| Gamebar |
Aveyond |
| Vitals |
|
Developer: Amaranth Games Publisher: Amaranth Games Genre: RPG > General Released: Jan 16, 2006 Players: 1 |
| Related Articles |
Website
Download
PurchaseAveyond is the latest release from Amaranth Games, and it's a clear homage to
the days of old school SNES, sprite-based RPG goodness. To my mind, this is the
format that the RPG flourishes in. Role-playing games are not to be defined by
their graphics and their bells and whistles, but by the strength of their
storyline, their battle and magic mechanics, and their sidequests. Those are the
essential elements of any RPG and the rest is really just window dressing. I
can't speak for all gamers, but I imagine most diehard RPG fans would agree with
me.
Thankfully, Aveyond is a game that is produced for the diehard RPGer, as there
are a number of issues with this charming title that will prevent a general
embrace from the gaming community.
Aveyond deals with the attempts of magical druids to save their homeland from
the machinations of a cruel evil lord and his daevon servants. The gamer
controls Rhen Darzon, a hapless young girl who is apparently the chosen one
specified in a prophecy to stop the demon hordes. Rhen is trained as a
swordsinger (a magician who evokes their art through the movement of their
weapon) and then set out into the world on her quest.
The storyline is old hat for RPG fans, but it's worked one bazillion other
times, so why not here? There's a very open-ended feel to the title which is
both good and bad. There's no hard scripting requiring that quests be
accomplished one step at a time, but this also makes it pretty difficult to tell
what to do from time to time. There is a clear storyline to the game, but I
couldn't escape the feeling I was just wandering around and winging it,
stumbling upon the next step in my quest totally by accident, advancing in the
game by the seat of my pants.
And, oddly enough, even though the game is very open-ended, I encountered
several instances early on in the game where I was forced to follow very obscure
and specific directions to advance the story without any prompting from the game
itself. Quests are rarely outlined specifically to the gamer, making things feel
random.
On the plus side of things, the game gives the player the option to, to a
degree, craft the powers their character will have. By “enrolling� in classes at
the school, the player can elect which powers they would like their character to
have as they proceed throughout the game. There are 10 choices and only five to
pick, so choose carefully. To my mind, this is some built-in replay value right
off the bat, something difficult to find in a reportedly 50+ hour RPG
experience.
Combat
in the game is not random, a la Final Fantasy, but taken on in a style more
reminiscent of Chrono Trigger. While exploring the wilds, gamers will see beasts
roaming about. Each enemy character seen on the screen is a single creature of
its type, which is nice and informative. Players know what they'll be fighting.
However, an encounter with one creature will include all other creatures in its
vicinity, often including ones that were not visible on screen at the time. This
can lead to some very unfortunate encounters for new gamers. Making matters
worse, there is no option to flee combat. If you accidentally enter into combat
that you can't win, you better hope you've saved recently, or you're dead. And
believe me, you'll enter into some combats you can't win. Aveyond has a nasty
habit of quickly ramping up enemy difficulty without warning. After stomping
through an area of the game and beating down all comers I walked through an ice
palace and out a back door into the wilderness again. The next enemy group I met
(two smallish creatures) promptly defeated my party with two devastating
attacks. Say what?! Typically there should be some intermediary encounters that
let me know I'm about to walk to my doom.
The world in Aveyond is a good size. There are a bunch of varied locales to work
through and explore. The maps are, on the whole, pretty sparsely inhabited by
enemies. They will respawn after the gamer enters a building or leaves the area
and returns, but it can be a hassle to level up by trying to hunt down enemies.
Map design also seems needlessly complex. There is a wealth of dead-end pathways
that take some time to walk down and have absolutely no treasure, secret or
enemy to warrant their existence. Making maps complex just so the player has
more places to walk isn't the best plan. Other titles, like the gold-standard
Final Fantasy, get around this problem with random enemy encounters, so there's
always XP around the corner, but Aveyond can't promise that.
