If I had one critique about Pert-em-Hru it’s that the game is too short. From what I gather (and looking at the cut content on The Cutting Room Floor) the game was going to be bigger and scope, but was deemed too be to much work to take on by the small dev team, which is pretty fair. I think the most interesting side effect of this is that all of the possible party members and can learn new skills through levelling up, but due to how infrequent encounters are it’s something you’d only really see if you stick with a single party member.
The game itself though is still a fun and breezy experience with some killer sprite work, especially with regards to the enemy design. As a horror experience it’s hardly going to keep you up at night, but the devs aren’t pulling their punches with regards to the violence.
As a final note, I’d definitely recommend going in blind on a first playthrough; a big part of the appeal is just seeing how well you do in keeping the cast alive and seeing if you can do better next time.
The game itself though is still a fun and breezy experience with some killer sprite work, especially with regards to the enemy design. As a horror experience it’s hardly going to keep you up at night, but the devs aren’t pulling their punches with regards to the violence.
As a final note, I’d definitely recommend going in blind on a first playthrough; a big part of the appeal is just seeing how well you do in keeping the cast alive and seeing if you can do better next time.
Though Ayuto begins the game without having sinned, he is not "sinless" by this game's definition because through you he has the capacity to do so, if you're callous enough to let his fellow tourists get whacked. And considering that this is a horror game, isn't that part of the draw for most players? Serise claims as much if you let the first character, a nine-year-old girl, die, after which Ayuto wonders why her death gives him such an adrenaline rush. We are judged just as the characters are by our bloodthirsty appetites, and depending on the extent to which we indulge them, the final scene of the game, visually identical between the good and the bad endings, takes on two vastly different tones. It's an elegant and unfussy take on how the player's actions within the diegesis of a game unavoidably corrupt the narrative elements; as such, this game seems like a pretty influential expression of the "game space as underworld/point of no return" concept that hits like Siren and Persona 3+ would go on to mine (and while we're at the comparisons, you can bet that Kotaro Uchikoshi stirred a handful of this into 999).
The RPG stuff is strictly rudimentary, but the game's mechanics are secondary to its genre's function as an expressive tool for tremendous visual imagination. Can't think of the last RPG encounter I've been through that hit as hard as Ayuto's underwater scuffle with the mummy.
The RPG stuff is strictly rudimentary, but the game's mechanics are secondary to its genre's function as an expressive tool for tremendous visual imagination. Can't think of the last RPG encounter I've been through that hit as hard as Ayuto's underwater scuffle with the mummy.
6 year old that once stole a cookie from the cookie jar: " When I grow up I want to- "
Pharaoh Khufu, the arbiter of sin: عيرة فيك
Pharaoh Khufu, the arbiter of sin: عيرة فيك
A very short but charming rpg with some interesting ideas. I particularly enjoy the idea of limited healing consumables. You start with 40 and have to make those last the whole game as you never get more. It is horrendously stressful and adds a lot to the sense of having a dangerous adventure that you probably shouldn't be having. However, by the end of the game I still had about 14 left and that was only because if you don't grind right before the final boss there's a considerable difficulty spike. Also, for most of the game there is an easily reachable medic character in short distance that will heal and revive any character in your party for free and as many times as you want, which does undermine a bit of the tension. Besides that there's also character permadeath, if you don't save some characters they just fuckin die and the story continues without them and obviously they can't help you in combat. Though for most of the game you go alone regardless because sometimes the others just refuse to help you for no reason. This game is unfortunately too short to really make use of all of its cool ideas, but there is still something to be enjoyed here, and it is especially impressive with how it came out in1998, way before indie games were as common as they are now and made with kinda shitty tools, especially by today's standards.
played oct 11th for rpgmaker october
the oldest game on my list by a good margin, and fortunately the exe for the eng patch lets you skip the step of wrangling with pc-98 emulation. its p decent! rpg battles are very much present and youll have to grind just a little, but it's downplayed for adv type gameplay complete with a command menu. which of course means you might need the walkthrough provided at the site you dl the game. not unlike corpse party (i think), which was only 2 yrs before this, in how your actions determine which characters live or die, but doesnt actually give diff bad endings out of it as much as diff permutations within your playthrough that are interesting to see. really like how the theme of judgement as it relates to the chars, while not that deeply mined, kind of wraps back around onto you as the player. found a lot of the dialogue in the game p charming--besides them ragging on mitsuru constantly when was the the most useful party member for me unlike most of their weak asses!!--and it made me like most of the cast enough that i only let ONE of them get killed off. and that's bc they had it coming. ost is REALLY cool and unnerving too. craftmanship of this one really speaks for itself, esp when compared to the humbler-feeling azusa 999, which also won those contests ascii did for rpgmaker games around this time.
