Darker Tides

Fun, but a little on the short side.

Good game. Story: A simple story about Aala's role to head out and prevent the Kraken's awakening. System: Definitely added onto the rpmaker system, with more variety with the skills. Art Style: Good. Music: Really good. Maps: Decently large, well detailed, and some additional maps. Overall: Pretty good game, it is short as well, but well deserved time.

Darker Tides looks and plays like an early RPG Maker game. And I don't mean that in a good way. It has all the usual suspects: Undefined boundaries that let you wander off-screen. A quest log that's pretty much useless. No map. No way to move around. Virtually deserted areas where even the NPCs just stand around and don't react. I'm sure I've forgotten some of the things that annoyed me while playing. Well, at least there's no grinding. All enemies are visible and, once defeated, disappear forever. And, as is typical for games from this publisher, the enemies have a homing missile effect. There's no escape unless you start running early. Well, running isn't really an option either. Which brings us to the biggest problem. The battles barely yield any gold. Just enough to equip yourself with better weapons. But the enemy groups hit hard, and your own party is more of a petting zoo than a fighting force. Consequently, you'll usually find yourself with no mana points left after just two or three battles. And as I said, using potions is simply far too expensive. So you end up having to return to the nearest town a good dozen times in each dungeon... which is incredibly time-consuming and frustrating. It's also worth noting that there are hardly any items you can equip to protect yourself from things like confusion... which further prolongs the battles when three-quarters of your party are trying to kill each other. But wait, it's getting better (I mean worse). They even used the layout of a city and dungeon from another of their games (It wouldn't surprise me if it were a pre-made set from RPGMaker) I guess it's from: A Place Far Away, another horrible game. When I bought the game, I didn't have high expectations. After all, the publisher is known for its overpriced shovelware games (I must know it, because I own a whole bunch of them). But... once again, my expectations were completely dashed. I strongly advise against buying it. And if you absolutely must try it... wait until it's at least 80-90% off.