Cthulhu Saves the World (2010)

Cthulhu Saves the World: Super Hyper Enhanced Championship Edition Alpha Diamond DX Plus Alpha FES HD - Premium Enhanced Game of the Year Collector's Edition. I got this for .99 on steam a while back with breath of death thrown in with it.

that title alone was immediately my cue to pick up this JRPG (JOKE rpg??? is a new genre forming?) I loved Charles Barkley and figured this would be similiar, it is in some ways. But maybe not as witty as Barkley, Shut up and Jam Gaiden...

This plays as a more traditional JRPG. (Where have I seen those 'victory' screens before? Is that RPG Maker or something else?) The battles in it are not like Barkley, which are skill-timing moves, It's more traditional like phantasy star or Data Hacker series but I thought it was a lot better than Data Hacker (Combat in DH is kind of weird, this is more straight forward, though the insanity element is a fun twist that is a bit similiar!) The battles are pretty decent, and you can go through a battle rather fast which is perhaps what I like the most about CStW. you can blitz through battles as enemies are not overly complicated and such. Each area has say 6-8 kinds of enemies, generally they are not too hard and its more about managing your attacks and allocating damage distro vs their health. This makes the battles very fast paced, you can grind real quick in this. Which speaking of speed, brings another feature worthy of mentioning, since you are the magical Cthulhu you can choose to summon monsters (random encounters) to fight right on the spot at any time using a menu command! so you can grind real fast. Also every dungeon area will stop force- feeding you random encounters after 30-60 or so battles, so if you want to keep grinding an area you have to use this summon command. I have to say, this is a really NICE way to go about business in a dungeon where every battle throws off your sense of direction (I have a short term memory) You can even camp in a dungeon at HP/MP recharging circles and grind next to them (cheating)

I was actually pretty impressed with difficulty and scaling and balance. I have certainly played games that weren't all there but this game felt right, (at least on normal difficulty)

The cutscenes are reminiscent of Phantasy Star series of RPGs. Funny NPC characters, and quite a few to pick from. The sprites are so-so, the writing so-so (the cutscenes like to end on a very abrupt note that comically mocks the contrivedness of the genre) I like this game as it is fairly easy to play through, and it's very clear where you have to go, what to do next. The Overworld is somewhat linear type pathing as a new area opens when you complete the old so you don't get lost really, and there is even a command that tells you what you need to do next. Cthulhu comes with some pretty cool commands that are great fun... I wish beating the game would unlock other commands like this as 'jokes' on a second play through.

One nice thing is you can tweak your NPC characters. as you level up you have ability gains and stat gains you pick from: just like at the eye doctor 'option A, or option B?' type spell picking. Sometimes you can mix it up between stat increases or spells, and there is actually quite a bit of freedom to play with your party based on who you like and how you want to use them (ROLE-playing, though this is by no means as diverse and specific as FF-job type system it works perfectly for the way the game plays, which is not terribly complicated) Sometimes there are special abilities too that you can opt for Such as cast a spell on self to deal 200% damage. (This actually is a bit tempting to get me to play the game again, because there were a lot of things you could do with your party to make combat interesting) You can also have special team moves depending on who is in your party, and what the party turn order/sequence is, so there is quite a bit within the combat. and the game had some creative features, including an alternate 'plot' line, and a few other bonus modes after you finish it. The music feels authentic and 16bit type score, Cthulhu's theme (the title) is a heroic melody.

All in all CStW is a Joke-RPG that is no masterpiece but turned out to be better than I expected, and more than holds it's own compared to other JRPGs. Not much time was spent on the general plot (that's the joke?) but the combat was pretty solid and the references to HP Lovecraft are nicely done semi-well researched and sometimes subtle, sometimes cheesy, often comical. For a game that cost me less than a dollar it was an absolute steal. Very well done.

Party I played with:

Cthulhu (Built him as a mage)

Umi (healer/mage) (switched her out for Ember)

Ember (Fighter)

October (combat mage... switched her out quickly for Paws)

Paws (feels like a ranger... somewhat diverse how you want to build him, i used him as a ranged attacker and healer)

Dacre (Healer Mage, this guy is great support, replaced Paws with him, because he's a btter healer that both umi and paws combined)

Sharpe (cleric? Knight? very powerful attacks with good magic. 'Red mage' kept the whole time.)

[Cthulhu, ember, dacre, sharpe]

To Do/incomplete extras:

-Have no tried Cthulhu's Angels (second quest)

-Have not played Highlander (solo character party, 4x XP rate)

-Have not played Overkill (start at lvl 40)

-Have not collected Bromides (collectible in game cards/artwork of NPCs and main characters)

-Have not played with 'director's commentary'

-Not tried Hard

-Not tried insane