"A Hypercard RPG at it's finest."

Wow. Flair's first game in a triad of my favorite homebrew games. It amazes me even to this day. How this was made in HYPERCARD is beyond me. I remember falling backwards in my chair when I first played it- Mostly because my chair was broken. Anyway, onto the review.

GRAPHICS: 7/10
Well, I wont lie. Nearly NO animations, but the few frames that people and monsters have are nice. But where is my walking animation? All the hero does is slide around. Facial pictures could be worse, but could be better. The terrain looks nice and polished. Gradients, IMHO, were overused. So overused it looks GOOD. Gotta love those battle techniques- They get slight animation. Yay.

MUSIC/SOUND: 9/10
The music is pretty cool. I love the Final boss music. There isn't a real battle music, it plays the music of the current location. With the exception of boss fights of course. The sound was decent. Nice sounds didn't quite match the spell effects. With the ICE spell's Blue circle gradient's edges darkening affect there shouldn't have been a sound that seemed to be ice breaking. Aside from battle, I don't recall any sounds being used, Which prevented this from getting a 10.

STORY: 9/10
A well written story about a Communist organization, secretly bombing some Capitalists, followed by our hero, Jed, not feeling too good about it. The story continues when Jed meets Shadow, an agent from the Mirage, who are opposed to the communists. They escape in a pod. That is basically the first 5-10 minutes. There are some loose ends, starting with Shadow and Jed getting split up when the pod explodes. For no apparent reason. This, again, prevents story from getting a nine.

GAMEPLAY: 10/10
To get from place to place, you go to the overworld map. There are NO random battles. (Be happy.) Click where you want to go. You go there. Enemies generally look around, in different directions. You can sneak past, a la Metal Gear, or you can fight them for experience. Battles take place in a generic Final Fantasy style, using your weapons, items, and Magic/Techs. Which brings me to another point. Cards. Equipping them gives different magic, for example, Fire card on Shadow gives him fire spells. Ice card on him gives him ice spells. This provides LOTS of fun. The game is rather short, I beat it with about 3-4 hours of gameplay.

REPLAY: 7
Not much in the way of sidequests. But cards provide lots of customization. And you can, of course, sneak past everyone, except a few bosses. Not bad, not great.

SCORE:
Graphics-7
Music/Sound-9
Story-9
Gameplay-10
Replay-7
TOTAL: 9/10

A good game. Support flair- Its a 1 man company and it's owner needs money. So register this shareware, and be proud!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/09/02, Updated 12/09/02