With all the lovecraftian love going around here lately I thought I ought to write up a little review of Cthulu saves the world. It also happens to be on sale now on steam! $1.49 (bundled with Breath of Death VII) http://store.steampowered.com/app/107310 Title: Cuthulu saves the world Size: 1780 MB Genre: Original Style RPG (DragonWarrior / Final Fantasy ) Basic Plot: Cthulu rises from the depths to take over the world only to find that his powers have been stripped. A wizard did it and so he has to rebuild his powers to take out the wizard. Review: Overall this game does a great job as an old school RPG. Their take on the genre is both different and refreshing. Combat is very fast paced. While still turned based, a few elements have been added to reduce the number of turns you take in combat. -You heal to full after every combat (Mana does not however regen) -You have a combo meter that certain skills build up. Super moves break the combo. Attacks will will use the combo to amplify the damage while resurrection skills or powerful all heals break it. -After each round of battle the surviving monsters increase in power. Thus each combat is a race. A defensive game of constantly healing is not an option as monsters get tougher they start to 1-shot your party members. Bosses can be tough, as you can choose to use skills that do slightly less damage to build up the combo faster, creating a tension where you need to decide if you want to use a finishing move, consuming your combo or go another round (or two) to guarantee that the finishing move kills the boss. When leveling your characters, you to choose between two options. This allows you to build your characters however you want. These choices are actually very meaningful because when the choice between two spells or abilities arrives, thats it. You get one of those two and the other is gone forever. Stat choices often arrive, Do you take +15 to all stats (+60 in total) or +50 to your characters attack stat? The trade-off between more HP or extra melee damage. This choice is more significant because it is beneficial to end fights as quickly as possible. The beauty also is that any character can be built in anyway. You can make any character a caster or a melee. You can make them more tanky or more damaging. There is money, and shops to spend that money on upgrades for your characters. You can often find the same items in chests in the dungeons. The game is loaded with Lovecraftian references. Not having read the books, I am sure I missed tons of references. Finally the game is LOADED with extras. After you beat the game you can actually go back through it and play it with unlocked extras (including one where Cthulu decides he is to lazy to actually take part in his own game, and the female characters have to do it all [aka charlies angels]). With Hardmodes and other things the game is pretty amazing deal for The Only Con to the game is that the dungeons are very big and kind of boring mazes. The ability to sprint is added to the game (something I missed for the first quarter of the game) and the dungeons have been designed accordingly. No map (like oldschool RPGs) means that you will spend a lot of time backtracking areas you have and trying to figure out the layout. Some dungeons have switches you need to activate for progress so it can get tiring. Fortunately each dungeon has an Encounter Number. After you reach the max, the monsters in that dungeon no longer engage you. if you need more experience to engage, you can still fight 'forced' random encounters (random in you don't choose what you fight) for an extra level. With the possiblity to save anywhere, it allows you to play in small doses just like DoD. Total Playtime for the initial playthrough is around 10 hours. If you want something to do while you wait for Clockwork Empires, and you love Old School RPGS, and love supporting Indie studios, check out Cthulu saves the world!
I own this and the game that came just before it, Breath of Death VII. I played BoD7 beginning to end and was unimpressed. But I have yet to play CStW. It is on my list of games to eventually play through. I just never have time.
The game is the same engine, so it might not be your thing. The major difference with the engine is that they added an extra feature: bridges. With cross over terrain the dungeons can be slightly more compact. The Humor is better and the gameplay has been tightened a bit. I tried some of the harder modes but they are nuts.
I too played only BoD7, but I got to... uhm... like after taking the zombie prince. On hard mode. After that, the game became too frustrating to continue, and now I've lost my saves with my old computer.
Yeah the game can be hard at times, I don't even know how you would do it on the harder modes. There were times I had to camp a save spot (for the free mana you get) and just fight battles there until I got a level so that I could make it to a boss fight.
I had to grind for a level just before the zombie boss, before of that it was kinda easy with the right skill choises for me and with the right level of attention. Next time I'll go on Normal just to see the end game.
