Space Funeral
Space Funeral is a Japanese-styled role playing game. The game was created by Stephen "thecatamites" Gillmurphy. Since its release on September 17, 2010, the game has received critical acclaim. Personally, I didn't like it.
What is the plot? Philip is a pajama-clad boy living a surrealistic hellscape. He learns the world is dying and can only be saved by finding the City of Forms. As such, Philip goes on a quest to find it. Along the way, he is joined by Leg Horse, a horse made of severed legs.
What's the gameplay like? It's a pretty standard Japanese-styled RPG. You explore a world and run into monsters to fight. Combat is turn-based with your combat effectiveness being based on your stats and items you have equipped. Philip and Leg Horse both have unique abilities, which cost magic points (which can be replenished with certain items or resting). The one unique feature is the "Mystery" ability, which has a random effect that can be helpful or harmful.
Personally, I found the gameplay to be weak. For most of the battles, I just spammed the basic attack and won. I never ever used the mystery button once. Eventually, I began to skip a lot of the random encounters. In most games of this genre, this would mean I would be too weak to fight the bosses. In Space Funeral, I was able to take down the bosses without much of a problem.
This got worse when I got the Zorg Canon. Prior to this, I saved the special attacks for the boss battles. However, the Zorg Canon is a weapon that makes Philip's basic attack more powerful than even the special attacks. As such, I just spammed the normal attack for every battle and never used Philip's special attacks ever again. Even the final boss couldn't withstand this strategy for long.
In addition, the game is too generous with items earned from random battles. Despite the game featuring a shop in every town, most of them are useless since they are selling items that you will have in abundance thanks to the battles. Really, the first town was the only place where the store was useful since you are just starting the game.
Another issue involves the level design. The level doesn't always make it clear what is an exit and what isn't. For example, some of the open fields continuing off screen are exits while some are not. This won't be a problem if there was something distinguishing what is and isn't an exit. However, I could not find any consistent feature that indicate such.
"But wait!" I hear you cry, "The main draw of Space Funeral isn't the gameplay. It's the story and characters!" Well, the story doesn't fare much better than the gameplay does.
Our main heroes, Philip and Leg Horse, are extremely flat: Philip is constantly sad (except in the conversation with Dracula) and Leg Horse is honorable and kinda snooty. Neither of them have major character development, even when there is opportunity for it.
The actual story is bare bones. There is little plot beyond visiting one location after another before getting to the City of Forms. While this road trip-style of storytelling can work, the individual locations aren't interesting enough to support it and are pretty interchangeable. The side characters are so unmemorable that I can't really say anything about them. The main villain isn't even mentioned until the final battle against her. As such, she has to give a speech explaining her entire character, goals and history when this information should have been organically weaved throughout the narrative.
I am not fond of the humor either. It falls into the trap of mistaking randomness for funny. For a joke to work, there needs to be a proper set up and structure. Space Funeral, by contrast, throws in random absurdities with no build up. For example, a recurring character in the game is Lucy from Peanuts. However, the game never attempts to do anything her aside from randomly plopping her into the story devoid of any context.
Overall, I was disappointed with the game. I have heard nothing but praise for this game. However upon actually playing, I found to be insubstantial, even taking its short length into consideration.
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| This game sure loves its blood. |
What is the plot? Philip is a pajama-clad boy living a surrealistic hellscape. He learns the world is dying and can only be saved by finding the City of Forms. As such, Philip goes on a quest to find it. Along the way, he is joined by Leg Horse, a horse made of severed legs.
What's the gameplay like? It's a pretty standard Japanese-styled RPG. You explore a world and run into monsters to fight. Combat is turn-based with your combat effectiveness being based on your stats and items you have equipped. Philip and Leg Horse both have unique abilities, which cost magic points (which can be replenished with certain items or resting). The one unique feature is the "Mystery" ability, which has a random effect that can be helpful or harmful.
Personally, I found the gameplay to be weak. For most of the battles, I just spammed the basic attack and won. I never ever used the mystery button once. Eventually, I began to skip a lot of the random encounters. In most games of this genre, this would mean I would be too weak to fight the bosses. In Space Funeral, I was able to take down the bosses without much of a problem.
This got worse when I got the Zorg Canon. Prior to this, I saved the special attacks for the boss battles. However, the Zorg Canon is a weapon that makes Philip's basic attack more powerful than even the special attacks. As such, I just spammed the normal attack for every battle and never used Philip's special attacks ever again. Even the final boss couldn't withstand this strategy for long.
In addition, the game is too generous with items earned from random battles. Despite the game featuring a shop in every town, most of them are useless since they are selling items that you will have in abundance thanks to the battles. Really, the first town was the only place where the store was useful since you are just starting the game.
Another issue involves the level design. The level doesn't always make it clear what is an exit and what isn't. For example, some of the open fields continuing off screen are exits while some are not. This won't be a problem if there was something distinguishing what is and isn't an exit. However, I could not find any consistent feature that indicate such.
"But wait!" I hear you cry, "The main draw of Space Funeral isn't the gameplay. It's the story and characters!" Well, the story doesn't fare much better than the gameplay does.
Our main heroes, Philip and Leg Horse, are extremely flat: Philip is constantly sad (except in the conversation with Dracula) and Leg Horse is honorable and kinda snooty. Neither of them have major character development, even when there is opportunity for it.
The actual story is bare bones. There is little plot beyond visiting one location after another before getting to the City of Forms. While this road trip-style of storytelling can work, the individual locations aren't interesting enough to support it and are pretty interchangeable. The side characters are so unmemorable that I can't really say anything about them. The main villain isn't even mentioned until the final battle against her. As such, she has to give a speech explaining her entire character, goals and history when this information should have been organically weaved throughout the narrative.
I am not fond of the humor either. It falls into the trap of mistaking randomness for funny. For a joke to work, there needs to be a proper set up and structure. Space Funeral, by contrast, throws in random absurdities with no build up. For example, a recurring character in the game is Lucy from Peanuts. However, the game never attempts to do anything her aside from randomly plopping her into the story devoid of any context.
Overall, I was disappointed with the game. I have heard nothing but praise for this game. However upon actually playing, I found to be insubstantial, even taking its short length into consideration.
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