Oath Demo
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Every once and a while, there's one of those games you think is going to be a total piece of crap yet manages to be decent and promising when you actually play it, and Caleb Seibert's Oath turns out to be one of those games.
The first thing that catches one's eyes when starting this game up is the archaic password protection which eventually results in half of the demo being unplayable in modern Megazeux (more on this later), followed by a flame effect and fade to white that probably looked really cool in 1999. Upon pressing 'P', the player is greeted with an ugly menu which allows them to listen to the game's soundtrack, which is actually pretty good, read the credits ("more credits in the final version"), or start a game. The game opens 9500 years in the past, where the Dark Lord Lancer-X is using crystals to open a portal to hell -- hey, wait, that's Dusk Lance! I somehow managed to steal this guy's plot 10 years in the future without having played his game before -- but he is stopped when a Holy Knight shoots him with a lazerwall. Gelgamesh's cheesy dialogue defeated once and for all, the focus jumps to the present day.
The player now controls Pharon, a figure of some importance in the military of Somewhereland who uses shadow magic -- alright, I'll admit that I wasn't paying attention to the exposition at first because I didn't realize the game would be plot based. After talking to his sister, his sister's fiancée, and taking a nap, his family dines and talks about a war that is occuring and High Priest Damicean. Afterward, Pharon talks to the king and can explore the west wing of the castle, which drops a metric ton of exposition on the player's head in the form of the library, and tells the player how the RPG mechanics of the game work. After playing with the battle engine a bit, which is simple and functional, but a little slow paced and repetitive, you can leave the castle, and Pharon loses a fight to High Priest Damicean's shapeshifter buddy. The two discuss turning Pharon back to the dark side and using him as a weapon -- hey, wait, now Damicean is Dark Lord Lancer-X and Pharon is Duncan, these plot similarities cannot be coincidental! -- and Pharon finds himself in a BREAK OUT OF PRISON scene.
Which, unfortunately, is where this summary ends. When modern Megazeux removes the password protection from Oath.mzx, it converts the file to a modern world file version, preventing Megazeux from version coding the counter "Key", which the BREAK OUT OF PRISON puzzle uses. I was kind of sad, at this point, but not sad enough to fix the issue myself. Overall, while the game's graphics were particularly unimpressive and repetitive, even for 1999, and it was quite verbose, the game had a functional 1x1 RPG engine, good music, and more plot than FFXIII could have even hoped to have to make up for it. This game represents a lot of potential that wasn't presented very well, and if this game were revamped and given a modern-Megazeux facelift, it would have very easily yielded four or five stars from me.
The first thing that catches one's eyes when starting this game up is the archaic password protection which eventually results in half of the demo being unplayable in modern Megazeux (more on this later), followed by a flame effect and fade to white that probably looked really cool in 1999. Upon pressing 'P', the player is greeted with an ugly menu which allows them to listen to the game's soundtrack, which is actually pretty good, read the credits ("more credits in the final version"), or start a game. The game opens 9500 years in the past, where the Dark Lord Lancer-X is using crystals to open a portal to hell -- hey, wait, that's Dusk Lance! I somehow managed to steal this guy's plot 10 years in the future without having played his game before -- but he is stopped when a Holy Knight shoots him with a lazerwall. Gelgamesh's cheesy dialogue defeated once and for all, the focus jumps to the present day.
The player now controls Pharon, a figure of some importance in the military of Somewhereland who uses shadow magic -- alright, I'll admit that I wasn't paying attention to the exposition at first because I didn't realize the game would be plot based. After talking to his sister, his sister's fiancée, and taking a nap, his family dines and talks about a war that is occuring and High Priest Damicean. Afterward, Pharon talks to the king and can explore the west wing of the castle, which drops a metric ton of exposition on the player's head in the form of the library, and tells the player how the RPG mechanics of the game work. After playing with the battle engine a bit, which is simple and functional, but a little slow paced and repetitive, you can leave the castle, and Pharon loses a fight to High Priest Damicean's shapeshifter buddy. The two discuss turning Pharon back to the dark side and using him as a weapon -- hey, wait, now Damicean is Dark Lord Lancer-X and Pharon is Duncan, these plot similarities cannot be coincidental! -- and Pharon finds himself in a BREAK OUT OF PRISON scene.
Which, unfortunately, is where this summary ends. When modern Megazeux removes the password protection from Oath.mzx, it converts the file to a modern world file version, preventing Megazeux from version coding the counter "Key", which the BREAK OUT OF PRISON puzzle uses. I was kind of sad, at this point, but not sad enough to fix the issue myself. Overall, while the game's graphics were particularly unimpressive and repetitive, even for 1999, and it was quite verbose, the game had a functional 1x1 RPG engine, good music, and more plot than FFXIII could have even hoped to have to make up for it. This game represents a lot of potential that wasn't presented very well, and if this game were revamped and given a modern-Megazeux facelift, it would have very easily yielded four or five stars from me.