Illusions: Chronicles Book 1
2022-07-02 update: added all missing music and sound files. —Lachesis
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Last modified 2011-09-25 21:13:48
Illusions Book 1 is an incomplete JRPG from the time before it was cool to make incomplete JRPGs in Megazeux.
The one-on-one battle system is pretty well-done for its time! It's clunky, but doesn't feel nearly as clunky as the one in Doomsday Dream Legend. Unfortunately nearly all of the battles are dead simple. Most of the enemies can be killed in 1-2 turns and do very little damage.
You enter a battle by getting close up to an enemy on the overworld. Pretty cool for this game's time are that these enemies start respawning when you kill them all. Less cool is how they might respawn near enough to you that you'll have to do 3-4 battles in a row before you can get away.
You get the standard attack/spell/item/run menu, but the spells work in an interesting way: you have 4 slots, each of which can hold one spell. You can buy new spells to fill these slots, but once they're all full you'll need to "forget" a spell, meaning you'll have to buy it again if you want it later.
You can buy weapons and armor in one of the shops but there is no inventory system for these, they just replace your old equipment.
The graphics are pretty good in most places, though the mountain cave is an ugly gray series of paths, like something out of the similar game Reign of Terror. It's pretty clear that the author wanted to mimic Sivion's aesthetic in this game, and a few things do look nearly that good.
The game is mostly bug free, but... unfortunately there's a problem where the final boards aren't linked from anywhere. You can't beat this thing without fixing the game in the editor. The mountain cave ends in mostly empty rooms, so it definitely seems incomplete. A shame, this would have been one of the better Megazeux JRPGs of its time if it were completed.
The one-on-one battle system is pretty well-done for its time! It's clunky, but doesn't feel nearly as clunky as the one in Doomsday Dream Legend. Unfortunately nearly all of the battles are dead simple. Most of the enemies can be killed in 1-2 turns and do very little damage.
You enter a battle by getting close up to an enemy on the overworld. Pretty cool for this game's time are that these enemies start respawning when you kill them all. Less cool is how they might respawn near enough to you that you'll have to do 3-4 battles in a row before you can get away.
You get the standard attack/spell/item/run menu, but the spells work in an interesting way: you have 4 slots, each of which can hold one spell. You can buy new spells to fill these slots, but once they're all full you'll need to "forget" a spell, meaning you'll have to buy it again if you want it later.
You can buy weapons and armor in one of the shops but there is no inventory system for these, they just replace your old equipment.
The graphics are pretty good in most places, though the mountain cave is an ugly gray series of paths, like something out of the similar game Reign of Terror. It's pretty clear that the author wanted to mimic Sivion's aesthetic in this game, and a few things do look nearly that good.
The game is mostly bug free, but... unfortunately there's a problem where the final boards aren't linked from anywhere. You can't beat this thing without fixing the game in the editor. The mountain cave ends in mostly empty rooms, so it definitely seems incomplete. A shame, this would have been one of the better Megazeux JRPGs of its time if it were completed.