King's Island 2

I'm by no means a big RPG player. Perhaps I just don't have the patience, but computer RPGs have just never been able to keep my attention for very long. Unless it's something more original than "Thou must taketh thy longsword and slay the beastmen of Krignerak etc.," I have a hard time getting into them. Still, there have been a few RPGs over the years that caught my eye and kept me interested for more than ten minutes, largely due to their accessible gameplay and interesting stories. One such game was a Flash RPG called King's Island, which had you control a hirsute berserker across an idyllic countryside, beating the snot out of farmers and trying to locate the big bad guy as well as some pants. There was more to it than that, but not a lot, and I actually found myself engrossed in the whole thing.

Then King's Island 2 was released, and it was like the most beautiful woman in the world planting a kiss on your lips before kneeing you in the crotch.



King's Island 2 picks up where the first one left off. Our hero has stupidly jumped into a vortex that sends him through time and space to a Hell dimension, where a magician with an exposed skull named Kottom welcomes him as the Chosen One, the one who will set the prisoners of this world free. So far, so samey. But the wizard does grant you the power of a warrior mage, and that's got to be cool, right? I mean, who wouldn't want the brute strength of a melee warrior combined with the mystical knowledge of a powerful mage?

It doesn't work like that, though. It's not that you can play as warrior and mage; you really have to decide between the two classes. And speaking as someone who doesn't play a ton of RPGs, mages suck balls. Maybe that's a little harsh, but in my experience the magical characters have always been the weakest of any group, constantly sucking on mana potions so they can hopefully stay relevant. It might say more about me than I'd like to admit, but I've always preferred playing as a warrior. I'm not the type of person who stands back and attacks from afar; I enjoy getting in there with my battleaxe and splitting heads. So excuse me if I decide to forego your poxy spells.

Except I don't really have that choice. Oh, sure, I could play through the game as a warrior, if I really want to. But here's what happens if you decide to do that:



Gang raped by undead soldiers. Nice.

Aside from the occasional sword, you will find nothing for your warrior guise. No armour, no other weaponry, nothing to help build up your melée strength whatsoever. What you do find are lots of potions, clearly designed to make your mage persona as strong as possible. I call shenanigans on that bullcrap.



Anyway, Kottom sends you off on your first mission, to retrieve the Flower of Knowledge that will help him remember how he can get you home. What follows is an aimless wander around dark grey streets that all look the same, shooting blue energy orbs at monsters who seem to appear out of thin air. You have no idea where to go, walking in every direction, occasionally entering new areas where even more drab landscapes and unoriginal skeleton creatures await. One of the things that most annoyed me about the first King's Island game was the lack of a map or any other discernible way to figure out where you were going. It's a problem they haven't fixed in the sequel, but now it's even worse, because at least in King's Island 1 it was largely bright and colourful. This just looks like every other dungeon-based RPG in existence.



I literally found the flower by accident. I just happened to walk by and spotted it on the ground, right there in the first area. Can you imagine how pissed off you'd be if you travelled through numerous areas, slaying dozens of evil beings, only to come back and find the bloody thing was right there, almost at the start of the God damn game? You could easily miss the flower, as it's only just brighter than the surrounding scenery, and considering some of the weird crap you pass on your journey it would be really easy to not give it a second glance.

So I took the stupid flower back to Kottom, who then tells me I have to go find some other wizard, who'll tell me how I can start breaking the seal that keeps Kottom trapped in a pentangle. And then I upgrade to Level 2. That's right - I wandered around for fifteen minutes and killed everything in my path, but I couldn't level up until I brought this flower back to Kottom. Sure, nothing stops me from levelling up once I've gained enough experience points after that, but it's still military grade BS if ever I saw it.



Oh, and if that wasn't enough, every time you go back to an area you've previously cleared of bad guys, all of the monsters respawn in the exact same places they were last time. I can understand why you'd have creatures respawn - no one wants to have to trudge through empty room after empty room - but seriously, all of them? And every time you come back? This means that if you struggle and fight and manage to defeat a powerful enemy, something that drained you of energy, spells and mana, you'll have to fight that same enemy all over again when you next return to that area.



