I ended up playing about an hour and a quarter of The Alliance Alive, because a lot was happening at the hour mark.
Story: 1000 years ago, daemons took over the world. The game world, not the real world, though you might be forgiven for being confused. As a result, the sky has been purple ever since. The main character is Galil, an adventurer, and he has a childhood friend named Azura who is convinced that the sky used to be blue. When they hear of a forbidden exhibit at a museum with a painting of the blue sky, Azura is determined to sneak in and see it one way or another.
And they did see it… for all of 10 seconds. I had to spend a lot of time turning statues and playing with lights and shadows to get that far. If The Alliance Alive is going to be that puzzle-heavy, I’ll play with a FAQ in hand to skip all the hassle. And I will quit if it gets too tedious.
But anyway, I did all that and Galil and Azura saw the very nice painting. But then they got caught by a powerful daemon. At the end of an unwinnable battle, Azura lost her eyesight and her mother’s memento sword. Galil lost nothing, which is good because he wasn’t to blame here. To be honest, Azura totally deserved that and I’m not enthused about spending the rest of the game helping her recover. I’m sick of games with pushy characters who force others to do dumb/illegal/dangerous stunts and then walk away without a scratch. This time Azura got a just punishment for her recklessness, and the schadenfreude is so delicious that I want to pretend the game ended here.
Combat, graphics, music, etc: The overworld music is horrible. It’s just noisy crackling. Unless it’s deliberate and things will change as the world is liberated from the daemons. The graphics are nothing special, I already mentioned that I’m not crazy about the noseless footless character designs because they remind me of games I don’t like.
Combat is fun, in the usual Saga-inspired kind of way. Instead of EXP and level ups, you get random stat boosts and awaken new skills as you fight. The harder the enemy, the more likely you are to get boosts and skills, which encourages you to constantly seek out strongest foes. I wouldn’t mind fighting those super-strong water devils and forest spiders right now, once I figure out a way to escape successfully.
Will I keep playing The Alliance Alive? I don’t see why not. It’s not mind-blowing or anything, but it’s very solid so far. I liked roaming around the museum checking out the funny paintings, I like the random stat-earning system (it’s like gacha before there was gacha), I liked watching Azura get her just desserts. It also seems fairly short – I have no evidence of this, but it just feels short – so I hope to be done so. And if I get tired, I’ll just drop it.
Play order of games based on One Hour reviews
If you recall, the point of the One Hour Review system was to grab a bunch of games, try them all out and then play them in order of quality and enjoyability. With the completion of The Alliance Alive, I’ve played all the games from the first batch, minus The Lost Child, which doesn’t work on the PSTV, and Final Fantasy XIII, which I have already played several hours of before and am not prepared to touch again right now.
The order of games I’ll play will be Tokyo Xanadu eX+ → The Alliance Alive → Atelier Lulua → Sword Art Online Hollow Fragment → [lots of other things] → Atelier Lydie & Scumbag. To be honest I don’t feel very strongly about any of these games, so I’m not committed to finishing them. I’ll just give them all a proper chance in turn and if finishing happens, fine. If not, fine. Then we’ll start afresh with another batch. Let’s see how it works out.
