Well, Helen's Mysterious Castle. I got attracted to this game because of the anime-girl-in-a-weird-16-bit-retro-environment premise, but came back with a little good surprise. I always thought this game was long since one steam user had almost 100 hours invested on it, but turned out to be fairly short for an RPG, I finished it in almost 6 hours.
What really shines here is the gameplay, an one-to-one JRPG combat system where the attacks are performed based on a countdown timer. For example, if you want to perform a hit with your broadsword, you have to wait to the counter to go all down from 14 to 0 to perform the attack, and you can't stop the movement once it's chosen, so you'll have to wait until it's performed to do another move. The enemy also has its own counter, and this is where the strategy factor comes. If your enemy has to wait 15 'turns' (so to say) to perform a powerful attack, you can deploy three attacks of 5 'turns' before getting hit, or you can use a heal movement to recover you and defend yourself from the great impact. A really unique combat style that I wish could be more standarized (or more refined in another game), since it's so fun. After winning battles against enemies and bosses, you get experience points that you can spend on upgrading your movements, something I prefer more than the common stats improvement mechanic, though it rewards grinding and that's quite a gray area for me.
Don't expect too much from the story, but at the same time, it's not like it tries to be more than what it is. The story is simple yet entertaining, with some twists and turns here and there, and that's all you really need for a game this length.
On the sound section... the music is amazing. I can't really remember who the composer was, but tracks like this one are so memorable they're still in my head after years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWJJAt4cbKM
And yes, you may ask "why after so many years, if you finished this game this year?", well, that's because I already played this game before, but didn't bother to finish in my original run. Anyway, the music is great, the sound effects are on point with the aesthetics...
And speaking about aesthetics, the game looks excellent. It's really like your generic RPG Maker 2003 game, but that's because all games created on RPG Maker 2003 look fantastic. The graphics are greatly designed and original, and they truly bring a sense of nostalgia, or longing for the times where the only preoccupation in your life was finishing up that captivating JRPG you played on the SNES (or its emulator counterpart).
Overall, this is a game I recommend strongly. I can't think of any flaws other than it can become quite grindier depending of what kind of build you want to achieve (or if you get stuck with powerness past certain point), but whatever, still good.
6.5/10
What really shines here is the gameplay, an one-to-one JRPG combat system where the attacks are performed based on a countdown timer. For example, if you want to perform a hit with your broadsword, you have to wait to the counter to go all down from 14 to 0 to perform the attack, and you can't stop the movement once it's chosen, so you'll have to wait until it's performed to do another move. The enemy also has its own counter, and this is where the strategy factor comes. If your enemy has to wait 15 'turns' (so to say) to perform a powerful attack, you can deploy three attacks of 5 'turns' before getting hit, or you can use a heal movement to recover you and defend yourself from the great impact. A really unique combat style that I wish could be more standarized (or more refined in another game), since it's so fun. After winning battles against enemies and bosses, you get experience points that you can spend on upgrading your movements, something I prefer more than the common stats improvement mechanic, though it rewards grinding and that's quite a gray area for me.
Don't expect too much from the story, but at the same time, it's not like it tries to be more than what it is. The story is simple yet entertaining, with some twists and turns here and there, and that's all you really need for a game this length.
On the sound section... the music is amazing. I can't really remember who the composer was, but tracks like this one are so memorable they're still in my head after years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWJJAt4cbKM
And yes, you may ask "why after so many years, if you finished this game this year?", well, that's because I already played this game before, but didn't bother to finish in my original run. Anyway, the music is great, the sound effects are on point with the aesthetics...
And speaking about aesthetics, the game looks excellent. It's really like your generic RPG Maker 2003 game, but that's because all games created on RPG Maker 2003 look fantastic. The graphics are greatly designed and original, and they truly bring a sense of nostalgia, or longing for the times where the only preoccupation in your life was finishing up that captivating JRPG you played on the SNES (or its emulator counterpart).
Overall, this is a game I recommend strongly. I can't think of any flaws other than it can become quite grindier depending of what kind of build you want to achieve (or if you get stuck with powerness past certain point), but whatever, still good.
6.5/10