This could have been something great. If you were a kid during the early days of gaming, the idea of a game that celebrates each era in turn is a nostalgia trip the likes of which will would bring a tear to the biggest retrogamer's eye. If you are not so old, then it would be worth it just to see what gaming was like once. But this, as much as it wants to be, is not that game. It starts as it, absolutely, but by the time you are done, it falls from grace in repetition and, ultimately breaking down entirely into a mess nothing short of patching it at a code level will fix.... just in time to ruin the end of your experience.
Story: You won't get much story, or any at first. Before any plot begins you will have to build the game to reach it. And don't expect a lot when you get there. It is an absolutely generic story about a hero defeating evil, but at the same time, it manages to be written to rip on RPG storylines in general. Building it is honestly amusing for those of us old enough to remember these bygone eras of gameplay, but it overstays it's welcome just before coming to an end... without any real ending, I might add. Rather, all you get is the end credits and a percent score, making for a very incomplete feeling.
5/10
Graphics: This is a much harder game to describe the look of then others because a large part of the game's design changes it. You will go through the eras of gaming from black and white graphics to the level of 3D gaming you might have seen during the era of the original Playstation, and it is actually very faithful to each era. And yet the progress between each phase feels like a natural progression, letting the whole game still feel like one complete package. The entire game is played from a top-down view until you hit 3D and then it's a bird's eye-view, even shifting the camera between modes as needed, and looks great. In fact, the looks this game will bring to the table and all the nostalgia that comes with it is arguably the highlight of the experience as you get to sample what gaming was like through the years.
8/10
Sound: Much like the graphics, the sound also follows the eras the game comes from and does so very well. From the silence of the earliest days to the midi-work of the 32-bit era, the game actually sounds really good. It's not the most varied sound, but it really does all sound good. Enjoy this.
8/10
Gameplay: Sadly, we have another game that falls flat on it's face when you get to gameplay, and yet it only really does this as the game reaches it's conclusion due to it's very nature. When you start, you will have a single tile of space to move around with a treasure chest on either end. At the same time none of your controls work: only the right key. When you reach that treasure chest, you will be informed you can now move left, reaching that treasure chest next. Then the screen will fill in and allow you to move allow you to move in all four directions. And with this, the game has taught you the core mechanic that will drive the game: you will find treasure chest as you play that add elements to the game, building up your ability to play much like technology allowed gaming to grow from humble beginnings.
You still have a long way to go as before you are done, you will add inventories, health systems, colors, music, sound, and even your basic ability to fight back against the enemies that wander the world, even changing your gametype several times as you play. The game samples several popular genres before it finishes up: some better then others. You see this game, no matter the "tech level" you are at, never has more then 8-directional controls and 3 buttons: One to act/attack, one to cancel your choice in a menu ot let you quit the game, and one to open your inventory. This technically works for all three major styles you will play (adventure, turn-based role playing game, and action role playing game). But how well it works varies by type.
For example, the Turn-based gameplay works great with this, but when you are playing an adventure game that was heavily inspired by games like the Legend of Zelda, it feels clunky, and it doesn't help that when you do play with your inventory it doesn't pause.
But unfortunately the game comes completely apart at the end due to tech issues I will explain, but it's very likely the game will be unfinishable for you, and the only way to fix it may or may not be viable to try due to your individual setup. To explain, I will have to use a spoiler warning so if you don't want to hear about the last boss before you play, please skip the Italics text below:
You have faced off with Zephyros (yes they went there) and he killed the girl with you, giving you a personal reason to want his head (yes they went there too, but at least this time he did it with a kamehame wave instead of a sword from several stories above). Beating him after this lead him to retreating to the magical tree where the world's power resides (if you haven't realized how much this game parodies other titles by the end, I don't know what to tell you). And this is where you will fight him for the final battle... an action fight with three phases played around a giant stone ring you will run around.
Phase 1 has Zephyros rise up from the center as a giant armored demon with eyes on it's hands and chest. He will spin around in his attempts to face you before lifting his arms and slaming them down in an attempt to catch you between them before belching eldritch fire all over you. Your job is to not be caught between his arms and while his hands are down bet the hell out of the eyes on his hands.
Phase 2 has those hands and their arms disappear. At this point he spins around the the ring belching that fire, leaving you to run away until he stop. Then you need to run up in front of him and hit the eye still on his chest. This will cause a ball to fly out his backside which you have to then run to and smack around. Repeat until it dies... if you can. You see this is the phase that is effected by a glitch in the game the worst... and I don't mean of this battle. I mean of the entire game. The time you have to reach that orb before it flies back into the armor without taking a hit is linked to your framerate, so the better the game is running and the higher the refresh rate your display is running at, the less time you have. Yep, this is the phase that may well be impossible, but it is not the last.
Phase 3 finishes the battle with Zephyros hiding on the other side of the arean and throwing fireballs at you. You have to dodge till you see a single blue fireball coming your way. Hit those back at him 3 times and you won the game (and without much in the way of a conclusion... it just sort of... ends. ROLL CREDITS)!
As such for all the good impressions the game starts with, it doesn't hold up and ultimately between the abrupt ending and (far more importantly) the issues that could well make the game completely impossible to complete, fails completely as a broken game.
0/10
Bugs: Sadly this game fails utterly due to technical issues that render the game harder to start and ultimately unwinnable for what I would suspect is anyone playing the game on a modern machine.
- The Controls: They do nothing! This is a point of entry that will separate the casual gamer from the truly hard core and how far they are willing to go to play, but if you are using Windows 10 or later (so any modern PC with a supported version of Windows) the game's support for controllers is officially dead. The reason for this is that the game doesn't actually have native support so much as it runs a keyboard emulation system included in the installation to let you use one. Unfortunately, the one they chose doesn't work with anything after Windows 8, and even that needs to run in Windows 7 compatibility mode. Furthermore, the interface doesn't recognize any controller made after the era of the Xbox 360 controller, so your odds of it working for you goes down even more. Fortunately there is a work around for this but it takes some work. There are other programs you can use to emulate keyboard buttons with a controller that will take care of it. Just know you need to set the following keys (Gog recommends and I use a free program called Antimicro)
- arrows = directional controls
- Tab = inventory
- Space = action
- backspace cancel
- Framerate decides timing: and this is what kills the game completely at the very end. It may make parts of the game harder, I don't know... but I do know for a fact this can destroy your ability to complete the final boss. This is an action boss where the amount of time you have to hit them is based on the frames that go by, and it is basically impossible at even so much as with a 60 hrtz display since you won't have enough time to reach your target before it goes away. And if you dare to have any higher.it only gets worse.
Overall: I really wanted to like this game. The idea of a game literally made to celebrate the history of the medium sounds awesome. Even if this includes weaknesses we just accepted back then, it's a throw back to nostalgia that I wanted to just relax and enjoy... and I did... at first. But as the game rolled on, these flaws outlasted the eras that were being shown off, making the game feel much more dated then it should. And then you reach the end game and it is obviously frustratingly brutal... and depending on your setup, outright impossible. As such even as the game started great, I have to put in the lowest ranks with a handful of other titles I have ever reviewed as a broken title. Avoid it completely
Score:
System Requirements:
- Any 1.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo
- 1 GB RAM
- Any GPU able to use Direct X 9.0c
- Windows XP
- 50 MB hard drive space
- Ryzen 5 5600G running at 3.9 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Windows 11
- PDP DX Wired Controller (Crimson)
Source: Gog.com
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