Knights of Tartarus

Review

After several hundred years, the great monster Baphomet has captured enough souls to open the gates of the underworld called Tartarus. Baphomet will release the four knights, each one feared by even the powerful monsters of the underworld. Baphomet knows that the end of mankind is here.

You play as [Insert Name Here] and are given the choice of two different classes, either warrior (sword) or mage (staff). After choosing which class you’d like to play with, the game begins with you in a forest; leaves falling from the trees with pink flowers and mushrooms spread around.  As you walk through the forest, you start talking to yourself (you might be a sandwich short of a picnic).  You’re saying, “I could have saved them, if only I was stronger,” when all of a sudden you split into two of you. The other you says to you that they’ve had enough of your moping around and that he will call himself Rival, letting you know that you can stay in the forest moping around if you want to, but that he will not, as the people need him. He then wants to test his strength against you in battle, after which he leaves in search of Baphomet. You carry on through the forest after receiving some help and reach Sage Town.

In Sage Town you’ll find your first save point; you can’t save anywhere else in the game other than these points dotted around the world, so best to do so when you come across one. Once in Sage Town, you visit the king, who’s heard about everything and worries about his people. He explains that he knew this time would come, and that he is powerless to stop it.  After leaving the king, you continue north as you set off on your adventure to put a stop to Baphomet and his Four Knights from destroying mankind.

You start with nothing at all, but as you fight your way around defeating monsters, you’ll gain experience points which will help level you up.  Early on you’ll get a decent amount of EP for low level monsters, but as you become stronger you’ll get fewer EP for defeating the same monsters. Once you do level up you’ll also replenish your health and mana, which is necessary, as you are unable to buy any potions etc to replenish any health lost in the early stages. Upon defeating a monster, it will sometimes come back to give you something, such as gold, or spells for you to learn if you choose too.

As you explore, you’ll come across some chests which contain something which you can make use of.  There will also be puzzles which you’ll have to solve in order to move on. You might not be able to move to another area until you have done or found everything, so make sure to check everywhere.

As with the usual RPG games, you’ll have the in-game details of your character: Stats, Items, Equipment, Skills and Spells, and they’re straight forward. There are four different types of skills which you can choose to upgrade your character:  Fighter, Saint, Sentry and Rogue, each with five levels you can unlock as you earn skill points through the game.

Choosing the fighter skill first will give you a combo-type attack instead of just the one hit. To do this, when you choose the option to attack and it’s your turn, you’ll have to button-bash the attack button to get as many hits in as possible.  But don’t take too long, as the attack only lasts for a few seconds, and if you hang about you may miss your attack all together!  I would, however, suggest getting this one first.  As for spells, you’ll learn them from defeated monsters.  I haven’t come across them anywhere else just yet; I think you can only have three spells at once.

On the main menu screen there’s Continue, New Game and Options.  The options consist of Music and SFX volume, Fullscreen, Window Size (no resolution, but a slider to size the window you’d like), Text Speed, Battle Animations On/Off and Language. You can use a game pad to play the game, but it seems only if you can use the D-Pad for movement, which isn’t really a problem. I’d like to be able to have at least a couple of profile saves in case one messes up, so that I have a back-up after losing a profile which doesn’t load up.  I had to restart the game when this happened.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!