room, the lights go out and there's a bunch of holes you have to avoid falling into).

Vonwert: Sure! I'll put you on the list. Right now the order is:

1. Patrick's Journey by Hedrum
2. Jester's Hunt by Draygone
3. Dash Handsome by Gustaff
4. Vonwert's Contest Game by Vonwert

I'm looking forward to playing all these games. A lot of these are ones I've been meaning to get around to anyway.

[Hedrum]

Oh no, that switch has something to do with the books. That book you just checked is an optional boss which you should ignore till like the 3rd scenario. If you do defeat the boss, you'll receive a book called the "ancient book"(or something like that) to get Alexis's ultimate magic which I think deals around 1,000 damage.

Anyway, check the book shelves in that room. You should receive "codes" there are 3 types of them. After that, go to the room where you see all of the four pictures. Each picture has a vault behind each of them. You use the "codes" and figure out if they work. You may even need to DROP the codes. When you found the right vault, you'll press a button that brings some chairs alive in a different room. Now, in this room you'll need to check the chairs in order (but it doesn't include all of the chairs). However, you get them in the wrong order then you'll have to go back into the room with all of the vaults and press that button again. After you check the chairs in the right order, a box will appear outside on the balcony. There you'll find a key. Then you'll get to the boss room. I hope that all made sense.

Oh, yeah, some books in the library (still talking about the Witch's Castle) gives you clues on where to find this ghost in all 10 places. This is a side-quest, you don't have to do this if you don't want to; this is to get Dustin's ultimate weapon.

SPOILER WARNING!!!
Ghost locations (in order):
1. SLC Castle
2. Dark Forest
3. Salt Lake
4. Snowy Woods
5. Utah Desert
6. Witch's Castle
7. Kearns Cave
8. Forbidden Dungeon
9. Great Field
10. Chrable Mine

Remember to check EVERYWHERE in those locations in ORDER!

EDIT: BTW, I didn't think you'd make it this far. :)

[Czechs Mex]

Heh heh, okay, thanks. I only read the first line telling me to check the library, because I don't want it ruined for me unless I'm stuck. If I'm having problems, though, I'll refer to that post. Thanks.

[Hedrum]

So what do you think of the game so far Mex?

[Czechs Mex]

That's what the review's for! :)

[Hedrum]

Yeah, thought you'd say that. :|

[Czechs Mex]

Alright, well I'm still playing the game, so that should at least tell you that I don't despise it.

[Hedrum]

Yeah, at least that's good. I'm playing it again and I must say it's very easy when you're playing it with the auto-battle mode :| .

[Czechs Mex]

Trust me, being very easy is not a problem with this game.
edit: and i'm enjoying myself, so enough with the long faces, darnit.

[Yeaster]

Play Black Ribbon. Now. lol. Just joking. Could you please play Black Ribbon (and complete it)? I want to know what people think of the game as a whole, especially since I can never play it again (disk broke). :(
Also, the game comes with a guide, however, it's dozens of years old and apparently I forgot to proofread it...and the pictures are old too... Anyway, whenever you play it, please email me your review, because I'll probavly forget all about this place by the time you're done playing it. (My email address is Eikichi@juno.com)

[Czechs Mex]

Sure I'll play it, but whether or not I complete it kind of depends on whether or not it sucks. I'll review it either way, though, and I'll send you the review.

Hed, I'm writing the review for Patrick's Journey right now. Kind of got a lot of homework, so it might not be up until tomorrow, we'll see. Also, I took a bunch of screenshots if you want them.

[Hedrum]

Oh sure. :D

[Czechs Mex]

Is there a place I can send them to?
And the review should be up sometime this week. Sorry, I got busy suddenly.

[BlueDragon]

For now, I say:

The Seinfeldinator

Defenders Of Light (FINAL) - Just submitted it to Pav, just wait 'til it's updated.

Later...

Mini Game RPG (I want to check and remove any bugs, then I'll resubmit it)

[Gustaff 13]

I want to play Checkers Plus, where might I find that?

[Czechs Mex]

Check your email. :) (I think it might be downloadable here at the Pav, too.) FYI: Just so you know, it is a 2-player game, so you might not get much of a kick out of it if you're by yourself. Also, you don't have to change scenario data if you play on the library level, so that one's a bit faster.

