Avalon Code

Interesting game. Alternates between fun and frustrating at the drop of a hat, though. I love the premise, wherein the world is going to end soon, and you are given the Book of prophecy to record in its pages all that you deem fit to pass on to the New World. Most of the game is spent finding the four spirits of the book that are required to draw upon its full power, but obviously there’s other stuff going on too.

The most inventive thing about the game is the Code Scan ability, wherein you can scan items, monsters, people, etc. And move the various “codes” that define those nouns into others. So you can, say, steal the fire from a monster, the Justice from a soldier, etc. And move it into other people, or your own equipment. While this is a really neat idea, it can take forever t find the right code you need. Luckily, it doesn’t need to have the exact code to power up/change an item, but even so.

The battle in the game is in an action-adventure format, wherein you get to actually move around the screen and whack the enemies with one of four types of weapons - swords, hammers, bombs, and projectiles. Obviously some enemies are weak against certain weapons more than others, but this will rarely come up except in boss battles. And good LORD are boss battles hard. This game actually gives you very limited HP - you start with three HP, and by the end of the game, I had sixteen. oh, and did I mention when you die in a battle - which you will, a lot - you’re revived with only half your full HP? And little MP with which to heal? Yeah, some of those fights are so fucking annoying.

As for side stuff, there’s certainly a couple of mini-games (most of which I hate), and there are side quests you can do for individual townspeople to increase your standing with them and get new item/weapon recipes. So there’s plenty to keep you distracted.

Not sure what else to mention - graphics are similar to FFIVDS, music’s nothing memorable but it does the job, and I know I wasted mroe time playing this game than my schedule allows. So if you want to give it a try, I recommend it.

Yes.

I thought it was terrible. Completely lacking in any enjoyment or entertainment. It had one or two good ideas, but no clue what to do with them. After about fifteen hours I gave up and went on to better things.

Yeah, it definitely could have been better. But I’m a sucker for a neat hook. And a game where you are the Herald of the End of the World? Totally grabs me in.

My opinion on the game generally leans towards Cid’s point of view. Granted, it has a very good premise, but outside of that, there’s not a lot to it. The overall concept is pretty neat, but the interface almost ruins it. I mean, just being limited to moving 4 codes around at time? Ridiculous. Also, I fucking hate the slider puzzles. Somehow scratched up my screen protectors trying to get those things right.

But despite the bad things I say about it, I did actually beat the game, despite putting it off a couple of months. And the boss battles can be pretty insane. I almost gave up at one boss because it was weak to bombs/explosives, and I had practically no recipes for any good bombs. It takes a while to kill a boss that has lots of HP, when you’re doing crappy damage with what it’s weak against.

Also not a fan of having enemies being able to skewer you in a few hits. Definitely not fun when later enemies can hit up to 3 HP at a time. And I have the same complaint about dying.