Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: DLS_MWZZ

It is actually a time and space capsule that has been delayed for more than a decade, preserving the aftertaste of the golden age.

I first knew that "ASTLIBRA Revision" was at the Steam New products Festival. At first glance, the heroine seemed to have donated wings, the game screen was full of retro flavor, and the trial version of the new festival allowed me to play far away and very generous. However, the number of running frames of the character in the preface story is insufficient, and the content and way of the performance even make people feel a little procrastinating and backward, giving people a feeling of "congenial". At first, I thought it was Mini Game. It was not until I started the first battle in the game, and then experienced a soul-stirring, life-and-death battle in one breath, that I realized that this hymn of humanity had taken me up to 40 hours.

It's not a Mini Game, it's probably the most easily buried masterpiece of the year.

I want to reject the buried future, so I am here to write these words.

I haven't hit the "post-day talk" part much yet, but it's probably time to talk about it.

The solid foundation from the old JRPG in "the balance of God", the protagonist and the childhood heroine were separated in a magic attack. When she woke up, she found herself in an unknown place with a talking crow, and lost all her memory. In order to retrieve the memory, the hometown and her, the hero embarked on the road of adventure without hesitation.

The trial version of "Divine balance" supports skipping the beginning of lengthy bedding, and the producers probably understand that players in today's fast-food era may not survive the slow pace of the beginning of the plot, but they are confident enough that as long as you actually play it, you will realize that it's wonderful.

It can be said that there are all kinds of highlights in the game system, details and performance.

For example, as ARPG, the "A" part of it is completely the level of the old action game masterpiece, the soul possession of KONAMI, CAPCOM, SEGA ACT masterpieces, and the addition of various subtle iterations in line with the progress of the times, which is really cool to the bone.

There are also designs in the game, such as free addition, simplified form of rubbing, attacking the enemy to restore "energy" (magic), the game will be suspended when choosing magic, and a large number of units of the enemy and us on the same screen, and so on. If you take into account the superposition of these things, it is easy to remind people of the once classic "Guardian Hero"-a SS masterpiece that has been re-known by young people and played by old players by "Uncle of the other World" this year. "the balance of God" is the true soul sequel of "Guardian Hero"!

Veteran players who like "Guardian Heroes" please go and play right away. I mean it.

In the picture, one teammate, three summoners, and messy enemies as part of the RPG also show the same high degree of completion and a thorough understanding of the game.

For example, for the synthesis of props up to now, "Divine balance" happens to be in the best range of "having and not annoying". It can experience the freshness of accidentally synthesizing great new props after one experiment, and the harvest of playing materials. and do not have to experience some of the uncomfortable things that are easy to appear in today's commercial games, such as designing too many maps to prolong the game time, causing collection panic.

For example, the common proficiency design of weapons, it exists, so that players can gain from hitting people with new weapons, but it is not annoying, at level 1, you can replace a new weapon that you have just got, and there is absolutely no n-level that commercial games love to do. Even from the whole point of view, even the rhythm of this new weapon is just right, and if you pay a little attention to it, there are many designs that give the player a perfect balance like the balance in the story symbol.

The resources of many subsystems in the game flow smoothly and couple with each other, which is very sophisticated and delicate. For example, in the prop synthesis mentioned above, when the player gets enough props to play the exhaustive method, the producer handed over the "synthesis manual" smoothly, which is really very comfortable. After the weapon proficiency is brushed, there are all kinds of returns, sometimes it is a magic guide, sometimes it is an important prop, sometimes it is the enhancement of its own attributes, and so on, forming a compound positive feedback bombing.

Of course, the arena subsystem will not be absent from the sophisticated design of the maze. "Divine balance" is completely free of the lengthy and boring time labyrinth of commercial games, which is one of the key points that the once-prosperous JRPG later persuaded many people to quit. At most, one or two short forks are designed in the game, and each "copy" scene is basically kept in single digits, and the difference is distinct, there is fun to explore but do not worry about getting lost, and players really do not even need map guidance. The name "labyrinth" doesn't live up to its name.

In addition, the adventure process also contains some riddles so far, or the treasure chest to use your brain to get, the design logic is more biased towards the old game, which integrates all the possible related systems in the game to solve together. In some places, when I realized how to solve it, I couldn't help but smile when I played the "side portrait of the goddess" more than 20 years ago.