Shawn, I played the Seinfeldinator once, it was hilarious. I'll be glad to play it again and write up a review for it. Might take some time, though.

Sorry I'm not spitting out reviews like I thought I would. I'm using all my brainpower trying to think of a topic for my thesis, so I haven't had much time for RPGM lately. But everyone who requests it will definitely get a review from me eventually.

[Gustaff 13]

Are you playing Dash yet?! <3
I'm going at Beer Quest and Dream of Machines, tomorrow. That's a whole lotta classic RM goodness.

[Czechs Mex]

No, I'm a bastard! :(
Seriously, I will though. I really can't do anything until about Wednesday, but then I'll be back into it.

Where the hell'd you find Beer Quest?

[Gustaff 13]

From a friend of a friend... :)
I mean Ixzion.

Want I should send one back to you?

[Czechs Mex]

Oh, that's alright. I got it from Ix, too, I just didn't know anyone knew he had it since I don't think it's been posted at his site.

[Hedrum]

And the wait continues :( ....

[Valkysas]

if beer quest could be re-submitted, I'd like that.

[Gustaff 13]

It might need a little tuning up, I got stuck.

[Czechs Mex]

Gus, thanks for trying it out at least. Where'd you get stuck? I think some of the puzzles in the beginning might be stupidly difficult. It might just be that.

If there are bugs though, maybe i'll fix that before submitting.

Hedrum, sorry man, I've got a midterm tomorrow. But it WILL be up by wednesday morning. I guarantee it.

[Hedrum]

I hope so. I'd like to see what I did for my first time.

[Gustaff 13]

Czechs, It's near the beginging. It was night, and I was supposed to gain the horse catapulter's trust? But all the buildings were locked and no npcs were out to get hints from.

[Czechs Mex]

Oh yeah, everyone goes to sleep after midnight. You have to take the bus home and go to sleep yourself. pretty obnoxious huh.

[MasterSlowPoke]

MICHAEL'S HOMOSEXUAL ADVENTURES 1-3!
They're not very long! You probably could go through the series in an hour and a half, even if you stop to get snacks.

[Czechs Mex]

*hopes Hedrum doesn't see this post before I edit the review into it*

[Draygone]

I just did, so there's always the chance. :p

[Valkysas]

Koutetsu no yuuki kagayake mabushii hikari wo abite.

[Czechs Mex]

Well no matter how you put it, you and Forbes are just going to have to wait your turn.

[Valkysas]

Translation:
Let the courage of steel shine, bathed in the bright light.

ITS IRRELEVANT.

[Czechs Mex]

ITS IRRELEVANT.

It's all Greek to me.

Edit:

Okay, I'm FINALLY done with the review. Christ, I feel like I just wrote a term paper. I think I need to work on being more concise. Well, there you go, Hedrum. Whether you like your final score or not, I hope this gives you some good feedback about what you've done well, as well as some possible areas for improvement.

Also, I make no claims to be a pro at this writing stuff, so if anyone has any suggestions/complaints/whatever about the review, I'd be happy to consider your input.

[Czechs Mex]

Game: Patrick's Journey
Creator: Hedrum

Summary
Story: 3.5/10
Presentation: 7.5/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Overall: 7/10
What worked: party changing system, polished presentation, puzzles that rule
What didn’t work: a phenomenally boring story, puzzles that suck

What happens when you mix vomit and chocolate? Patrick’s Journey, Hedrum’s first endeavor into RPG Maker, takes you on such a roller coaster of stomach conditions, ranging from fully satisfied to nauseous to puking on your controller. However, even with its negatives, Patrick’s Journey exceeds all expectations for a first RPG, and could even teach a surly RPG Maker vet a thing or two about game creation. The details of the journey are broken down below.

Story 3.5/10

Let me give you the gist of it: a group of high school kids notice an unpopular girl at school has been fiddling around with witchcraft. It turns out that the girl’s actually being controlled by an evil lord, and the kids now must find the four magical artifacts that will put a stop to said lord.

As you can probably infer from the quick synopsis, this isn’t exactly epic storytelling. I did enjoy the modern setting, and the dialogue, for the most part, was fairly natural. However, unless you’re a master of your craft, basing your story off an “evil” anything is usually grounds for disaster. It just makes things too cut and dry. I like playing games where you can sympathize with the antagonist – he needs to have some kind of motivation for doing things other than just being inherently evil. In Patrick’s Quest, you probably won’t have a very strong attachment to the evil lord unless you’re generically evil yourself. The main characters are also quite underdeveloped and bland. While there were some notable exceptions, most of the personalities I came across were difficult to differentiate between and even slightly obnoxious. My favorite character ended up being the one that did the least amount of talking.

