The life of a fantasy RPG hero is
hard work. Forget having to fight horrific beasts and save the world from
megalomaniacal wizards, and just consider the fact that they travel to every
single location on their planet – usually on foot, no less. It’s a wonder
they’ve even got the energy to save the world, given that they’ve just hoofed it
across three continents! Wouldn’t it be simpler if a hero could quest through
forests, mountains, caves, and dungeons, all without even having to leave their
home town? Adventures to Go! gives us just that: an RPG where every quest is
custom built to your specifications.
Hard economic times have hit the
kingdom, but 16-year old Finn Courtland has come up with a foolproof plan for
making some quick cash. See, there’s a training facility in his hometown called
Adventures To Go – for a fee, wizards will summon tracts of land filled with
monsters, so would-be heroes can get some hands-on experience before setting out
on a real-world quest. But Finn figures, why not just run through adventure
simulations and sell the spoils for a profit?
While it seems like a no-brainer,
apparently Finn is the first person to consider exploiting Adventures To Go for
easy money.
Ok, so it’s not the deepest or most
original plot you’ve ever seen in an RPG (Spoiler Alert: eventually it’s up to
Finn to save the kingdom from an all-powerful evil force!), but at least it’s
pretty funny. Most of the humor comes from the side-characters you encounter,
like the aging frat guy running the armor shop (who at one point declares his
armor “worth droppin’ some skrilla on”) or Finn’s sister, who runs him out of
the house every morning with incessant nagging. Other jokes come from the
characters’ no-nonsense attitude toward RPG genre clichés – instead of silently
listening to a kind old woman NPC prattle on about her son, Finn tells her to
shut up because she’s boring him.
Going on an adventure is pretty
straightforward. After stopping by the Guild Office to pick up new jobs and
requests, Finn and his party head over to Adventures To Go, which is set up like
the fantasy version of a mall. Weapons, armor, magic, and item shops are lined
up in a strip, so restocking your inventory and getting your hands on the latest
equipment is a snap.
Getting your hands on new gear has rarely
been so easy in an RPG before.
From there, you’ll go to the
Information Kiosk, where you can place your order for a custom-made quest. Here
you’ll pick what kind of landscape you’ll be exploring (forest, plains, and so
on), what kind of monsters will inhabit it, and whether or not you’ll finish the
adventure by conquering an underground labyrinth. You can add an unknown element
to your quest if you use an Event Ticket, which could do anything from advance
the storyline to generate an uber-powerful boss creature. Once you’ve worked
your way through the day’s adventure, you’ll earn a completion bonus if you
survived, then its back to the Guild to cash in any quest-solving items you
found.
The actual adventuring part of the
game consists of exploring each area and fighting monsters. Exploring’s pretty
simple, at least a first when you’re stuck with mostly wide-open locales like
badlands and plains, though as the game goes on you acquire new, more difficult
terrain types. The only thing you’re really looking for is the area’s exit, but
along the way you’ll encounter black monoliths, which could have positive (free
money!) or negative (severe damage!) effects. Each area is generated randomly
every time you adventure, so even if you’ve run through the forest area before,
you never know what you’ll find the next time.
Battles occur randomly, but they
aren’t your standard RPG fights. Instead, combat play out like miniature
turn-based strategy encounters. When you come upon enemies, a 6×6 grid is
highlighted around your party and the enemy. Speed determines who acts first,
and units take turns moving around the grid and attacking. To take combat
actions you’ll spend a character’s AP, or action points; a character’s turn
isn’t over as long as they have AP left. Every in-battle action has a different
point cost, and while some actions (moving, attacking, and using items) are
relatively straightforward, there are a few unique options at your command.
Choosing Defend will end your turn immediately and give a defensive bonus until
your next turn, whereas choosing Ambush will see your character prepare their
weapon – should an enemy unit cross their path before the next turn you’ll
attack, dealing higher damage and depleting the enemy’s AP.
Unspent AP rolls over to the next turn, so
conserving AP is usually a sound strategy.
The battles are fast and the
exploration is exciting, so at first the game’s a lot of fun. Story events come
rapid-fire for the first three hours or so, and do a good job of drawing you in
to the world and its characters. Unfortunately, it’s after this initial period
that the game’s flaws start becoming apparent. For starters, while dungeon areas
are randomized, they’re still far too similar from one time to the next. After
you’ve explored a terrain a handful of times you’ll become familiar with
everything it has to show you.
Combat, too, starts to get a
repetitive feel after the first few hours – which isn’t helped by the fact that
there’s very little to differentiate your party’s characters. Sure, some can use
magic and others use long-range weapons (read: bows), but melee characters have
no unique attacks or special moves. After a while, combat becomes a matter of
surrounding the enemies in turn while wailing on them with standard attacks,
while your mages rain magic down from a distance. Speaking of the game’s magic
system, it’s overly complex (you combine crystal shards to create different
spells, which must then be equipped before being usable) and poorly explained
in-game, creating too much guesswork for the player.
I really enjoyed Adventures To Go!
when I began – the tactical fights are quick and fun and the game’s got a
lighthearted vibe that was refreshing. But it soon became obvious that this is a
game designed for quick bursts of play, not multi-hour sessions. Its unique
combination of RPG exploration and strategic combat is definitely worth a try,
but at the end of the day it’s a better game in concept than it is in execution.
Gameplay: 6.8
ATG makes a great first impression: combat is quick and strategic, and dungeon
exploration is randomized so each excursion is fun and exciting. Once you’ve put
a few hours into the game, though, you’ll realize you’re doing pretty much the
same things over and over again. It’s fun in short bursts, but feels lacking
over long periods of time.
Graphics: 7.2
The 2D character art that accompanies conversations is nice, and the in-game 3D
isn’t bad either, though it’s not going to knock your socks off. Environments
suffer from repetition, though – if you’ve seen one forest area, you’ve seen
them all.
Sound: 6.9
The music is upbeat and energetic, but not particularly exciting or memorable.
Sound effects serve their purpose without standing out, and there’s no voice
acting to speak of, unless you count grunts of pain when you get hit in combat.
Difficulty: Easy
Enemies aren’t particularly smart in combat, so it’s easy to out-maneuver them
on the battlefield. Sometimes as part of an event you’ll encounter a nasty boss
significantly stronger than you are, but since there’s little to no penalty for
failure (you just go back to town, and can try again the next day) you can
always grind for experience then try again.
Concept: 8.5
ATG has such a great concept that it initially feels like a much better game
than it really is. The ability to custom craft a fantasy world to explore is
liberating and fun, and does give you a good amount of freedom as to how you
approach completing each quest. The funny, self-referential story is a nice
touch, too.
Overall: 7.1
Adventures To Go! is a great idea brought down by a sloppy execution. With a
little tweaking (better pacing, better explanations for in-game mechanics, more
randomization and changes from one adventure to the next) a sequel could
definitely be a must-play. As it stands, though, it’s just a quirky diversion
between more substantial RPG fare.
