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Aquarius vs. RedMaverickZero
Aquarius The bug eyes... Creepy.
Kenji Murasame
Download: 99 KB
V.S.
RedMaverickZero
Play Time: hours and 21 minutes
Review # 40 for RedMaverickZero The bug eyes... Creepy.
Them's Fightin' Words
    Castle Paradox has held many contests. Usually with half decent turn outs. But one contest I never got into was the Human Day Contest. Either a lack of time, or I got confused over the objectives. Anyways, Aquarius is a game for a Human Day Contest long long ago. Heck, it was on the gamelist before I even knew what Human Day was.
Graphics
    Like all contests, these games are made within a set time limit. Which can put a strain on the author and make the graphics seem a tad rushed at times. But, for Aquarius, the graphics looked beautiful. And they never got old because of all the unique attacks and animations the characters had. There were a few bad points in these graphics. However, 9/10 of them were outside of battle.

The characters looked outstanding in battle. And they animated beautifully. However, when they became walkabouts upon the map, they tended to well... Get the Bug Eyes. Theres eyes were so far apart from the rest of their face. It just didn't look right. I mean, the graphics were still good to a degree of the maptiles surrounding them. And the walkabout structures were fine too. Having a ton of color and shading. Another thing I enjoyed a lot about the graphics was that every character was unique in terms of design. The lady character, wore blue for example. The first pirate, wore purple. And the last character, wore black and red. So you didn't see the same thing over and over. Which is always a refresher.

The battle graphics, like I said, were the best part of this game. Mostly because of all of their attacks and animations, as stated one paragraph ago. The main character, whom was more blue than anything was your typical "Palidin" Type character. And all of her attacks looked beautiful. The pinpointing of the hero sprite to the weapon sprite was exact and on perfect sync. As for all the other heroes, this applied too. And with the character Garand, it applied only too well. The maptiles of this game are definitely the stronghold as well. Although they lack in variety. Because most of the game is spent in that "Poisionous" Forest. You only see purple uhhh... trees.
But they are done very well, and on occassion you see green slime floatin around throughout the trees. Very nice graphics.
 
Storyline
    Like a lot of games, mostly OHR games for this example. The character awakens from a sleep. Sounds a lot like Link's Awakening or a lot of other Zelda games that people use this example for. And they don't remember who they are. That technique is good for developing the character and all, but you see it so much. It gets a little annoying after a while doesn't it? Anyways, she awakens and feels familiar with where she is, but doesn't know what's going on. She picks up her Aquarius Sword lying on the ground, and then speeds off into the forest for whatever reason. Meeting up with treasure hungry pirates she embarks on a sort of scavenger hunt with them. The captain, and some other pirate. Together they go through the forest and the cave in search of this crazy treasure. The main character, finds out the hard way that the pirates don't want to help her with anything. That they are selfish pirates only seeking gold. Which isn't that what we all make pirates out to be?

 
Gameplay
    The game is your standard OHR game. Using the default engine. Which I don't think this game had any plotscripting at all. Someone once told me that not all games need plotscripting. After I learned scripting a little bit, I began to disagree. But this game kind of showed me that the person was right. Everything was pretty well done. All of the battles were pretty good too. Which I'll get to that later. The game had barely enough play time though. A measely twenty minutes with all of these fantastic graphics was astonishing. However though, the only thing that dragged the game to the twenty minute mark was the fact that the forest was so very big. And every few steps you'd get in a battle. Which takes about like a minute. So getting from Point A to Point B is not anything helping the storyline, just taking up time.
 
  Battle
    Battles were pretty fun. Like I said, everyone had some unique attacks that helped them in battle. And what made this really interesting was the fact that some of the heroes had attacks that did multiple attacks. For instance, the captain pirate dude. He had this very cool attack called Pillage. It was basically a jump attack. Except for the fact that when he fell to the ground he would do four devestating attacks to a particular enemy. And if that enemy died in the process of this attack and another was on the field. He would drift to the other one. A very unique attack that inspired me for more attacks on my project. The female heroine was like I said. A palidin. She had sword attacks and then her healing powers helped out the party a great deal. Her healing spells did around 100 something to restore. Dispite the fact that you don't really lose too much damage considering the amount of battles you're in. It's because of the high amount of HP your characters have. 600+. The battles were very repititive but very fun in other words.

 
  Map Design
    Another flaw of the game is it's humungous straight forward maps. Usually, large maps come with mazes and alternate paths that can confuse the player. Yet, it was mostly because of the large maps that gave the game a minute count of 20 minutes. Wandering the map doing nothing is pretty boring. Dispite how pretty the game looked, the map suffered the most. In combination with the random battles. Which it wasn't the battles' fault, it was the long tedious maps...  
  Balance
    Battles were pretty balanced. You did a reasonable amount of damage to the enemies and the random battle count was set pretty generouslly. The only reason this seems bad in terms of random battles, is because of how big and vast the maps were. Enimies had enough HP so that you had to use your special techniques to win swiftly and safely. I can't really say much else due to the fact that I said it already.
 
Music
    Most of it was alright. However after wandering that damned forest for so long that music began to piss me off. The battle music was very appropriate too. It was a lil upbeat when you were sick of the forest music. And the cave music wasn't much better I suppose. However there was some music that just wasn't background music. Like when the characters found the "Treasure/Weapon". Which was alright for a mood setter I suppose.

 
Enjoyment
    The enjoyment factor wasn't as high as it usually is with most OHR games. But as usual, it was a blast writing the review. However, I did enjoy watching all the character do their moves. The graphics are pretty much what makes this game what it is. And as visually entertaining as they are, i suppose it isn't enough to bring the game a large factor of enjoyment.
 
Final Blows
    This is only a demo. And it is pretty much never gonna be completed based off what I know. Which is sad, because as little as you know about the storyline through what there is, you kinda want to know what happens when you reach the end of a demo. You've invested time, so you want to know what happens next. But as for a note to the author, I'd suggest, if you can still do the style this game is done in, to try and finish it. Make it more than a contest entry and a cool and fun game.

It's a treasure, it needs more than an army to carry out that huge thing!

It's a treasure, it needs more than an army to carry out that huge thing!
Final Scores
Graphics: 7/10.0
Very nice. The stronghold of the game. Except for the walkabouts...
Storyline: 1.5/10.0
In development, so it's hard to really tell what's gonna happen next.
Gameplay: 2.5/10.0
Your basic OHR game. With some visual things to enhance it's fun factor.
Music: 3/10.0
Good selections, however they get annoying after a while...
Enjoyment: 2/10.0
Not as fun as it could have been. If the story would have progressed better, this would have been a very fun game. The graphics and story didn't go hand in hand though...
Overall Grade: C-
Final Thoughts
    It's visually entertaining, but that's all I give it. Check it out if you wonna see good graphics and a developing story.  


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