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The Gamemaster's Citadel vs. Shadowiii
The Gamemaster's Citadel Yeah, better watch out for those large, flat pieces of land.
Psyco2000
Download: 319 KB
V.S.
Shadowiii
Play Time: 0 hours and 15 minutes
Review # 45 for Shadowiii Yeah, better watch out for those large, flat pieces of land.
Them's Fightin' Words
    The Gamemaster's Citadel I actually played a while ago, and I just replayed it recently. The first time I played it because OHR-Monthly gave it such a lousy review I just HAD to give it a shot. This time I was dumbfounded to find a B- review for it (from OP:OHR. Boy, we sure were stupid back then!), so I figured I'd better set the record straight.

This is probably one of the worst OHR games of all time, ranking up there with Magnus and Way of the Warrior. It is also probably the best definition of a generic "newbie" game you could ever find. In fact, if I wanted to pick a game to be the standard for "newbie", I'd pick this one.

If you don't bother to read the rest of the review, let me just fill you in right now: Don't download this game. It isn't worth your time to even open it up.



Graphics
    Abysmal. They are downright awful. The cutscenes are horribly drawn in MSPaint, the maptiles are flat and barren, the npcs are horribly animated blocks of color, and the battles consist of flat heroes and flat enemies (the exception being the "final" boss, who looks semi-ok, but still awful). Graphics are definately the worst of the bunch.

NPCs - Horrible. Words cannot describe their horribleness. As stated above, they consist of flat blocks of color, "animated" by pressing the backspace key in Custom (for those who don't know, it simply flips the image. It's basically the cheap way of "animating" your npcs without actually having to draw the second frame). As bad as Magnus', to say the least.

Maptiles - Also awful, though some are...ok. Wait, I lied. They are all awful. Solid chunks of color, and some "details" like weird lines all over certain houses and fire that looks like animated spray-brush abuse (which it is!). Flat, lifeless, ugly.

Battle - Egads. PLEASE don't make me talk too much about them. They are quite bad. The enemies are very flat and lifeless, and the heroes are as well. Not to mention the fact that the author didn't bother to even capatalize the battle commands (ie "shoot" vs "Shoot"), so it not only looks totally flat, it makes you wish you were dead too. The battle graphics are stale and unexciting, and look bad too.

Cutscenes - MSPaint can be used decently for cutscenes. Take RMZ's game for example. Sure, they aren't beautiful but at least they don't look like total crap. These look like total crap. Air brush abuse at its finest, fill button, totally MSPaint pictures. Ugh. Kill me now, please.



 
Storyline
    Story

Well, a plane which seems to be full of furries or something is flying along, and I'm GUESSING it's a military aircraft because everyone has guns and knives and whatnot (it never tells us though), when they get attacked by the Gamemaster's robots (who the heck IS the Gamemaster anyway?). Well, their pilot sucks so their plane slams into the ground and you wake up in a hospitel. Except the doctor knows too much. But by that I mean he never got around to telling you everything yet (stupid game). It seems only three of your friends made it out with you, the rest were captured by Gamemaster (who shows up every once in a while to taunt you, wherein instead of attacking and killing him right there you just chit-chat. Reminds me of battles in Naruto, more talk then fight). So you have to climb this dude's tower to rescue your friends, which involves a lot of random battles and some computers that can heal you. You make it to the top and rescue them, and the Gamemaster escapes. Oops, ruined the totally anti-climatic and dull ending. Silly me.

Dialogue

Worse than the story. The characters all have the exact same tone and personallity. They all agree on almost everything (yeah, there's exciting conflict), and the Gamemaster talks like a drunken circus ringleader (and kinda looks like one too). The dialogue isn't as bad as Magnus, but it is quite poor. There are several spelling errors throughout the thing, as well as lack of capitalization (ugh, hate it when people do that). But the real biter is it all just sounds like it's coming out of the mouths of five year old retards. I'm suprised the author spelled "Citadel" right.


 
Gameplay
    The point of The Gamemaster's Citadel is to climb to the top of the Gamemaster's citadel and rescue your friends. So the gameplay follows suit. Basically you fight a TON of amazingly easy yet suprisingly long random battles, get levels REALLY SLOW, fight one boss, then win. The maps offer nothing original, just walk up to the next door and heal at a computer if needed. The gameplay itself is extremely boring and unfulfilling, and after just the second battle I was ready to quit this game for good. Luckily(?) for me I didn't (fortunatly the game is really short), and I managed to finish the stupid thing. Ugh.


 
  Battle
    First off, only two of the four characters you get have an ability other then a variation of "attack." That's right, only two have actual skills. The other two you just smash the spacebar and pray. Wait, you do that for the main characters too, because all their skills really suck anyway. The battles require no skill whatsoever. Psyco2000 didn't seem to want any actual gameplay, which is good, because the battles don't have any.


 
  Map Design
    They are as linear as you can get. Follow one door to another. I'm dead serious, that's what the map is. Usually the doors are so close you can see the next one when you enter the room. This is probably the height of newbie map design, besides overall "what the heck" map design in such things as Time and Magnus.


 
  Balance
    They are extremely easy, which makes the game extremely short. Thank goodness, because I was about to kill myself if I had to play this abomination any longer. You are incredibly strong. Even the boss doesn't do you much damage.


 
Music
    All original OHR music. Used decently, but not very wonderfully. It didn't help the mood any (probably because there was never any mood in the first place), but I like the default OHR tunes, so at least I wasn't trying to scratch my ears out.


 
Enjoyment
    Let me set the record straight, this game is not fun. Sure it's short and sure it's easy, but it is not worth even fifteen minutes to complete it. Don't be decieved by that B- review...that person was either drunk, high, got paid by the author for that review, or all of the above. Then again, it was a rather old review, so maybe they get SOME lee-way.

Let me just say that the game is not fun at all. You will not enjoy a minute of it, I can assure you this.


 
Final Blows
    Another awful newbie game. Luckily this one actually did a few things right: there were no obvious errors in the game mechanics (that is, mislinked doors, missing areas, etc.). However, the game itself was an overall bore and a complete waste of my time. I don't recommend it to anyone, unless you want a laugh at how bad it is.

On a completely unrelated note, his cutscene art reminds me of Eggie's art style (though Eggie's is much better, something about it is similar...).


Cheap way of saying

Cheap way of saying "get your friends to play my game?" Subtle message, here!
Final Scores
Graphics: 1.5/10.0
Downright terrible. It only got the extra .5 because the author attempted cutscenes, which (as I know) can be a difficult process. However, he didn't bother to draw them GOOD, so he gets no more than this. The graphics are awful. That's all that needs to be said.
Storyline: 1/10.0
A totally dull and unique story. Villain kidnaps friends. Heroes fight robot. Heroes save friends. Bad guy escapes for the sequel (thank goodness we never got one). The dialogue is shallow, bland, dry, and dull. Not worth your time at all. Story: 0.5 Dialogue: 0.5 (because I can't give total zeros)
Gameplay: 2/10.0
The only good thing was that it was easy. And it ended quick, so I didn't have to endure those tediously easy battles any longer. Blah!
Music: 2/10.0
I actually like the included BAMs in the OHR, so this guy gets a much higher score then he deserves in this category. The music is poorly placed and generally does nothing but not be silent. Which is exactly what you DON'T want music in your game to do.
Enjoyment: 1/10.0
Not fun at all. It reminded me of how bad OHR games could be, which is something I really don't need to be reminded of, honest. Avoid it at all costs.
Overall Grade: F-
Final Thoughts
    A horrible OHR game. Complete garbage. But it is probably the first Furry OHR game...  


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