By Micky Gunn
Are you sick of all those dragons that continually
stick their noses into your RPGs? If you’ve had enough of fully realised open
3D worlds, epic set pieces, and million dollar trailers designed to grab the
headlines at E3; if you have always felt, deep down in your heart, that top
down isometric views and turn based combat are the only way to really
experience dungeon crawling; Rainbow Moon is for you.
Even if
you’re not a retro / classic / old school gamer, Rainbow Moon, the new take on
old style RPGs, is so packed with gaming goodness that you too might think 8
(or at the most, 16) bits are enough. That said, coming in at almost 2
gigabytes, the game is fully realised, fully HD, and damn nice to look at. Not
only are the graphics exactly right, it’s all bathed in a restrained palette of
ambient sounds and topped with a classy, and classic, theme. Put simply,
Rainbow Moon is good.
Not that there’s much to the story.
You’re Baldren and you get tossed through a vortex to Rainbow Moon. Along with
you goes all kinds of bugs, undead, and laser shooting robot things. What
follows is a lot of searching, making friends, fighting enemies, and getting
home. However, setting up the story does not come close to doing the game
justice. It’s big (the world), it’s complex (the combat system), and it’s deep
(the upgrading and levelling). There’s so much going on in Rainbow Moon, it’s
hard to know where to start.
Once you begin playing, the game
takes hold with its wonderfully tactical battles. At various preset locations,
usually blocking a path or doorway, some kind of monster will be waiting. If
you’re not feeling up to it, you can skirt around and try to hunt down all the
levers and treasure chests hidden on each map. Eventually, though, you will
have to fight and, to do this, all you have to do is walk up to the beastie and
the fight begins.
You and your crew, as well the enemies -
which could number twenty or thirty - are warped to a battle grid. To begin with
it might just be Baldren and long-range specialist Trisha against a couple of
skeletons and a giant bee. Each character gets their turn to act within a
round, with each having a set number of moves within their turn. So when it’s
his turn, Baldren might use his three moves to cast haste on Trisha. Move one
square forward. And attack a skeleton. Trisha, with only two moves per round,
might move back to keep some distance between her and the skeleton, before
launching a volley of fiery arrows at the bee.
As you
progress, and the number of combatants grow, the battles become very complex.
With every type of monster, as well as every ally, having their own strengths,
weaknesses, long and short range attacks, as well as different defensive abilities,
and area attacks. With health potions being quaffed to combat the different
potions, and spells being cast, as well as cool animations for every
high-powered special strike, Rainbow Moon makes turn based combat dynamic,
tactical, and a total blast.
When you win you get a few
potions, coins, and various bits and pieces to either use to upgrade your
armour or sell at the various shops. Whoever manages to land the final blow on
an enemy also earns pearls which can be used to raise a character’s stats. It’s
a very deep and satisfying levelling system. Even if, after ten hours of play
and feeling very satisfied that you’ve reached level fifteen, you notice that
the gold trophy is awarded at level 500.
No, you won’t be
maxing out your characters by just playing through the forty hour plus story,
you’ll be grinding from here till Christmas. Which is an awesome thought
considering all those downloadable games, even the very good ones, that often
are clocked in a week and never played again.
While there is
a lot to like about Rainbow Moon, if you try you can find a few faults. For
example, in combat it’s far too easy to use up your last turn stepping back
onto the square you just left, instead of unleashing a devastating
multi-directional attack. And there’s no chance to get that last move back.
Also, even though the map is perfectly in tune with the game’s retro aesthetic,
it’s annoying and difficult to decipher. There are just too many dots, and not
enough map, for this adventurer.
Even though Rainbow Moon
does push the retro adventuring vibe, it is an absolute joy to play. If you
played RPGs in the 1990s, developers SideQuest Studios have made a game for
you. If you’ve never played an isometric strategic RPG before, it’s still a
game for you. In fact, everyone should play Rainbow Moon.
NZGamer.com
Rainbow Moon
:: Publisher: eastasiasoft
:: Developer: SideQuest Studios
:: Format: PlayStation 3
:: Rating: PG