Castle Paradox :: Game Review

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Flute vs. Aethereal

	Flute
	zetes
	Download: 118B
V.S.
	Aethereal
	Play Time: 0 hours and 20 minutes
	Review # 6 for Aethereal	I'm surprised the demon didn't retreat out of fear for his ears and his sanity.

Them's Fightin' Words
		I truly hope Zetes and Bellwaks are not proud of this...I don't even want to call this a game, although that's the title that Zetes and Bellwaks released it under. This thing has so many bad points it's not even funny (and if it's trying to be comedic, it's doing that all wrong) and so few good points (actually, I can only think of one good point - I'll get to that) that I can't see why anyone would want to play this piece of trash. I'm not trying to bash the game, but it was just that horrible. Allow me to go into more detail as to why it was so bad.
Graphics
		The graphics are pretty bad, but the lack of effort is what really hurts them. Very few maptiles and sprites have shading (actually, the old woman sprite wasn't half bad) and the number of tiles in the game could fit on half a page. The overusage of the "lens flare" filter doesn't exactly help - it was used at least four times in the game. Another filter is used early on in the game that creates a neat effect, but filters should be used sparingly on maptiles, guys. It eventually gets repetitive, noticable, predictable, and overall annoying. The sprites were the best part of the graphics, and even they were pretty bad. The battle graphics were awful, with a lack of shading on all but about two sprites. The biggest issue I had with these graphics is the lack of effort. No shading is one example of this. The scene in the intro is an example of this because there is an animating fire tile on your house, and the animating fire was placed on grass! So, basically, there's a big grass hole in your house with fire on it. Reeeal nice. Did I mention the "Water Dude" that joins you later has nothing but blue eyes and a mouth for a walkabout, but looks like a big blob with yellow eyes in battle? Right...If Zetes and Bellwaks put forth some effort, the game might look alright. As it stands, however, this is one ugly game.
Storyline
		Let's take the hero and give him the knowledge of a two-year-old! What a great idea! Actually, not. There isn't really any storyline at all. Basically, you're this kid who goes outside and is nearly killed by a fire demon monster. After that...you do stuff for no explained reason. You go to a castle and find out the king is that fire demon, but you're never given a reason to go to that castle. You just go there because it's the only place you can go. So anyway, as you're going to the castle, you get stopped by a guard who says you "must give something to the king" to pass over a bridge. Instead you fight him. So when you get to the castle, the King wants to kill you because of some reason that isn't explained at all. You fight him, and he knocks you out with a spell and throws you into prison. Wait a minute, didn't he want to kill me? Oh well, I break out of prison (all I did was hit spacebar on the bars, and it said "You cunningly destroy the bars". What?) and am tossed into the moat, where I am saved by the "brother" of that fire demon, the "Water Dude". He then joins my party, and of course is invincible. After that, I couldn't do anything. I didn't even get an "end demo" message, which is quite annoying. Does this sound like a nice story to you? I didn't think so. The NPCs in this game were utterly stupid. I talked to one, and he said "I like pancakes. Do you like pancakes?". In that same house, the other NPC said "I ph33r pancakes. Do you ph33r pancakes?" (sadly, I did not change that one bit). That's right, there are some NPCs here that talk using noobiespeek. Not good in a game like this. As I said before, if this is meant to be comedic, then you're doing it wrong. The dialogue is atrocious. That's all I have to say about it. Poor grammar, poor spelling, horribly written, lack of capitalization about 85% of the time, aggghghghgg.
Gameplay
		Haha...well, the only "gameplay" was going around trying to figure out what the hell to do, but since this won't fit anywhere, let me go ahead and tell you this: in the first town, I head into a house casually, it's got an old woman in it. I head upstairs and find a treasure chest there which says "Wow you found a lot of gold! w00t! Check how much." or something like that. Well, I checked my inventory and found I now had 32000 gold. Wow. I head downstairs and the old woman accuses me of "stealing her gold" and immediately kills me. There isn't an actual battle, she just happens to be uber powerful and casts a death spell on me. What the hell? I got a game over just because I was searching the town? That's so stupid. Lord, help me.
	Battle
		Heh, you don't get any special abilities or anything (well, your Water Dude friend has two spells). Water Dude, once you get him, beats the unholy crap out of anything, and has 10,000 HP while you have a measly 60 or so. Before you get him, battles are worse than the average yawnfest, as you have to not only hold down the spacebar, but do it while looking at horrible graphics. Not cool. Thankfully they are very, very short and there aren't many of them (the last boss battle against the King lasted less than one minute). That's all I can say about the battles - there isn't anything else. Yes there is. There aren't any items in this game, so trying to select "items" from the battle menu is a waste of time and energy from key-pressing.
	Map Design
		Ha ha ha ha ha! The world map is really, really bad (let's just say the "continents" are very thin), and the first town totals four houses clumped together. This town is not only about twenty maptiles tall, it is made up of a total of five maptiles: one for roof, one for house, one for a door, one for dirt, and one for grass! Haha! Now, the castle town has many "town icons" representing it on the world map, but IT'S SMALLER THAN THE FIRST TOWN! I'm sorry, but this is just really sad. The castle's design is awful, too, featuring nothing but a couple of hallways with no branching whatsoever. Awful.
	Balance
		The game's battles were pathetic, and there isn't anything else related to "balance" that I can comment on because there were no weapons or armor or items of any sort (that I could find, anyway). The only balance in this game is that it is balanced to be horrible, if you consider that a type of balance.
Music
		Well, I will say this: as far as I know, we've got some original music here! (a loud gasp emits from the crowd) However, it's um...annoying. Not good at all, but I'll give a few points here for originality at least. That's all I can say.
Enjoyment
		I didn't enjoy one drop of this game. I certainly pray that no one will ever be forced to play this, because it's that bad. You won't get bored, you'll just shut it off five minutes in. I only played through the whole demo because, well, I'm reviewing it :
Final Blows
		Well, there are a few more things that don't fit anywhere else, so here goes. First, when you start off the game, your hero has 0/1 HP. This means if you access the status menu and back out, boom! Game over! Second, there is a developer's room. It's not hidden by any means, and two of the four people in there are retarded. Very lame, Zetes. Overall, this game ranks up there with ashs.rpg and Magnus in the "greatest crap of all time!" pile. Don't play this. Ever.

Uh, is this like, Arfenspeak for the retarded? Maybe...

Final Scores

Graphics: 2/10.0

No effort, few graphics, no variety...just bad.

Storyline: 1/10.0

You do stuff because you can't do anything else. There is no story that I can see. Also, making the hero stupid was not a good idea.

Gameplay: 1/10.0

There isn't any, unless you count less-than-boring battles as gameplay.

Music: 3/10.0

Original, which garners a good score right off the bat, but annoying, which takes away points.

Enjoyment: 1/10.0

I enjoyed writing this review (it's what I do), that's about all I enjoyed of anything relating to this game.

Overall Grade: F

Final Thoughts
		You'd be crazy just to put your mouse button over the download link. Don't play it, don't download it, unless you want something that might make you want to punch your monitor through.