Like what you see? Join the community!

  

Main » Magazine » RPG Maker » Review: Ursus Quest: Tree of Life
Review: Ursus Quest: Tree of Life
1,396 views
0
By: Lausen | Published: May 7, 2008 22:00 pm | RPG Maker
Rating

0


The story has you play as one of two orphans. You can choose to play as either Victor or Zoey. You play through their life as a child to adult. After the beginning you can pretty much choose what you wanted to do. Obright gave a great amount of freedom to the player. You can help reopen Max's shops, become a musician, become an artist and sculpt statues all over, become a cook, go on archeology digs, become a clergyman, and many other things.

Obright did a great job at giving each of the characters personalities. The thing I found most appealing was that each time you talk to someone, 4 options came up. This gives you more of a chance to get to know the character and the surrounding area. You also can flirt and even get married and have a child. I never got the chance to do this however. You can become a thief and steal from the town people, and even go to jail. Also, the back-story of the area was pretty interesting as well. Elements of Shadow of the Towers were in this as well. Overall you're just playing out the character's LIFE trying to make Moyos a better place, or stealing from it.

Well I'll start with towns. There is only one town, but it's broken into two, Moyos and West Moyos. Let me say, Moyos is amazing. It suits the feel of the game perfectly. It's one of the few towns that I've encountered that is actually believable. West Moyos is kind of overshadowed by Moyos, but it's still not bad. The detail in them is great. Obright used dungeons differently than most. None of them had any enemies. Instead he opted for puzzles, which I thought were really cool. The puzzles he had were very well done. The map had a neat rocky area, and the little area Moyos sits on is cool. Also, there are a lot of rivers that make the area seem bigger, in a good way.The map wasn't what I expected. Not bad, but not what I came to know of Obright. In Shadow of the Towers his maps had many elevation differences, but in Tree of Life the map was rather flat.

Let's be honest. This game is crawling with neat little features I've never seen in an RPGM 3 game before. First off, there are random battles on the field, but Obright added a little feature that made fights different every time you stepped out on the field. You can ask nearly everyone in town to join your party. Because you don't level up the traditional way, each person stays the same level so no one gets over powered. The fact that the character grows and changes depending on the choices you make really made the game interesting. There was flirting, statue building, you could buy a house, and one of the main features you needed to beat the game was the ability to trade. The list goes on. Tree of Life really shows what RPGM 3 can do.I really don't have anything to complain about here.

For all of the features this game offers, Obright did a great job making sure nothing was out of order. I didn't come across any kind of bugs in his coding at all. I also must say the battles were done very well. The only thing you can argue about this is you can go to other areas of the field at any time and fight strong enemies. I got killed once because I was someplace I wasn't strong enough for, but on the whole it was balanced quite well. Obright used all 99.9% and it shows. Some of the coding and puzzles he used had to have taken a great deal of space. Each of the main 7 quests had 4 different ranks you could get and at the end depending on all of the ranks you get one rank. I can only imagine what else Obright would have added if it weren't for the limit. He did an amazing job of keeping it bug free.I did spot a few small spelling errors, but that's to be expected from a game with as much dialogue as this.

I enjoyed the story, and watching the main character grow and mature, or become rotten to the core. You have so many options of things to do and you can do them in any order. That really adds to the enjoyment of the game. If you don't like one of the side missions, you can skip it and go work on another one. I have to say my favorite thing was the archeology digs. Those really helped make the world feel real because you learned a bit about the history of the area.The biggest thing that hampered the fun was how much you had to trade. If you didn't write down what each person is willing to trade, you'll be running around talking to the same people over and over like I did.

The story was interesting and being able to choose your own path adds to the replay value a lot. There are many different quests that fit different people's interests, which is a great thing. I can tell Obright really put a lot into the appearance of Tree of Life and it shows. The look just fit into the story perfectly. The few puzzles he had were definitely cool. Though I got worked a few times in battle, most of them were balanced perfectly, and being able to choose your battle team was a nice touch. There were one or two spelling errors I saw, but the standout stuff made me completely forget about them. This was one of the most unique experiences I have had with RPGM 3!

Leave A Comment
You must be registered to leave a comment
Comments (0)