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Winterfold : Revenge of the samurai vs. RedMaverickZero
Winterfold : Revenge of the samurai See the pretty maptiles? Now look for the blotchy main character.
rpgspotKahn
Download: 375 KB
V.S.
RedMaverickZero
Play Time: hours and 5 minutes
Review # 46 for RedMaverickZero See the pretty maptiles? Now look for the blotchy main character.
Them's Fightin' Words
    While looking over the top 25 games every now and again I saw that this game had a fair amount of downloads to it's name. So, I thought, hey, I'll try it out. Winterfold, a game with a unique story and system that of which hasn't been introduced to the OHR to my knowledge.
Graphics
    The graphics are pretty good. At least that's saying it the short way. From what I can tell, there was a team established in the making of this demo. And on the team, various people did various things. I don't quite know who did what, but here are my thoughts on the graphics as a whole.
The walkabouts... left much to be desired. The emperor's goons who attacked me looked like they were colored appropriately, but the main hero's walkabouts looked considerablly worse in terms of quality. I mean the general structure of it was fine. The animations were good, it's just the coloring scheme.
Hero sprites... There were none, so I guess the constructive thing to say about that is... to do em.
Enemy Sprites... Looked pretty good from what I can tell. The shading quality was very nice. Made it look close to professional. But one thing that made me not appreciate them as much as I could have is when I fought the leader, I noticed something horrible you should never ever do. You used a palette change with the same sprite.
Maptiles... Maptiles were by far my favorite part of this game's graphics. So whoever did those, give yourself a pat on the back. Houses were drawn with the finest details. The ground was covered in snow, and it didn't look like some of the games I have seen involving snow with just a plain white tile. There was a nicely detailed patch of snow, that got darker around certain points. As nice as these tiles were, they would have looked a lot better had the other game sprites blended with them better, giving it a better visual display.
 
Storyline
    The story as of what I have heard seems to have a lot of potential. This man, who has some weird name, has had his wife murdered and his son is dead but he doesn't know where he is. And this sinister Emperor, wants to kill him too. But why? Why is he after this guy and why does he kill his family. Well the demo hasn't told me yet. However, one thing I noticed, which kinda makes the game a lil less fun, is the fact that the game is explained to you. As in the player has no freedom to just learn stuff on their own. You find a key on the ground, and damn, you have to read like 2 text boxes saying it's important. It reminds me a lot of that annoying cricket from Pinnochio.
 
Gameplay
    This started out real well, but it lost it's gold stars after I saw that it used the default battle engine. You start out choosing what type of samarai you would like to be. Double handed, single handed, or special. From there you choose your spirit. Bear, Wolf, or Eagle. The bear makes you powerful, the wolf makes you smarter (magic stats increas), and the eagle makes you faster. I was expecting something cool involving all of these. Like perphaps a custom battle engine, because it would have worked so perfectally. But... it was the default engine. And what makes matters worse is the fact that there is no visual. I know I stated this in the graphics section, but the lack of hero sprites really drags down the quality of the gameplay and the graphical quality of the entire game.
 
  Battle
    They were really unfufilling. Button mashers too. I have seen a lot of games claim to be good, because of the fact that they have soooo many skills to choose from in the battle menu. Well, if anyone is thinking that is a good idea, it isn't. More skills that aren't introduced to the player can be dull. I mean, the main character had like a fighter skill, white magic, black magic and some spirit skill. Only one of those 4 had a spell. And it did less damage than my standard attack. I can understand the whole magic aspect of the game, but in giving this one character all of these skills it will make the player not want to use any additional characters that will come along later unless you can give them something you didn't already give to the samarai dude. Enemies were fairly boring. Having only your standard attack as their attack and doing enough damage to make you be able to leave the room, get a soda, and then come back in and hold the spacebar for a minute and watch them pixelate away.  
  Map Design
    There were two areas available to wander around. One was outside this village place, the other was inside of a house. They were preportioned a fair amount of distance away from one another. And the inside of the house was just the right size. However, the maptiles made this portion of the game look better than any of the rest.  
  Balance
    I know I mentioned most of it in the Battles Section, but the character had very little skills. He had a healing category of spells, but there wasn't one there. No items to heal, and enimies were so easy it wasn't even really worth my time. The boss had like 5 more points in his attack strength it seems because he did barely any damage at all.  
Music
    Sorry, I didn't play it with VDMS running...  
Enjoyment
    I was all excited when I saw that I was personally modifying my character in the beginning, but when I read how uniteresting the story was and how poorly it was portrayed it started to diminish my excitement. Then when I saw the lack of color preportions and lack of hero sprites in the main character, I just sighed and held the spacebar, hoping the game would be over soon.  
Final Blows
    This game is a demo. I realize that, but if you would like to impress someone enough to make them play your game when it's 100% completed, you all will have a lot of work to do. But you all have an effective team I can tell. Just put your heads together and think of all the things wrong with the game that you need to work on. There is an extremely lot of potential in this game, and I know that together you can make this the game a winner.
This was the only appealing part of the game, and the creators didn't even use this to it's full potential.

This was the only appealing part of the game, and the creators didn't even use this to it's full potential.
Final Scores
Graphics: 4/10.0
The only thing worth seeing is the maptiles... The lack of proper coloring ruins the appeal of the walkabouts for the player and the enemy sprites are mediocre.
Storyline: 3.5/10.0
Games do not need narrators, get rid of that pesky Jimminy Cricket thing that tells you what to do and you should have a fun story to follow along with.
Gameplay: 3.5/10.0
The originiality in the beginning is a plus, but the way you used that originality diminishes that small plus. Work on this and you will get your gold star back.
Music: 1/10.0
Sorry, I didn't play it with VDMS running...
Enjoyment: 2/10.0
I tried to have fun with it. I really did. But the way every part of this game clashed with itself really hindered the fun experience.
Overall Grade: D-
Final Thoughts
    Not my choice game for 2004, but hey, you may like it.  


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