Aveyond
is fun to play. The game is irreverent and the quests are cute. There's no heavy
soul-crushing storyline filled with the weeping of children and the death of
your childhood lover. I was a bit confused as to why Lars and Rhen didn't fight
all the time considering how their relationship began, but I didn't get hung up
on that. The game looks exactly as it should as a throwback title and has a
wonderful soundtrack (this isn't MIDI crap, people, this is orchestral).
With an $18 price tag and over 50 hours of gameplay on the table, Aveyond should
look pretty good to an RPG fan. The Amaranth site even offers what, for me, was
an RPG first. Freely available on the site are saved games that give the player
boosted stats and weapons. Want to start with great equipment, lots of gold and
at level 30? Download and go! Just want the gold? Download and go! Awesome.
Graphics: =
To my mind, 2D sprites are how RPGs should look. I almost always love the sprite
based graphics. Aveyond's look is cute and varied, with lots of different
environment types to walk through, but overall the look leaves something to be
desired. Enemies, for the most part, are very small on a battle screen, leaving
tons of extra space on the battlefield. While the environments are varied, the
whole things has the feel of RPG Maker to it, which is not bad in and of itself,
but there is the sense that if I had enough time on my hands, I could have made
a game that looks the same.
Sound: +
The music in Aveyond is phenomenal. Hearing the score open up over the beginning
credits was an uplifting experience. It's the best music I've heard to date in
reviewing titles for GameTunnel and I've played quite a few games lately. It's
really refreshing to start a game up and not only hear original music, but have
it be music and not some form of synthesized beeps accompanied by a driving bass
line. There's also a good variety of tunes.
Gameplay:
-
The gameplay in Aveyond was not enough to stop me from playing as a big time RPG
fan, but if I wasn't already approaching the game to give it the benefit of the
doubt, I would want to quit. Encounters are structured poorly (no ability to
flee combat, enemies that are either harmless or 100% deadly with little
transition), maps are weakly designed (there's a lot of walking to get anywhere
and there are tons of dead ends that exist for no other reason than to make the
area complex) and frequently the path to the next goal is completely opaque.
Value: +
There's a lot of game to be had with Aveyond. At $18, the game is cheaper than
most arcade style shareware titles and has far more content to it. Replay value
is always sketchy on RPG titles, but massive amounts of gameplay typically
balance that out nicely. The inclusion of “power up� save game files on the
Amaranth site is pretty slick, too.
Concept: =
There's very little new in the gameplay concepts of this RPG. Combat and magic
are very standard. The storyline could have been where the title shines, but for
as far as I could get into the game in the time I had before submitting my
review, the story was pretty much old hat for the RPG market. There's a magical
crisis in a faraway land and it turns out that I'm the chosen one from some
prophecy, coming up from my humble beginnings to save the world as we know it.
It's very cliché. However, the side quests are cute and random (if obscure) and
the game still does manage to be engaging despite its shortcomings.
Fun:
=
As with many RPGs, when you're rolling, it's fun. When you're stuck, it's not.
The problem is that in Aveyond, I found myself stuck more often than not.
Wandering from spot to spot and from town to town to find the next action that
will queue me along in the adventure would get to be very tiresome and I was
frequently reverting to the game's forum to move me along.
Overall: TRY
Aveyond has enough RPG in it to keep me playing it, even after the review is
over. However, for anyone not accustomed to the RPG experience and ready for the
pitfalls that await them in Aveyond, I don't see the game being enjoyable enough
to merit continued play for 50-some hours, as advertised. Even for myself, if I
can't find a consistent enough thread to follow in the game for more than an
hour or so, I'm going to get burnt out always scratching my head about what my
next step in the process should be.
Posted: Saturday April 15, 2006
Action
Adventure
Arkanoid
Fighting
Platform
Puzzle & Casual
Hidden Object
RPG
Shooter
Simulation
Sports
Strategy
Download Games