As the game goes on, the plot eventually does get slightly deeper, but it’s still essentially the same uninspiring stuff from beginning to end. Besides, by the time I actually did reach the end, the story had become so convoluted with inside jokes that I really wasn’t sure what was going on anymore.

I’m not going to lament on this any further, because clearly the story is not the reason you’d want to play this game.

[temporarily removed screenshots]

Presentation 7.5/10

Fortunately, things look up from here. Considering this is Hedrum’s first game, I found the presentation to be quite impressive. The towns and dungeons were by no means beautiful, but they were well-planned and varied. A huge amount of sample dungeons were used in this game, but other than a few unforgivable moments such as a forest maze, they really didn’t detract from the look or feel of the game.

In addition to the decent graphical look, I was very impressed with some of the cut scenes. In one example, a character takes the party around and tells them a story of recent events. The actual scene is recreated at the same time, as if the two timeframes have been superimposed onto one another. It’s a neat little trick.

But my favorite part about Patrick’s presentation? It’s completely bug free, a rarity in RPG Maker games. Okay, there’s actually a couple minor spelling errors, but unless you’re Mora or Big Rick Cook, it won’t bother you in the slightest.

Overall, from a programming standpoint, Patrick’s Journey is probably one of the more polished RPG Maker games I’ve played to date.

[temporarily removed screenshots]

Gameplay 7/10

There were a couple features in this game that really got me excited. First of all, the character changing system is impressive. There are seven characters you have control of throughout the game, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. It’s up to you to determine which group of characters you want to use in which situation. Every character is well balanced, and every combination of characters is useful in one way or another. At some points in the story, the characters break off into separate groups, and you control each of the groups individually. It makes the game less monotonous, to say the least.

Another aspect of the gameplay I’m particularly fond of is the puzzles. All the typical stuff was there – your block pushing puzzle, the sliding on ice puzzle, flipping switches in the correct order, etc. What I was more impressed with, however, were the timing based puzzles. There were some cases where you had to race to a certain spot to avoid getting eaten by a sand trap, and another where you had to avoid a bunch of charging hotties before they cornered and smothered you. These things are relatively untouched in the RPG Maker world, and it’s great to see Hedrum coming up with some new ideas.

However, as good as some of the puzzles are, there’s one piece of advice I need to give:

DO NOT MAKE INVISIBLE EVENTS THAT SCREW THE PLAYER OVER, YOU SADIST.

There’s no reason for them. It just ups the difficulty to level stupid, and tears the control out of the player’s hands. Really, there’s nothing more aggravating than trial and error when all you can learn from your previous mistake is not to do exactly what you just did. The same goes for mazes. If you insist on having a maze in your game, for the love of Mohammad, turn off the freaking random battles. There were a couple other annoyances, too, such as NPC’s blocking my path when I’m trying to leave a room, as well as computer controlled characters using all my expensive weapons as items during battle.

So that’s the reason why the gameplay score wasn’t higher. It had its good points, but there were too many times when the frustration level went through the roof.

[temporarily removed screenshots]

Overall 7/10

This game has such a huge disparity between its good and bad moments that it’s tough to come up with an overall score. Even taking into account the three categories above, there were still a couple things that didn’t sit well with me. First, just about EVERY non-playable character has a name. Why? It gets pretty confusing, because you have no idea who’s important and who’s not. I’m guessing the reason for the excessive naming was that Hedrum wanted to throw every last person he knew into his adventure. And that was another problem. There were just too many references to the creator’s personal life. Inside jokes just aren’t as funny when you’re on the outside.

A simple suggestion to the reader: play Patrick’s Journey for an hour. That’s just enough time to absorb the quality presentation, the sweet party-changing system, and a unique puzzle or two. If you want to continue on after that, go right ahead. But be warned – this game is LONG. And sometimes frustrating. And the story makes you feel like a baby with a turd in its pants – you know you’re waddling around in *****, but you really just don’t care.

