Gamelist Review List Song List Watched Journals Forum IRC Gamelist Song List Review List Forum Articles IRC Log Out Add Game Edit Games Add Reviews Edit Reviews Add Songs Edit Songs Log Out Edit Games Edit Reviews Edit Songs Sign Up Log In My Journal My Game Journals Watched Journals All Journals Journal Settings All Journals About Us Staff FAQ
Castle Paradox
Title Bar
Log In Box
 
______  
[more]
    1) 5.0000
        AW - Unsettling Theme by Rimudora
        Bob the Gangsta by 8bit
        That Money [DEMO] by 8bit
    2) 4.5000
        Classical Dream by Setu_Firestorm
        AW - The Steel Angel's Frenzy by Rimudora
Timestream Saga Second Edition vs. RedMaverickZero
Timestream Saga Second Edition Arfenhouse?! In TSSE?! Brilliant!
Fenrir-Lunaris
Download: 3.22 MB
V.S.
RedMaverickZero
Play Time: 2+ hours and minutes
Review # 43 for RedMaverickZero Arfenhouse?! In TSSE?! Brilliant!
Them's Fightin' Words
    **SEPTEMBER 1st VERSION**
I have reviewed a lot of Fenrir Lunaris' games and all have had a very high quality in the majority of the fields of a typical review. But his current project definitely has them all beat. TimeStream Saga Second Edition is by far an excellent game all around.
Graphics
    Fenrir Lunaris is one of the best people I know at graphics. And in all areas.
Walkabouts are excellent. They animate very well and they look good. Perfect amounts of proportion in the frames. And one set of walkabouts that really left a lasting impression was when you go to this cave to destroy the sick stone; you come across this black haired dude. He floats down, as a particle of purple light then becomes a winged human. He flips his air and blasts an energy blast. It is definitely the most beautiful set of walkabouts in the demo I have seen thus far.

The maptiles are not my personal favorite, but they are still quite good. Everything is so rich in detail. The World Map has a very large amount of detail. Small beaten paths leading to various locations. Shallow water, nicely animated oceans, it all looks astounding. And what really blew me away was when I went to look at the mini map in the game, that the world map was completely filled up. And it was much bigger than your everyday run of the mill world map. In the course of the demo you don't even see more than 1/20 of the thing. And every tile, from forest to mountains will leave you in an utter display of awe.

The hero sprites are the 2nd to best most impressive by my judgment. They are definitely great. Fenrir uses every color he possibly can to the highest degree. He first of all, uses a black outline, which can save you a couple colors. Whenever you use a color outline you have to use a color to fill in a color. For instance, if you used brown for the hair. You'd need 3 colors. One for the outline, one to fill it in, and then the last one to shade the hair. Fenrir uses the black outline, and then he has a large amount of color swatches to use. The graphics look good, they animate good, and they look real neat when you save your game. These are most definitely graphics of a professional quality.

The by far, most impressive graphics in my opinion, the backdrops. They are good for a number of reasons. One of which, is the fact that there are so many of them. On the world map I saw a great deal of them. Whenever I was standing on a forest tile and got in a random battle, I was in a forest. When I was on the coast of the land I was there on the backdrop. Obviously a great deal of detail was put into this portion of the game. And it looks simply astounding. The large amount of color put into them is also great. I mean, there has to be a secret to all of this. Because either you spend like 2 hours on one backdrop, or else there is a program that can make them integrate colors around the surroundings. It's got a very artistic painted look to it. Awesome job, Fenrir. These are truly your best graphics ever produced.
 
Storyline
    The storyline is pretty much your stereotypical story. Save the world from an evil. But you don't start out in the time period the evil guy lives in. Nope, you have to go back in time. So Kotaru, and his good buddy Managarm (MG) step through a time portal after they pass some exam and go to a new time where they must stop the evil wizard, Kezkef. I don't know if I spelled that right, but when you play the game you will remember the whole Kez part. The guy looks fucking bad ass. He's half-furry, half-human. Which is a deadly combination. On top of that, in what I like to call the Council of Bad Guys, Kezkef tells the group of some deadly weapons he wants to use to get even more power. Yet whenever you get to Kyle's part of the game, you realize there are not one, but two evil sorcerers. So Kezkef and what I am guessing as the main character of Legend of Cale I.

Kyle is also from what I guessed as another time. He is the last of his race after a very cool backdrop showing his comrades exploding in their ship. It's really good. Characters have been developed nicely. Although some characters, I think could have been done a tad bit better. This is mostly a note to Fenrir on which characters I think need to be expanded upon. Managarm, I don't know anything about her really other than she's Kotaru's friend. Skoll, I realize he's a new character, but you need to expand on him too. He's pretty cool and it would be interesting to see more of him. Everyone else was done pretty well I think for the most part. Kotaru has a brilliant background. I mean, the guy has a mom that changes her gender at will and she's pretty much in a coma. So he can't ever talk to her. And everyone teases him about it. Kyle gets teased about his hair, but that's just comical, it has nothing to do with the story really. Velius is pretty much an exact copy of Vivi Orunita from Final Fantasy 9. Everything from the age to the height and glowy eyes. Character development, except for the few I mentioned is pretty good. I don't think you should rush things though. The scene where Delvire was talking to Skoll made it seem like you rushed the whole argument. He thought Managarm hated him, and they had only been in the party for like 10 minutes. The story is very wide open and anything can happen. Which is something everyone can enjoy.
 
