A decent game but flawed.
Lemme just write this review in point form to be quick.
1. Graphics: Simplistic but clean. However, animations are very lacking. Given the size of the characters on the screen, having more animations would have really helped to make them feel less like cardboard cutouts with a dialogue box.
2. Sound: Good quality music, but the actual sounds have nothing particularly noteworthy. I don't consider no voices as a downside, but the game does feel awfully quiet overall.
3. Gameplay - Overworld: Standard flash RPG fare in walking around, but this prologue is noticeably lacking in things to do. No items to pick up in the overworld? There is very little in way of exploration except for this-path-to-next-plot-point. The story isn't exactly all that interesting as well, and the way the backstory is told by the alchemist sounds like drunk nonsense rambling rather than something helpful to be listening to. There's that strange unwalkable section in the library which implies a secret door, but that area may be for another part. The world does feel kind of dead, like a painting that's there just so you have something to walk around on, but I guess that's because it's set in a village out in the middle of nowhere (will the next parts be more lively?). I do like the avoidable enemies though, random battles are just bad form in 2012. I think the way the Blood Thistle catches you is a neat idea as well, although it may be a -wee- little too easy to avoid them.
4. Gameplay - Combat : The system attempts to make a turn based system more interactive, but the timing for the melee attacks is extremely unforgiving. The prompt pretty much comes as soon as you should already be pressing, so it is completely unhelpful in helping you time your button presses. The bow was by far a more reliable source of damage, which means that buying the other weapons is a very big gamble unless you were very good with the timing. Same thing with dodging attacks, although I guess it is easier to do that since you only have to get the first press right. Magic is more forgiving than melee, although I guess everything is more effective than melee. I will say that I like the differentiation in how all the attacks are handled by the player, but it is still somewhat poorly executed.
The lack of a keyboard control for the combat menu makes it clunky for right-handers with right-hand mice, since they'll have to keep switching back and forth with their best hand. Overall, the combat just feels like a chore to be done with while walking to the next plot point rather than being anything exciting.
5. Gameplay - Bugs: I did not encounter any gamebreaking bugs, but there is one absolutely combat-breaking bug that I did find. The spell Spectral Ray does not do any kind of normal damage, but whatever it does instead causes the enemies health to be set to "NaN" (not a number), AKA insta-death. It doesn't even need to be charged to do that, just tap the spacebar. Given that I was already bored // frustrated with the combat system in general by the time I got spells, I just bought a load of MP restoring items from the shop, and Spectral Ray'd everything away, including the two bosses.
Please check your coding and playtest your game fully next time before uploading.