However, if you’re willing to pick your way through the crap, there’s some serious golden peanuts to be found. Patrick’s Journey is consistently well-presented and sometimes humorous, but occasionally, you’ll even be surprised with a unique puzzle that’s never been done in RPG Maker before. For this reason alone, I feel that Hedrum has made a respectable contribution to the RPG Maker community.

[Hedrum]

Story. Yeah. Extremely LAME. At least it's the best I could do for my friends. :lol

[Draygone]

Is there any way you can not put those pictures in a row like that? It's skrewing up your post.

[Czechs Mex]

yeah, i just removed them. how was it screwing up the post? forcing you to use the horizontal bar or what?

i wasn't having any problems, but maybe i just have a higher resolution than others. I'll try making the pics smaller if that would help.

And draygone, if you have any suggestions or complaints as far as the actual review goes, let me know, because you're up next.

[Draygone]

Yeah, I had to scroll from time to time. I'm running on 800 x 600 resolution. You don't really have to shrink them, you can just stack them top to bottom instead of side-by-side.

[MasterSlowPoke]

800x600?! Your poor eyes...

[Czechs Mex]

Alright, I'm going to be spending most my RPGM time this next week working on my contest game, and then I'm going to Italy for a week. But after that, I'll get some more reviews out. Sorry for the slowness.

[Hedrum]

Is there a place I can send them to?

Oops! Um. I'll be sure to send you my e-mail adress. I could really use those screen shots of the game.

[WilliamKirk]

SOunds pretty good, Hedrum. :)

[Czechs Mex]

Hedrum, the shots have been sent.

[Hedrum]

Yes, I've received them. I might be uploading them up on my site pretty soon. Who knows?

[Gustaff 13]

Czechs, are you gonna be doing anymore reviews this weekend? (hint hint)

[Czechs Mex]

My buddy is back from Iraq this week, so I probably won't be doing to much with RPG Maker, sorry. :( But I'll try and get two done next weekend, which would be your game and Draygone's.

[Czechs Mex]

Uh, draygone, are there some custom graphics missing from the download? i think the first three or so weren't found. I don't have a dex drive hooked up to actually check what's on the cards, so I'm not sure if the problem is with my emulator or with the download.

[Draygone]

The graphics are spanned across all three cards. I think it says so in the included directions. I don't remember the exact order it takes everything, but I know I arranged it so it loads all the graphics from one card before loading from the next.

If you're not playing this on your PS, then you might have a problem, unless you know of a way for it to switch out "memory cards" when it reaches the missing graphic so it would try loading it again. Every time I reached the "missing" file, I tried switching it out but it wouldn't recognize that I did so.

EDIT: Okay, I went to find a way to get everything to load on ePSXe, and I remembered that I had created a second version of Jester's Hunt specifically for ePSXe usage. I can't remember for certain (my Dex isn't hooked up so I can't check), but I think any graphic that is on the Worlds 1-3 card are duplicated onto the Worlds 4-6 card so that the game can be started from either card. Unfortunately, in order to keep a save file open on the system card, I had to get rid of the one slot taken up by the introduction. Give me some time, though, and I might be able to edit it into the W1-3 card, if I have enough memory.

EDIT2: Whoops, I just checked directly from RPGM1's utility menu, and there isn't any space left to save. If you ever want to take a break from it, you'll just have to just suspend the program by hitting Esc. It is my understanding that it takes most people 4 hours to complete it (I can beat it in 2h45min, but that doesn't count). Is that alright with you? Don't worry, it doesn't use the default Game Over, so if you lose, you won't lose any progress besides being warped back to the hub world.

[Czechs Mex]

Yeah, that's fine. The emulator has a "save state" feature anyway, and I ususally just save on that.

I can hook my dex up and play on the psx if that'd be easier, but then I can't get you any screenshots. It's up to you.

[Draygone]

Dunno why I'd need screenshots, but if you could play it on your PS, that'd be a lot easier for me.:)

[Czechs Mex]

Sure.

Screenshots would just be for the games pages here and at the mag.

[Draygone]

Ah, that makes sense. Well, if you haven't started already (or got very far), you could always play the regular version to see the intro up to the title and I could send you the ePSXe-specific version. Just send me an IM at thedraygone if you do so I can send it to you. Or PM me, if I'm not on.

[JLaCroix]

You should review the Dynasty Project 3 and Dynasty Project 4 versions released under Dynasty Project Revival.