Dragon Fantasy: The Black Tome of Ice

From what I have played, this game is a fun version of Chrono Trigger. And I would recommend it normally if you like this style. But it will get a thumbs down for a massive, massive reason. I went the wrong way in the game, and the way this was programmed it is impossible to go back. Worst of all, because I when the wrong way without having the right (or any) people in my party, the game locks on a specific scene. So yea....because of crap programming, I get to start all again. I would be forgiving if it was my error that caused it...but to allow me to go to an area I shouldn't be able to get into, and then trap me in that area by placing someone to block my way back...and then having no way out of not getting locked....that one is on Muteki. So sorry..no sympathy. Enjoy you thumbs down for not play testing this.

I really wanted to like this, because even though it was an absolute failure of a parody, the previous installment was at least a solid game. This one started off alright with Ogden picking up where he left off last time. "Hey, they're trying to be Chrono Trigger in this one; that's cool, I guess... I mean, combat is slow and dull, and the enemies are damage sponges, but that should work out once I have more party members, right?" For a while, the only party members you can get are monsters, whose stats are so low and equipment so chintzy that they're almost completely useless; the ones that can heal are at least decent at that. Once you get human party members, you have a fairly competent group, but it's still SUPER grindy, which would be fine, but the game's not built very well for long grinding sessions. The writing is worse than ever, too; aside from hackey video game references with no real context to make them work - THEY MADE THE MASTER OF UNLOCKING JOKE AGAIN HA HA HA HA HA THAT NEVER GETS OLD - they have jokes that sound like they were written by a child. Same obsession with bad smells, too, but now so strong that it needs a restraining order. Seriously, it uses th…

This is a good game. It not mind blowing but it will keep you entertain for more than 20 hours. The first one was better but this one is recommended. Good story line and likable characters. You want to pick something up for a couple of days fun I would recommend. 7.5/10

While there's complaints about bugs, and I did find a few minor ones, I found it incredibly fun, and can definitely recommend it.

Heroes face the frost Ancient tomes awaken fate Courage thaws the night

I was torn on whether to put a positive or negative review for this game. I finally decided to go positive because "mixed" felt kinda harsh... Then I do one more fight before writing this review, I capture a monster and get a level up for all characters, yay! Text box announces my party is full (because of the captured monster)... and then crashes. So negative it is. This game has some undeniable charm to it: it's nice looking with decent character sprites, animations, quite detailed and beautiful environments/tilesets AND it's definitely not made with RPG Maker! Music sounds nice though somewhat inappropriate for the pixel artstyle of the game, but no big deal. I noticed BGM loop points are ackwardly implemented. It has a FF6-style world map with an accurate reproduction of SNES mode 7 pseudo-perspective effect. However the game also came with all the annoying features from the "good old JRPG days", such as save checkpoint system, a huge ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pile of technically-not-random-but-still-forced monster encounters and verbose, mostly uninteresting one-way dialogues. A few generic NPCs have blablablah that span 5 or 6 pages of text box. Navigating the combat menu becomes a chore, th…