Reviews for Arzea

[jbgray]

Very fun game. It exploits two very powerful aspects of human psychology: love of collecting and flow. The controls are awkward for about five minutes, then you find yourself forgetting about them and losing hours of your life as you explore the game. There's also the gratifying moment where you realise that your character is actually way, way better than when you started: jumping much higher, hitting much harder, charging faster.

I'll admit, it reminds me a LOT of Level Up!--a good thing, because it's one of my favourite games and I recommend it to anyone who liked this. There's also something you could take from the comparison: neutral NPCs. I'd say that's the main thing you could do to add depth to the world of Arzea; the only one I can think of is the cat, who is impossible to interact with.

You might want to take a look at the medals. I earned all the in-game achievements, including the Completionist one, but am missing six medals, the five you get from collecting fragments, keys and orbs, and the 100% completion one. Several other people have mentioned this, so it's not just something weird about my setup.

Because I'm very sad and it took FOREVER for me to find a couple of the items, I managed to level up to level 100 and was hoping for something special. I suppose the character was virtually a minor deity at that point, but I still hoped there'd be a little something extra at that point! That's not so much a criticism as a compliment to how long this game can capture someone's attention. :)

[Graveland]

Great games, but medals don't works. Got only 2 instead of 8.

[Ulrond]

Medals don't work, and both endings are kinda... meh. Otherwise, awesome game!

[Mattthatguy]

BRINGS BACK FOND MEMORIES OF THE BEST OF MY CHILDHOOD, SIMPLISTIC WITH A PUZZLE AND A REALLY BAD MAP, LOVE IT

[RickyTheFish]

It was fun to play, for sure... a bit easy, though. I only died twice, and both times the death was caused by lava. One of those deaths was intentional, too; I wanted to see if lava was an instant kill, so I deliberately jumped into some. Because the map is rather expansive, it would have been nice to have a more helpful map display; the in-game map was only marginally helpful, especially after beating the game and having large portions of it wiped out. I have to wonder if a level cap exists, though; I am currently at level 104, and I am still able to earn EXP and level up. My spells charge almost instantly and do severe damage; the final boss is a pushover with spell #6 (I forget what it's called). The water spell is my favourite, though... excellent crowd control, even if it's unpredictable.

One thing I liked was giving the player the ability to gain new skills as he leveled up, even if those skills aren't made immediately apparent. What I'm referring to is the ability to kill the boxes and the enemies that are sort of circular and shoot out tons of bullets. At first, the boxes are unkillable, and the circular enemies can only be killed by one specific element as indicated by their colour. But, at some point, the boxes become vulnerable and can be killed, and the circular enemies can be killed by any spell. It was definitely helpful adding those abilities into the game, as it made trekking from one end of the map and back searching for powerups and fragments much easier.

Overall, a pretty fun game, even if the story is a bit lacking.