Grab your 8-bit sword and shield and get ready to defend yourself against random encounters while saving the world one town at a time! The king has been poisoned, monsters are running amok everywhere, and the only person who can do anything about it is you! That's how things start out in Regressia by IainPeregrine, and if you're a fan of Dragon Warrior styled games, or old-school NES RPGs in general, you'll want to be giving this game a try.
Regressia is a single player RPG that has been in the works for something like four years. Every ounce of the game and its multimedia was handcrafted from scratch, so prepare to be awed by 8-bit graphics, music and storyline. (What, didn't you know you could have an 8-bit storyline?) It plays much like a Dragon Warrior game, so while walking around on the overworld you can expect random encounters with monsters on a regular basis, and in town you can expect one-liner conversations and shops that will sell you the latest and greatest gear.
This is the kind of game where you're going to want to slow down, explore a little, talk to the town folks, and make sure that you have some decent equipment before you go off to plow through the waves of monsters. Otherwise you'll end up dead. So if you're looking for a power trip then be careful, because the monsters will easily kill you if you're not. Also, if exploring and talking to people to glean information doesn't appeal to you, then you'll probably want to shy away from this game. The combat encounters aren't dramatically deep, so if that's all you're playing for, you'll get bored in a hurry.
The controls are very simplistic, with your directional pad and two command keys for opening and navigating menus. Its all very self-explanatory once you start into it. You also have some control over how the game window is displayed (windowed, full screen) and you can control audio volume as well. The game's primary controls - movement and command keys - can easily be adjusted to whatever setup you're comfortable with using the in-game keyboard configuration editor.
Iain was eager to point out that this is a finished game, but what you will be downloading here is the demo version. I was able to finish the demo in an hour and a half, so you can probably expect around 10 hours of gameplay or more from the full game, depending on how much time you spend leveling up and sniffing out secrets. After you've played through the demo, you may want to purchase a subscription for the full game and help to support high quality independent games on BYOND.
There may be a few bugs here and there, but updates are happening regularly as problems are fixed and suggestions are incorporated. Also, if you need any help getting through the demo, a walkthrough has been provided for just that.
Thanks for taking the time to write an honest review
The combat encounters aren't dramatically deep
This is the one part of the demo is concerned with. I introduce new aspects of combat slowly so that the player has time to learn how things work before I throw another curve ball. By the end of the game, combat tactics are dramatically different than how they started, even though you're still fighting one monster at a time.
By the end of the game, combat tactics are dramatically different than how they started, even though you're still fighting one monster at a time.
I figured that was probably the case, but as far as the demo is concerned, there just isn't much to it. Not having played the entire game, I can't tell anyone what things will be like down the road, this is more-less a review of the demo. If you want a review of the rest of the game, talk to Nadrew. :)
But for the demo, combat consists of, at most:
- Attack.
- Use a healing item.
- Use healing/attack skill.
There was maybe one monster in the demo that did anything besides a direct attack, and that was sort of an out of the way "you shouldn't be here" monster.
That said, I wasn't including the scripted combats. The last encounter in the demo was considerably more "dramatic" than most of the standard encounters. But the scripted encounters also don't make up the majority of the game.
Wanted to let you know that, based on your comments, I updated Regressia with an in-game macro editor. Thanks for the feedback, it's always appreciated.
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