by There’s a difference between a game that is needed to satisfy an idea, and an idea that is made to satisfy the need for a game. Deadly Sin 2, is the latter.
It’s always a bit hard to critique a RPG Maker game. My gut impulse is to reject the game as being a recycled collection of frankensprites, visual effects and coded plugins scavenged from the deepest ends of the internet. This opinion is not entirely non-subjective either, as many poorly made RPG Maker games that I’ve played fit this bill. In the spirit of fairness however, I always try to remind myself that reused assets and codes should not stop me from discovering a game that might really enjoy. Even with this mindset I can say that Deadly Sin 2 isn’t worth playing.
You can forgive a lot from an indie game, but there has to something–some spark or unique shine–that makes pushing past the game’s roughness worth it. The problem is that Deadly Sin 2 just doesn’t have anything like that. The opening is generic, the party members are super generic, quests are generic, story is unbearably generic–on top of being made up of a mishmash of sprites and tilesets. Now, I do feel a tad bad saying this because there are some parts of the game that are worth pointing out as being moderately decent. For instance:
All your characters in combat are animated with some pretty sweet pixel-work. They ready their weapons and attack, or do a special animation for their skills or magic. It’s tight, looks nice and flows really well–and is completely unique to this game. The combat is a little more advanced than your typical take-turn combat as well, with the addition of a threat mechanic which influnces who an enemy will attack. I also appreciate the way that you can increase character’s skills through the use of skill points that you find throughout the world. It’s nice to have customization over your characters and reading up on the skills is fun.
These things alone though aren’t strong enough to create anything worth trying. The Threat mechanic is nice but isn’t that profound. The animations are nice, but since the combat is weak, they’re just something flashy and distracting instead of being the icing on the cake. Combat feels imbalanced in more ways than just the stats themselves (although that is part of the issue)–the pacing feels wrong. Having access to all the skills right off the bat leaves little to work towards. Enemies feel random and aren’t really introduced in a way that allows the player to understand the world that they exist in–the monsters don’t tell a story or fit in, they’re just “there.” Treasure is littered everywhere, making its discovery a chore instead of something exciting. Seriously; after the game’s introduction, I played about 10 minutes and found this…
This…
And this…
And that’s not even all of them. When there’s treasure everywhere, it’s stops being treasure and just becomes junk. Add to this that I’m not being facetious when I say that everything about the world, story and characters are so uninspiring. The mage in the party refers to enemies as “scrubs.” “Scrub” is a word that was invented by the online gaming community somewhat recently to refer to someone is is of a “lower tier” than them. A “scrub” is someone of such a lower skill level than you, that they aren’t worth your time. To hear one of my party members uses this word breaks all immersion of what I assume is supposed to be a high fantasy world. Add to this that the two “main character’s” introductions both generically involve their sweethearts, both look like generic warriors, both have no personality whatsoever, the hero’s castle at the beginning is burned down, there’s some vague and super boring political “intrigue” involving invading kingdoms and political tension that after a short-while I was ready to quietly pack this one away for good. I wasn’t really insulted by this one, but it still belongs in Tier 3, since I would never recommend it to anyone.
