Although I’m not sure why they split this game into four parts, it’s still a nice game to play if you don’t mind looking at guides or references.
Type: Single-player
Genre: RPG
Developer: Amaranth Games, LLC
Publisher: Degica
Release date: 20 April, 2022
Intro
Aveyond 3-1: Lord of Twilight is the first episode of the Aveyond 3 Orbs of Magic series, which also counts as the third Aveyond series. It’s a turn-based RPG Maker game featuring up to 5 playable party members where you have to explore a lot of areas to fulfill your objective. To tell you the truth, this is my first Aveyond game, so this review will be based on that.
Visuals
The mapping is top-notch for an RPG Maker game. You won’t see any square-ish or plain-looking maps like other amateurish works in the same engine, and all areas are varied, featuring various regions with different-themed assets. Moreover, all outdoor areas are so vast without making it look as if it’s being done on purpose. All traces of default RPG Maker interfaces are also replaced with a customized one, giving you the impression that you’re not playing a game from that engine.
Story
The story does a good job of laying the foundation of its objective. The whole journey revolves around one objective which is trimmed down into smaller parts to make it not feel redundant. This gives more color to the dialogues, giving personalities to each character with their response. However, since there isn’t much that we could get from the story at the moment, I couldn’t feel any affection towards the characters. Most mysteries are not resolved and there isn’t any conclusion or whatsoever in this chapter either. I don’t even know why the game is split into four parts with the story being as it is.
The Game
Gameplay
The game focuses on traveling between locations, which are done by quests. However, it’s never clear on how or where you are supposed to go to reach the objective. There are some arrow marks at the beginning of the game that can help you to locate your objective, although sadly, it’s only available for the first few quests. You’re forced to travel to all explorable areas in the game and/or talk to everyone in all towns that you can visit to figure out where you’re supposed to go. It’s not fun doing quests this way, especially since you need to travel to other locations all the time.
You have the freedom in exploring any area that you want. The game might limit you from exploring most areas at the start, although it doesn’t take long before you can explore everything that the game has to offer. However, this also means that you’ll enter a high-leveled area without you knowing it, giving you a party wipe at your first battle since there is no option to run away. Luckily, the autosave feature helped to prevent further damage. Although this might look nice at the start, I found that this limits exploration since it’s hard to gauge whether you are strong enough to explore this high-leveled area which can be your next quest destination.
For a game with vast maps, this should be obvious, but it’s easy to get lost. There is one area that connects to 5 other areas which lead to other places. While having some sort of hub area can help to cut down exploration time, it fails to remind me how to access a certain location. I couldn’t count how many times I went to the wrong area or forgot that a certain exit exists from this area.
Combat
Strangely, there are no boss fights in Aveyond 3-1: Lord of Twilight. All enemies are triggered by touch to help you to level up. Although they are easy to defeat at first, some enemies can be very strong later on, to the point that they can reduce your HP by 1/3 in one attack in the easiest difficulty. Some enemies also have an instant death skill that can affect your party member. Moreover, since it’s impossible to revive a party member in an inn, you’re forced to use an item that can’t be purchased until you’re much later in the game.
Length and Difficulty
The in-game clock states that I finished the game at 07:02:08. Some of my playtimes were spent getting lost, making sure that I didn’t miss any side quests, or simply retrying some fights that killed my party members due to the scarcity of revive items. Most quests require you to travel between areas and the in-game fast travel is quite pricey in my book. It’s hard to earn money in the early game and enemies won’t even give you any drop if you are unlucky.
The game has 3 difficulties. I played in the easiest one after I found that I was forced to use items in other difficulties. Inns are also expensive in the early game and the fact that you are fully healed after you level up in the easiest difficulty helps me to save money. It’s still challenging though, especially since your party has very weak armor – enemies can kill you if you are not careful. If you think that it’s still difficult, there are some OP items that you can get if you know where to look.
Problems
One quest can only be triggered at a certain point of the game, and it’s annoying to talk to everyone that you can find to make sure that you are not missing any. Some quests also can’t be completed in this game, giving more confusion.
Specs
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
Verdict
It’s a tough decision to rate this game. On one side, I found that the game was professionally made – maps are beautiful and varied, to the point that I never get bored exploring new areas. The only complaint that I had is how it was designed to make it hard to remember how to access certain places, particularly because of the numerous exits in the “hub” area. The fact that I kept on having no idea where I was supposed to go next to finish my quests also doesn’t help in this regard.
I don’t understand why the game is split into four parts when the story doesn’t convince you to hop on the next episode – I could even predict what’s going to happen in the end just from playing the first part. The only good thing that I could think of to continue playing is to experience the high-quality maps and the enjoyable battles – there is nothing worth talking about the latter one, but that’s exactly what makes it good. If you can ignore about its lack of clues to progress the game, it’s still a decent RPG Maker game that has better quality than others.