And you meet some real bastards in this game, really quickly. I was continuing my blind search through this giant Hell world when I bumped into not one, but two soldiers who were invincible to everything. I threw every spell and incantation I had at these assholes and they took it like I was attacking them with a fly swatter. And let me tell you, some of those spells cost a lot of mana. But that's OK, because your health and mana automatically replenish themselves over time - as long as you're standing still. I didn't really have that luxury, so what I ended up doing was running in a circle as these two pricks chased after me, using as many of the piss poor health and mana potions as I could, depleting my inventory of any worthwhile items. And even then I had to give up and retreat back to an easier area.

But at least they weren't the dark mages. Oh, let me tell you, I fired poisoned darts and fire lances at them for a grand total of one hit point! So I was left to just run around even more, trying to avoid their attacks, while all the time skeleton warriors and archers were turning me into Swiss cheese. Eventually I ran out of mana altogether and had no choice but to change into warrior mode, which went about as well as you'd expect.



For those of you interested, I did reach the other wizard on at least one occasion. After boring me to tears with what I think was an attempt on the writer's part at humour, the wise old wizard started listing about a dozen items that I had to obtain for him. At first I thought this was another joke, but no - you actually do have to find all of these things. Then, assuming you can find him again, you have to go back, at which point you'll no doubt be sent on another contrived scavenger hunt.

I guess this is why I don't play many RPGs - I'll run around to a certain extent, but don't send me halfway across the planet for a friggin' unicorn hoof, only to tell me I got the wrong one. What fun I found in King's Island has been completely squeezed out of its sequel, leaving a drawn-out, laborious affair that doesn't allow you half the customisation it promises. If you really like playing as a mage and have the patience to work your way through the confusing maze of dull grey city streets, then maybe you'll really enjoy King's Island 2. Just don't expect an invitation to my guild.

Civony

Though this week's game falls out of my usual fare, it would be wrong of me to focus solely on simple Flash and Shockwave software. There is an ever growing number of more complicated, expansive titles, bringing together networks of gamers from all over the world. Personal favourites such as Kingdom of Loathing and Forumwarz have in the past eaten up far more of my time than I'd ever like to admit. The game I'm reviewing this week, Civony, has done much the same thing, but in a totally different way.

I'd seen ads for Civony on practically every website I've logged onto in the last two weeks. Whatever company owns this game has their advertising down to a fine skill. The first thing you see is some cute chick in medieval dress telling you to come to the website and referring to you as "my lord." And then when you go to the Civony website you're met by a knight in kickass armour, swinging a broadsword through the air. Immediately appealing to the two biggest fantasies in any hardcore D&D player's life, it's no surprise people are filling up the servers.

But first, one question: what is "Civony"? I looked it up but there wasn't any such word in the dictionary. The nearest I could find was "ciphony," which is "the process of encrypting telecommunication signals, as to prevent information from being intercepted by an enemy or competitor." And I suppose that could be what they meant, except very little (in fact, to my knowledge, none) of the game involves encrypting telecommunication signals. I can only assume that the "Civ" part of the title is a reference to "civilisation," which is what you're supposed to build as you play. But "ony"? I have no idea. Maybe they meant it as a tribute to Oni, the third-person action game developed by Bungie.

Whatever, let's play. The first thing you need to do, of course, is register. Registration is quick and easy, requiring only an e-mail address. You can play as either a lord or a lady, and I of course chose the former because I'm all man. Or something.



Hold up - that guy's no bad ass medieval warrior! There's no way in hell I'm letting that avatar represent me among the online nation building community. Fortunately you can scroll through a fairly decent number of images until you find one you like.



Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about! And when you have a helmet with big ass horns sticking out of it, you can call yourself pretty much whatever the hell you want.



You also have the option of deciding where you'd like to base your city. I decided to go with Bohemia, largely out of my fondness for Queen.



This is what greets you when you begin: a largely empty town and a suggestion that you play the Routine Quest. As far as names for quests go, "Routine" doesn't exactly get my blood pumping, but I might as well get on with it since I'm not given much of a choice. The Routine Quest is designed to get players used to the game interface and also supply them with a decent chunk of resources, so folks can build up a nice little city before raising an army, marching on their neighbours, stealing their food and women, and basically getting their warlord on.



You'll get to do all of those things - eventually. But first, there's a lot of building to do. And then, once you've built everything, you have to upgrade your buildings. Oh, and this will take some time.

Cottages take about a minute to build. Ditto for the farms, sawmills, rock quarries and ironworks. That's not the problem; I can occupy myself for a minute. But then you try to upgrade your buildings and... well...