But it should also be said that for young players who are used to today's business masterpieces, some puzzles may be designed to be a little too "alive". For example, somewhere, you need to take the initiative to find and use something in the prop bar, and young players will wonder, why not give an interactive button-- old games are often not given, and you have to realize for yourself, "it seems like something should be used here."

This is where the balance of God gets stuck by the generation gap. I also see people in Steam bad reviews and players asking, "Why isn't the game automatically archived?" RPG players with a little experience are likely to blurt out: "if you hit JRPG, don't you save dozens more files?" So it can only be said that it depends on whether there is an adaptive intersection between the game and the player.

The first treasure chest that will get stuck, in fact, we all understand the unique system honed for more than ten years, in addition to the above, there are more or less things that an excellent RPG will have, "Divine balance" also has a unique system with quite new ideas.

What you can experience in the trial version is the "growth" function in the menu. "Divine balance" in addition to the traditional RPG monster killing, experience upgrading, plus attribute point part, consumption killing monster obtained "power crystal" can also upgrade attribute points, at first glance, it seems to be another parallel empirical value system, but it gives the upgrade initiative to the player, at any time "zero storage" consumption "power crystal" plus point, it is more fragmented than the "zero storage" empirical value system.

Its creativity lies in that this growth interface is not only a traditional science and technology tree, but also a traditional two-dimensional maze composed of attribute points. Players rely on the consumption of "magic element" to walk through nodes, each node has a different reward, the regular reward is the character attribute point, but in which corner, there may be powerful props, more advanced skills, hidden locked doors and its keys, and so on.

Think about it carefully, this point-by-point laying is also quite "liver" …... With this "attribute point maze" upgraded from the technology tree, the game suddenly brought the most traditional and classic RPG temperament of the 1980s and 1990s to the players. Players' vision in the interface is limited, and sometimes they can see good things across the shore. In order to get them more quickly, players have to make rational use of the magic element that is not particularly rich, or get more magic element by brushing more monsters, which is equivalent to giving the player an interesting and lasting fighting power.

More lovingly, when I unlocked most of the nodes, I found that these labyrinths formed patterns according to the development of chapters. These sketched patterns exactly echoed the elements of the main stage of each chapter. For example, the story of the second chapter mainly takes place in the forest, and the corresponding maze shape of this chapter is a tree, which is very old game temperament.

Another very novel and theme-appropriate system in the game is "balance". Players will get the "divine balance" after the preface, and can put almost all kinds of props around the balance to get the enhancement effect of the props. The more balanced the balance, the higher the enhancement. All kinds of props mentioned here are almost all the props available to players in the game-almost all! Even including some plot props, do not know what props, can be put in, only individual props can not.

As a result, the motivation and reward for collecting props in this game is completely different from other RPG. Although the enhancement effect of props on the balance is generally the better, the props are not strictly related to the weight on the scales, so even an inconspicuous primary material, may be the key balance weight or bring rare effects, it is best to have all of them! I confess that I have never been so active in robbing houses.

This is really the only interesting game balance that smoothly couples other systems in the game, such as the synthesis system, so you should go through the list and see what new "weights" you can create. The balance is also coupled with the magic guide system in the game, such as the "money transfer" problem that often occurs in the RPG game, some of which can give money bonus, plus the balance with Build, it is good to be rich every minute. In short, with the help of scales, players have a set of parallel, easy-to-use enhancement systems that can meet a variety of needs in the game.

In fact, this kind of free and broad inclusiveness runs through the game, including the design of the game with different difficulties. Simple difficulty, this game is an unparalleled lawn mowing leisure brush, the ordinary difficulty is the regular "Devil City", the hell difficulty is to shield against the iron "Soul of Darkness", and the absurd difficulty seems to be the old ACT-- game that really designed the space for this challenge, and the game has shown players uninjured play in the "Arena" subsystem many times.

This is completely different from just blindly reducing the difficulty of the game and striving for the "inclusiveness" of sinking players. Four or five difficulties are equal to four or five different games, and players at all levels can be happy. This is the true inclusive design. After playing this game for a while, I heard that "Divine balance" is a work that the producer has independently developed for 14 years (claimed to have been paddling for three and a half years in the interview). It is a real ten-year sharpening of the sword. No wonder everywhere can be so sophisticated, just right, or even completely inconsistent with today's business logic.

It is actually a time and space capsule that has been delayed for more than a decade, preserving the aftertaste of the golden age.