Gameplay
    Fenrir has made something so plain and ordinary into something very awesome and easy to use in the game. Characters don't really have equipment; they have weapons, upgrades, abilities, boosts, and all that good stuff. And one thing I found to be useful, was the whole being able to generate shops anywhere. It had something to do with some kind of chip or w/e that let him get weapons from his time. But one very neat thing I learned through Fenrir was that you could manipulate your character's growth in stats by equipping various items. These things called "Boosts". And on level ups, depending on the boost you have determines how much MORE you get on a level up. Something completely original that is pretty cool to work with. I wasn't much into Junctioning on Final Fantasy VIII. But there were tons of ways to manipulate your own stats by equipping various things. And this is right up there with making a Junctioning system. Excellent on this portion Fenrir.

And another thing was the abilities. Equipping various abilities to your characters allows for things to appear in the game. Like, you can't climb up vines unless you have the ability Claws equipped. And there's a ton of them. I looked through the abilities shop and although I can't afford it, I noticed some really good things to make the game easier. This area was one of the best of the game.
 
  Battle
    Because of the boost feature mentioned up in the gameplay section the battles can either be really easy or balanced and challenging. On my run through of the game I didn't really pay attention to the boost things. I just bought them and equipped them to my characters not knowing of what was going on. I had to train for the battles in some instances. One battle I remember that was horrible was the fight where Delvire was holding a bag of "loot" and you had to fight this other wolf character. It was crazy how long it took. Like 20 minutes and the enemies weren't very challenging at all. And another battle not long afterwards, where you fought a dragon and bird skeleton it seemed to take forever. Although that fight was a bit funner because of the fact that I didn't really have a healer with me, so I could alternate instead of holding the space bar. Other than those two battles, the fights were pretty well done.
 
  Map Design
    Maps were beautiful. They had lots of rich detail and were very large. The World Map blew me away. I personally have been doing a World Map for the first time and it's nothing compared to this map. It is so humungous and vast. It really makes you wonder just how many places in the game are left?! Because in the course of the two hour demo I barely visited anyplaces on that map. The snowy places, a couple towns, a cave or two. And the desert, which isn't finished. So there's a lot left. And the maps have lots of room to explore, which is a great thing.
 
  Balance
    As I said in the Battles section, the fights really vary depending on your boosts equipped. If you don't really use any, then your fights will be a tad more challenging. But if you can work your boosts efficiently, then you can crank out some pretty big powerhouses. But if you don't use the boosts your battles are still pretty well balanced aside from the two fights I mentioned. I mean, random battles are pretty well balanced out and enemies in the random fights have a generous amount of HP to not make the fights dull or boring.

One thing I enjoyed about this game is the different perspective of the game. There's Kotaru's party, and then there's Kyle's. Each is after the same thing but does things differently. I have only been Kyle once, but he had a fair amount of gameplay in his portion of the game. And Kotaru has around the same amount. And since the demo ended at Kyle's part of the game I really don't know what's in store for those guys. All I know is there's tents...
 
Music
    I can safely say that I believe all the music to be ripped. However, after looking through the .RPG file, I noticed that there is A LOT of music already in the game for such a short demo. However, every person seems to have their own theme. I especially enjoyed the scene where the mysterious dark haired youth comes down and blasts the wolf in the mine cart. The music really set the mood for this game. And it did it in ways I never imagined could be done on an OHR game with just one person editing it. Listening to this game and paying attention to it will definitely impress you.
 
Enjoyment
    I loved this game. It was probally one of my top 5 favorite OHR games. It combined so many things to make the game enjoyable. The graphics were fantastic, the story was very deep and involved and the gameplay was fantastically unique. It combines all of the elements of a truly good game into quite the enjoyable experience. If you truly like RPGs then this game will definitely be a blast for you.
 
Final Blows
    Fenrir, I will use this section to tell you what I liked/disliked. I liked the fact that the graphics were pretty and detailed. Characters were drawn and developed well with the exception of a minor few. Steven needs to be redrawn so he doesn't look so out of place, even if he is barely in the game. Everything else is pretty much good dude. Keep up the great work, I can tell why this has taken you so long to do. The World Map took a week at least I can imagine. And graphics by themselves are an accomplishment that makes your game look amazing. But get off your furry ass and finish this game. It's real awesome and your hard work has definitely paid off.
And mommy said words couldn't hurt you!

And mommy said words couldn't hurt you!
Final Scores
Graphics: 10/10.0
Fenrir's takes out all the stops and shows off his artistic talents on the OHR in ways I have never seen him do before.
Storyline: 9/10.0
Very deep and involved, which is something you hardly ever see in an OHR game.
Gameplay: 9.5/10.0
Possibilities are endless with things Fenrir has done.
Music: 9/10.0
Ripped, but placed perfectly!
Enjoyment: 10/10.0
Fenrir has created a world that is not only enjoyable but it also makes you eager to see what happens to other characters. It's just a shame this demo is so short.
Overall Grade: A
Final Thoughts
    A demo that keeps you wanting more! Finish this masterpiece Fenrir!  


All games, songs, and images © their respective owners.
Terms of Service
©2008 Castle Paradox