NeverEnd

"Nothing spectacularly breath-taking, but fun nonetheless."

NeverEnd is a fantasy RPG that tries to replicate the old style of turn-based RPGs with a nice adventure aspect to it. It's a pretty charming hybrid of adventure and RPG genres, however it does have its own drawbacks.

Graphics: 9/10
Towns are done in pseudo, isometric 3D backgrounds, similar to most RPGs that you would have encountered on the PlayStation (most noticeably anything by Squaresoft). The camera is fixed at a certain point for each "scene" of the town and you walk around in it. The world map is in full 3D.

The visuals are in most instances bright, beautiful, and articulate, the best of which can be found in towns or map markers (when you're not on the "world map"). The graphics certainly could not be considered next-gen by pushing the bar, but they are adequately satisfying. You can look at screenshots yourself for a better understanding.

Sounds: 7/10
Voice Acting is perhaps the weakest point of this field. All dialogue is done by voice actors, but at least two-thirds of the NPCs just don't sound natural, as if they really are reading off of a script, trying to imitate some heavy accent. Agavaen, the heroine, has a good, believable voice actress. All-in-all, the dialogues are nothing to be particularly proud of.

Music isn't very prominent, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The soundtrack plays in the background in such a manner that it buttresses the atmosphere of the game; it doesn't stand out artificially as most soundtracks do. There aren't any catchy melodies that you'll be humming day and night due to this, so it's easy to slip under the radar. However, there seems to be bugs that will sometimes prevent the music from playing, requiring a complete close and re-start of the game to get it playing again.

Most of the other sound effects are at least at par, nothing noticeably wrong with them. They sound natural and effective.

Gameplay:

Combat: 4/10
Combat is instanced: you walk around on the world map and have "random encounters" in which you're brought to a different battle field to duke the fight out, and then you're returned to the world map.

The combat claims to return to a turn-based root, but with a "unique" twist. The twist, as far as I can tell, the twist is that turns are not based on sequential order (where you pick every turn with no delay) or on an agility/speed meter (which decides how fast you get to take turns), but on an action base. Certain spells, items, and attacks take more or less time to perform. At the start of your "turn" you select the action, and a blue bar slides across the screen indicating how long until you perform the action. Weak attacks can be done quickly, strong or ailment-inducing attacks are slow.

Combat is generally fun, but can become very repetitious. The reason I score the combat so low is because of how unbalanced most instanced battles are. You can easily take one step, get a random encounter with 3 mobs that you will come out unscathed, take another step, get a random encounter with 3 mobs, and get your arse handed to you on a stick. The more you level-up, it seems, the more often mobs with spells like haste, deadlock, and crooked mirror appear. Haste quickens the speed of actions, deadlock prevents you from doing anything for a considerable amount of time, and crooked mirror has a 1/3 chance of basically one-shotting you.

At least 70% of my battles ended in near-death because of this unbalanced aspect. Quite often there are two mobs that can use deadlock -- you target one at the start of the match, even if you kill it, there's still a second one that lands it on you. You're then stuck as 2-3 mobs (usually with haste, or are spamming magic attacks like crooked mirror or mental assault) destroy your helpless self as they each get 4-5 hits in before the spell wears off, or in the more likely case, you die. Most of these battles seem more dependent on luck, rather than any skill or level-deciding.

Exploring: 9/10
The adventure aspect of the game is implemented quite nicely; you go around town picking up quests and finding clues in a dynamic, changing world. Completing certain quests will cause new NPCs to show up in certain areas or change certain circumstances in towns that lead to a whole new chain of possibilities. Thus, it's always a good idea to talk to people, because you never know when they may have something for you to do, or a new quest opens up in the abandoned house on the corner.

The world map is relatively small, but it's adequate for this game. There are lots of little nooks and crannies to find secrets in and to always keep you busy, with several marked "boss/mini-boss" figures blocking treasure chests. However, due to the unbalanced and seemingly completely random-based combat, it can become very frustrating trying to go from town to town, even on the small map; you can be going just fine minding your own business, then out comes a random encounter that kills you nearly instantly, or leaves you using precious stores of potions that you quickly run out of.

Mechanics: 5/10
There are several aspects here where the game just falls on its face. Enemies scale with you, but allies or other "party members" that you can acquire for quests don't. Thus you can easily be level 20 and have someone guiding you who's level 10. That level 10 will get killed by the level 20's faster than you can heal or protect him, and once he's dead, it's game over. Furthermore, the level gap prevents the level 10 ally from even being able to do any sizable damage to the enemies.

The leveling system is the style where you use something more often, and it will level itself. Like any system of this caliber, it pretty much means that you need to have an idea of what you want to specialize in within the first hour of gameplay; if you're constantly switching from dagger to hammer to longsword to staff, depending on which ones you find and what bonuses they have, then you'll break your character and find you can't fight anything. But, if you pick something and stick with it, things should be alright.

Magic is, well, complicated. You start out with no magic abilities; you have to use runes to create spells. You only have a limited number of times you can cast a certain spell (based on how many times you "make" the spell); once they're used, you have to sleep to restore them. This can sometimes be as easy as pitching a consumable tent or sleeping at an inn, but in the heap of battle, is impossible. Due to this limit on how often you can cast spells, it's very difficult to get efficient at leveling your spells without going outside the town wall, getting in one or two battles, and returning to bed. It gets very tiresome and doesn't seem quite worth the effort to invest in magic (although later on you begin to get some really powerful spells way stronger than weapons, if you specialize in magic). The only other problem with magic, is that most of the good spells enemies use on you almost right from the start, all the way up through level 20 and 25, you don't have access to. They require rare runes that you simply don't have, so you're stuck spamming the basic fireshot and healing spells while they do mental attacks or caste haste and deadlock.

Lastly, there are the bugs. There are a handful of minor bugs, like one that stops the music, or one that will get you stuck on the load screen while your character is actually in-game and able to move. However, there are also a few game-breaking bugs that make it impossible to continue. One such is for the cabin hermit Reworn; sometimes, it seems, when you get the quest to bring him his dog back, when you get the dog, you no longer are able to enter map locations, thus you're stuck permanently on the world map. Re-loading an earlier save may fix it, but the cause of the bug hasn't been found.

Another game-breaking bug is once you get your guide to go through the swamp, if you ever set foot in Mildrew Inn when the swamp tobacco guy arrives, the game will crash. You'll be at the swamp, talking to your guide, but whenever you try to progress the dialogue, the game will crash. This is where I got completely stopped, because I didn't want to be confused as all hell starting over from 4-5 hours earlier, not knowing what I had yet to do up to that point.

Conclusion: 7/10
For some odd reason, the game has a charm that makes it quite enjoyable to play, despite the unbalanced combat and the bugs. My only real gripe besides those are that you don't ever get new armor for your legs, so you're wearing the same brown slacks through the whole game (or at least most of it). If you like classic console-style RPGs and have a taste for adventure games, this game will probably suit you -- just be mindful about the game-breaking bugs. It also has a nice, low launch price of $30 new, so it's not going to break your wallet.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/24/06