This work covers almost all the auxiliary skills needed in the traditional RPG, to match the "saturation" of various creative powers of play in the process of experiencing the "divine balance". From all angles, I strongly feel a familiar breath, which is from the debut of the SFC mainframe in 1990 to the atmosphere of the golden age of JRPG in the 2000s, which is what JRPG used to like most, and it is also an experience that veteran players have been away from for a long time. Even, it adds some interesting new materials to the original.

I'd love to talk about the plot, but like the old JRPG, there is no spoiler resistance at all, and any premature disclosure of information will greatly discount the player's first experience, which is the reason for the caution in this article. Even if your card is off, I very much suggest that you try to find your own way, and then go to the strategy for help in an hour or so, so as not to accidentally see other information and affect the experience. After all, it seems that it should have lived in an era without the Internet and could not withstand much spoilers, and in fact, many plot "stuck points" that passed the border were not very difficult, and the hints in the Chinese version were also very good, which could be understood by a little brain.

I feel like Zhuangzi is confused by the butterfly's dream. I hope the emperor's spring heart entrusts the "crow". Who knows which is the dream? If I want to briefly summarize the feeling of this story, I would like to compare it with the masterpiece Chrono Trigger and its sequel Chrono Cross. The balance of God, which is also about time travel, can be compared with these two masterpieces at the story level. Of course, the producer is single-handedly. The game was developed by Japanese developer KEIZO in 14 years of spare time and was completed in early 2021. Even with more than 10 years of development time as a weight, there are always many places where it is impossible to beat a production team of 100 people. Even so, the equipment and volume of the plot are completely the tonnage of a masterpiece in the old era.

The shortage of manpower also constitutes a unique novelty under the ingenious design of the producer. For example, the traditional JRPG is generally a team adventure, to create five or six major team characters, "Divine balance" does not have this spare power, therefore, although the supporting role also has a big part, but all the adventures of the main line are closely around the protagonist one person and one bird. This is in line with the preferences of the current audience, and is convenient to show the perspective of adult adventure alone, and to describe the logical core of a person facing great difficulties-unlike the Enron that everyone faces with the changes of time and space in "Chrono Trigger", "balance of God" is full of the unique loneliness that adults can understand, and those who can overcome this loneliness. The sincere bond between people.

In order not to spoil, this is the only thing we can post here. For example, the protagonist in the traditional JRPG often speaks the words of the tool man and speaks for the producer. This is not the case in "the balance of God". The protagonist only occasionally shows the idea of the main perspective in the drama. In addition, there is not a single line in the whole story. You need to rely entirely on the reactions of other characters to understand the protagonist's words-- this treatment may not be surprising in the Old Man Ring. But what if it's the same in the Legend or final Fantasy series?

This is a lot of Japanese Mini Game since the 00's, the original purpose is to save a lot of text, but in "Divine balance" comparable to the old masterpiece of high-standard plot output, this treatment not only improves the quality of the performance, but also in line with the fast pace needed by ARPG, account of the same amount of drama in the case, you can watch a bunch of protagonist's words. What is particularly important is that it enhances the effect of the protagonist "faceless", which is slightly stronger than the traditional JRPG, which greatly enhances the player's sense of substitution. In the experience of the traditional masterpiece level of the plot with this effect, but also the presentation effect is completely full, bringing a new feeling.

Different from the logic of the traditional JRPG narrative, with the help of the main perspective of "the balance of God", players can personally, delicately, and intuitively feel the changes that have taken place after the characters around them make their own choices and influence the timeline. It is not a matter of what NPC has changed, but just experienced life and death together, unforgettable, only to look back on the great melancholy that has gone with the wind. But the price, for the happiness of all who are farther away, must be worth it-which is what JRPG once fascinated, a hymn that depicts the divinity of human idealism.

In addition to the Guardian Heroes mentioned above, there are too many shadows of masterpieces in the balance of God. The more JRPG and other games you play, the more you will feel. Combined with the description of time and space and fate in the game plot to cross-understand, this thing itself is even a little bit popular today to break through the meta feeling of the dimensional wall.

For example, in a certain story, players may need to cross-dress to save lives, and Claude knows best what kind of costume to change. For example, at the end of the game story, the world is probably saved, but many people have also paid a heavy price, so, for the happy future of all, the protagonist is duty-bound to embark on the road of deja vu again-the most shocking "post-day talk" design in Galaxy Star 2, the soul is possessed at this moment! Not to mention the protagonist's hair color, wearing silver helmet, holding the appropriate sword and shield to run, a "fantasy legend" male host Crixus.