Thirty minutes to upgrade the town hall!? Why? Seriously, why? Does it take thirty minutes for the information to go to the server? I could upload four high quality Youtube videos in the time it takes for this one sprite to appear on my screen.

OK, so it takes a while for stuff to get done. That's all right, I'll just carry on and get a few more things built while I wait.



Or maybe I won't. So, if you want to upgrade a building or, God forbid, construct some walls, you better have a lot of time to spare. I ended up going to another website and playing some games while I waited. That's right - I played other games to keep myself entertained while playing Civony, which defeats the entire purpose of playing Civony in the first place!



I got all of this stuff as reward for achieving certain tasks, but most of it isn't even all that useful until you've got a good-sized town. I was quickly losing patience with the game and wasn't all that interested in any of the items, though there was at least an item that could cut down the amount of time I spent pissing around waiting for something to happen.



This area gives you all the information you need to know about your community, such as the population, your resources, and the size of the workforce. As you can see, my town is composed mainly of bums.



Civony is a lot like Sim City for the Middle Ages. And like Sim City, I'm sure it gets really interesting once your town starts to grow and expand. But you see, I never had the attention span to wait that long when I played Sim City, and I clearly still don't. The least Civony could do is let us release a monster or a natural disaster to make things fun.

Agyta

I was having some trouble finding a game crap enough to get reviewed here. No matter what I played I found myself enjoying it to at least some degree. Fortunately, I remembered a little RPG I'd played a few weeks ago called Agyta, and I breathed a sigh of relief this evening to find it was still as crap as when I first played it.

Agyta is a Legend of Zelda clone, except instead of playing an elfin warrior trying to rescue a princess, you play a delivery boy named Limith.

No, really.



Limith has been working as a delivery boy for two years, and I'll cut him some slack for that only because he's 17, but God damn, kid, what are you gonna do with your life?



I'm much more interested in hearing the story of Limith's boss, who sends our hero on a delivery to Agyta, a new planet. I'd like to know how this man with no discernible facial features (hell, no discernible face) managed to make a success of his life, to the point that he's the manager of a successful interplanetary delivery company.



We start out in the town of Agyta. Wait, I thought the planet was called Agyta? So is the town named after the planet, or the planet named after the town? And why do I care?



At least the local townsfolk were nice enough to point you in the right direction and leave you to travel alone on an alien planet. So Limith walks through the forest (though only in straight lines - apparently the ability to walk diagonally was lost on the young man) only to find that his path is blocked by a forcefield!



I'd like to know why I wasn't made aware of this before walking halfway up a God damn mountain? I mean, the locals knew I was going this way, surely they could have let me know? So now I have to walk all the way back down to the village to find out how the hell I'm supposed to get further.



The only person with an access key is Hans. And Hans conveniently lost the key. So now I have to look for the key.

Are we having fun yet?

By the way, this key is almost impossible to find, because nowhere on the map is there anything that remotely resembles a key, and none of the NPCs have any information whatsoever regarding the location of the key. You want to know how I found the key? I consulted a walkthrough. Yeah, that's right - I cheated. By the way, this is the first puzzle.



You never see a key. You never even realise it's there until you walk over to the portal and the message tells you that you found the key. I should have stopped playing right then and there. But I'm a glutton for punishment.



Going into the mountains provides you with your first taste of combat, which is turn-based of course. Thing is, the enemies are all hard as nails. This wolf took forever to kill. And this is the first monster! They only get harder after this!



I mean, look at this fucking thing! It's huge! I tried taking it out with my Fury attack, which is bullshit really, since I lose just as much damage as the monster. And in all honesty, the rewards for killing these beasts aren't much at all.



Of course, no RPG is complete without a maze of caves and tunnels. I must admit, I like the smoke effect, though I have absolutely no idea what purpose it serves other than to obscure the player's vision.



What the fuck is that!? Oh, so now the developer remembers that we're on an alien planet. I'd like to know what kind of advanced culture can create portals that allow for interplanetary travel in the blink of an eye, but haven't any weapons more advanced than a fucking broadsword. Where are my laser guns, damn it!?



I ended up in a room with four round stone buttons and another forcefield. I can only assume the idea is to press the right buttons down to deactivate the forcefield, but by this time I no longer cared. And when you reach that point, you know the game must suck.

I would suggest you play Agyta if you really love poor Zelda clones. Better yet, just play a Zelda game. I'm pretty sure you can find one in your local video game store. They're kind of popular. Agyta, on the other hand, deserves to be forgotten quickly.