the oldest game on my list by a good margin, and fortunately the exe for the eng patch lets you skip the step of wrangling with pc-98 emulation. its p decent! rpg battles are very much present and youll have to grind just a little, but it's downplayed for adv type gameplay complete with a command menu. which of course means you might need the walkthrough provided at the site you dl the game. not unlike corpse party (i think), which was only 2 yrs before this, in how your actions determine which characters live or die, but doesnt actually give diff bad endings out of it as much as diff permutations within your playthrough that are interesting to see. really like how the theme of judgement as it relates to the chars, while not that deeply mined, kind of wraps back around onto you as the player. found a lot of the dialogue in the game p charming--besides them ragging on mitsuru constantly when was the the most useful party member for me unlike most of their weak asses!!--and it made me like most of the cast enough that i only let ONE of them get killed off. and that's bc they had it coming. ost is REALLY cool and unnerving too. craftmanship of this one really speaks for itself, esp when compared to the humbler-feeling azusa 999, which also won those contests ascii did for rpgmaker games around this time.
In terms of the actual RPG gameplay, Pert-Em-Hru is pretty basic. Luckily, it realizes this, and most of the focus goes to the story and the puzzles. This is the game equivalent of a cheesy B-movie, where the fun is in watching yourself fuck up in a first playthrough and lose half your party, maybe get a bad ending, and then play it again and get a perfect run. Good stuff.
Great Egyptian-Mythos themed B Horror, kinda wish the puzzles weren't so obtuse tho.
sure kill people who wanna steal your shit, but why magical mummy khufu gotta go judge and sick death on people tho for something as small potatoes as shoplifting in another country once??? even punishing the chick who apparently sold drugs idk I don't see the big deal,,,,
weirdly gets me thinking about SOCIETAL CONSTRUCTS, man. why would a far removed cave living big shot like him deem actions like those as all time lows deserving of death? who taught the mummy tha preschool morals??? gets me thinking abit beyond tha game ahh but who gives a shit right?
otherwise a quick fun lil rpg maker ghost story. funfun
weirdly gets me thinking about SOCIETAL CONSTRUCTS, man. why would a far removed cave living big shot like him deem actions like those as all time lows deserving of death? who taught the mummy tha preschool morals??? gets me thinking abit beyond tha game ahh but who gives a shit right?
otherwise a quick fun lil rpg maker ghost story. funfun
Considering, that out of all the RPG Maker Dante 98 releases out there, I've only played this and Azusa 999, I'm pretty pleased with my very short track record so far. I'm not super familiar with early RPG Maker games, but I do think that they're really intriguing, especially compared to the legacy titles made on later versions have. Not only are the games made on any version of the tool limited in a software sense, but the ones made on Dante 98 are limited a fair amount more by its hardware. So, it's cool to see how people got creative with it all and this one did not disappoint.
This game's pretty short, and surprisingly for an RPG Maker horror game does feature real RPG gameplay, though it's fairly simplistic, which is perfectly fine. I do also like that the simple puzzle elements the overworld gameplay has transfer nicely into the battle system as well.
Besides that, I really enjoyed the writing, and the fact that you could save several of the characters throughout the game. No one felt one-note, which for the size of the cast is great. The art is also of the era, but it looks great as well and is definitely something that makes it very easy to forget this whole game was made by two people using RPG Maker. For sure what surprised me the most, was the game's sense of humor. I thought it was going to be a wholly serious game, and while there are a good number of unnerving and mature aspects in it, there are lines of dialogue that completely caught me off-guard, since they're genuinely pretty funny. Not so much a creepy game for myself at least, but others' experience may vary of course.
A very well-made and engaging game on the whole, and I'll definitely replay it sometime (it's kinda comfy). Check out the English translation here, it comes with a pre-configed version of Neko Project II, and gives some details on the game's history, like some of the awards it rightfully got.
This game's pretty short, and surprisingly for an RPG Maker horror game does feature real RPG gameplay, though it's fairly simplistic, which is perfectly fine. I do also like that the simple puzzle elements the overworld gameplay has transfer nicely into the battle system as well.
Besides that, I really enjoyed the writing, and the fact that you could save several of the characters throughout the game. No one felt one-note, which for the size of the cast is great. The art is also of the era, but it looks great as well and is definitely something that makes it very easy to forget this whole game was made by two people using RPG Maker. For sure what surprised me the most, was the game's sense of humor. I thought it was going to be a wholly serious game, and while there are a good number of unnerving and mature aspects in it, there are lines of dialogue that completely caught me off-guard, since they're genuinely pretty funny. Not so much a creepy game for myself at least, but others' experience may vary of course.
A very well-made and engaging game on the whole, and I'll definitely replay it sometime (it's kinda comfy). Check out the English translation here, it comes with a pre-configed version of Neko Project II, and gives some details on the game's history, like some of the awards it rightfully got.