There are more small colored eggs that reflect the author's preference, for example, this one looks like Beidou Shenquan. There are also many elements in the game that are particularly saluting, retro, and knowledgeable. In addition to making people look like the hostess of the second Miss Project of the East, there are also those elements worth mentioning that constitute supporting roles, such as "the growing tale of black and white witches falling in love and killing each other", what "stray red-haired mercenaries cut off the decisive battle of fate", with a strong soundtrack of the prosperity period of the same people in the '00s, it is a dream back to the release of the new Sound Horizon disc. The picture that tells the story of the black-and-white witch girl in the game is simply the CD cover of this group.

Although it may be a coincidence, but this "six" is really too coincidental to talk about the music is even more gorgeous, in addition to almost seamless switch to the next door "wing bird", full of tribute to the theme song, the game selected a total of more than 100 BGM from free materials, peer creation and other different channels, the volume of music alone is very difficult for commercial games to do. Many of these tunes are themselves excellent track players. I also met by chance in other excellent Mini Game, and I was quite impressed. "Divine balance" also matched almost every capital with a very exquisite and appropriate performance stage. so that the expression of emotions in the game is extremely rich, full and in place.

For example, when the protagonist steps on Rain Water's door in Chapter 8, an initial song "living XXXXXX Destiny" sounded, from the name of the chapter "living proof" to the stage where the chapter is located, to the strong feelings expressed by the characters in the story, they echoed together with the lyrics, forming a very strong emotional effect, which is the familiar taste of a feast.

To use an outdated buzzword to describe it: it seems to be the "saturated" bloom of creative power.

In my opinion, "Divine balance" is an epic JRPG for a long time. When JRPG converges to a mainstream safe zone in order to survive in the commercial tide, it is like another timeline and world line, preserving all the favorite places where JRPG used to be. Just like the plot depicted in the story itself, those masterpieces that have gone far away have gathered their quintessence together, cast into swords, and cut off the forgotten fate with the help of the hand of this work.

The things that come together in this song that represent different emotions are very JRPG. The conclusion and the digression "Divine balance" are of course not perfect, as I have already mentioned, because it is basically a work developed by individuals, there are a lot of flaws and Bug in it, such as when players buy things in the store, they cannot return to a higher level after choosing props and weapons, and they need to cancel the deal and re-talk to choose. Although it is harmless, it seems awkward.

I have experienced some Bug because of my fast speed. Fortunately, I still have the old habit of archiving step by step without much loss, but from the evaluation of the player group and Steam, there are still some unlucky players who have not archived for a long time. However, these problems have been continuously updated and corrected by hardworking producers-admirably diligent, who has sharpened his sword for more than a decade, which ensures the overall excellent experience of the game.

In the game, the protagonist's hometown is called "the land of windmills", perhaps not intentionally, just because of the beautiful scenery, but after experiencing the game, I still have a magical illusion that the author KEIZO, like his protagonist, is like Don Quixote, firmly launching a fearless charge towards a goal of almost "inevitable failure".

The so-called "inevitable failure" means that from a business point of view, my reason tells me that it is impossible for "Divine balance" to sell sales such as "Old Man Ring" or "final Fantasy 7" and "Red scar: the ceremony of the Night". It is even less likely to compare with the sales of any old masterpiece, and it consumes more than ten years of spare time of the producer, and the cost is so huge that no matter how big it is, it is impossible to "get it back". But its birth is still like a barrier tearing apart time and space, telling people that JRPG is not the only thing today, and that the record of the existence of another timeline and the possibility of another should still be preserved.

I like many things about the balance of God, and in my world line, I choose to volunteer to help it-a break, a real arm, and in the final battle of the game, because the rubbing is too fierce and the person is too excited. I had a cramp in my right arm. It's too cool to keep the stamina. However, I would like to remind you, please try to use the handle, especially the vibrating handle, the keyboard is not very good.

In short, "Divine balance" has officially launched on Steam on October 13. Not limited to "Dark Soul", "Galaxy City" or any specific categories, as long as you are an ARPG or JRPG player and do not conflict with the art style, then try this book.

And thank you for making it! (the game experience code is provided by the publisher whisper Games. )

Advantages

+ the high-quality kingdo plot of the old masterpiece

+ A combat system that is too cool to stop

+ hundreds of BGM audio-visual feast

Shortcoming

The logical Generation Gap in the Design of − Old Games

Inevitable minor flaws in − 's personal production

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