Review: Doom & Destiny

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 Two Fedoras and Armless Octopus IGSU Review of Doom & Destiny

The story driven RPG genre has always been in short supply on the XBLIG. And it’s really no wonder why that’s the case when you look at games like Breath of Death and Cthulhu Saves the World, there’s an awful lot of development work that goes into them. Not to mention you’ve got to compete against those great Zeboyd games for mind share which is no small feat. Enter Doom & Destiny, a JRPG loaded with satire, parody, and nerds, but can its seemingly identical formula succeed?

Gameplay

What can I say, it’s a JRPG built on the RPG Maker framework. If you’ve ever played any of the original style JRPG’s you know exactly what you’re doing in this game. In fact, you’re probably so damn familiar with it you’re already rummaging through peoples clocks and underpants drawers for “magic elixirs” as we speak.

 

On the other hand, there are also a few advances worth mentioning. First and foremost, there is the ability to save any time you like, which is a priceless modernization. Also, during the traditional turn based combat system the first thing you’ll probably notice is the time line at the top of the screen. While Doom & Destiny may not have invented this, it was incredibly useful during many of the more important battles of the game where timing heals and item usages were essential. Another bit of delightful modernization found within the games combat is the use of partial experience. As a battle progresses, sometimes poor Nigel, the wizard of course, has to take a dirt nap because he’s got crap stamina. In an old fashioned JRPG this would mean no experience for poor Nigel, but in Doom & Destiny, as long as you complete the encounter you’ll receive experience based on the percentage of turns each character was alive for. This was a nice way of maintaining the punishment of death without the draconian stunting of one of your warriors growth.

You’ll also be delighted to know that there is a certain degree of depth involved with the games tactics. If you’re not the kind of person that loves the tactical approach, don’t worry they are pretty straightforward and since actual Japanese people didn’t make it they aren’t obfuscated behind layers of attempted profound symbolism. You will simply have to select a leader that will grant special bonuses to certain stats based on the positioning of each of your team members in specific slots. It is quite a nice and elegant system that adds just the right amount of tactical flare to the game.

Also of note are the games handful of puzzles. Initially they’re fairly bland, push crates and flip switches type of things, but as you approach the end however, you find yourself stuck in an elaborate mansion filled with tremendous amounts of decorative objects. Now I don’t want to actually spoil anything so I’ll just say something is a bit off kilter that may need straightened up a bit, or something a bit too straight that may need off kiltered. On the down side of things, stuff like this tends to make you crazy paranoid that every object in the game has a purpose. And to the developer who asked me how I spent twenty hours in his game, this sir, is how.

Yes there are levels, yes you can allocate skill points, you can even buy spells, I’m serious here guys it’s pretty damn true to the JRPG format. So all that said it works fine, it’s a tried and true model followed and executed well, but you know as well as I do it’s all about the story with these kinds of games.

Story

At the heart of all good role-playing games is a good story. Rather than regurgitate some unreasonable facsimile of the story, I’m going to go ahead and block quote in the developers own words here to give you a spoiler free rundown of the plot before I begin to discuss my impressions.

Doom & Destiny is a conventional Japanese style RPG with an unconventional mood. It tells the adventures of four nerdy friends trapped in a fantasy realm populated by cliché, strange characters and weirder villains. Mistaken for heroes they will take a long journey through dangers and mysteries to reveal the evil plot of Unnamed and his shady lieutenant. Will our heroes be able to find their way home without losing themselves in laughs and bad jokes?

Fight alongside Johnny, Nigel, Mike and Francis in many different locations from lava-filled dungeons to icy peaks : the new battle system encourages new game strategies giving the player the possibility to choose the party leader and simple battle tactics. Cast powerful fireballs with Nigel, quickly backstab unaware enemies with Francis, summon powerful Noodle Gods to heal your friends with Mike or slash your opponent to pieces with Johnny’s powerful sword. The fate of Destiny’s empire is in your hands.

Now that you’ve got the idea, I can go ahead by saying that I found myself falling routinely in and out of love with the game’s story telling. The main contributing factor to this seemed to be the pace. No not the pace of the story, the pace of the humor and comedy. The game would go through undulations of seemingly traditional story telling and all out unrelenting parody. The end result was periods where it was just groan after groan of cringe inducing puns and times where you are whisked away to the whimsical lands of your youthful RPG adventures. The puns were genuinely amusing, and the humor provoked considerable laughter, I think it just could have benefited from a little softer touch from time to time. Despite the occasional moans and groans, the story was pretty entertaining. The humor hit more often than it missed and it all averaged out to a positive experience worthy of carrying the game.

Audio/Visual

According to BenjaminFicus and HeartBit, Doom & Destiny is the first game to ever have consent from RPG Maker to commercially use the RPG Maker assets in their game. What that means is the game has an incredibly high quality set of tiles and sprites to pull from. That said, the hard work wasn’t done for them, all the maps still had to be created and populated, the dynamic lighting engine had to be created, and the whole RPG Maker stuffs had to be ported into the XNA environment. But the result was that the team was able to spend all their energy on the design of the maps and populating them with absolutely tons of wonderful and amazing assets that added immeasurable amounts of character to the environments. And not to belittle the accomplishments of Zeboyd’s amazing games, but in terms of visuals Doom & Destiny professionally created assets absolutely blows their offerings out of the water.

I was mowing the lawn last night, you know after dark, dodging random encounters, when all of a sudden I realized I was straight up whistling the world map theme from Doom & Destiny. I guess up to that point I hadn’t spent a terribly extensive amount of time thinking about how good or bad the music was in the game. I guess at the very least I can say it is catchy. It really is quite good, it has a production quality that matches the games visuals precisely. There is however one auditory annoyance that I believe should be mentioned. The burp sound when a player consumes a beverage or food during combat. Seriously, guys it was funny once, not funny 120 times in a single battle. Stop the madness, patch in anti-burp code!

Summary

Doom & Destiny is a pretty great offering. It’s my favorite game from the IGSU to date and will probably be a contender for best in breed. You’ll should manage to get between ten and twenty hours of play time out of the game, though I have been told I’m a slow ass motha fucka, so your mileage will likely lean towards the ten hour side of that spectrum. The story has its ups and downs, but is worth hanging int here for, and the actual gameplay is quite top notch in the genre. So go forth, don your D&D LARP gear, and toss these dudes your 240 Microsoft Gold Points.