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The content on this blog is my personal opinion and does not reflect the views of the Department of Defense or the US Navy in any way.


Monday, November 5, 2018

Game review: Epic Battle Fantasy 4

Epic Battle Fantasy 4 is a comedy RPG that uses plenty of memes and parodies to tell a story about a bunch of murderous hobos that go out to save the world (again).

For the most part, it is a fairly conventional RPG. A cult has stolen a powerful artifact, and the heroes have to chase them down in an attempt to recover it before Bad Things happen. Each of the characters has different spells, weapon skills, and equipment that they can use to fight their way through the monsters in various parts of the world on their way to recover the artifact, protect the others in the set, and stop the cult.

Technically this is a spoiler, but they naturally fail, falling just short in their efforts to reach and protect all of the other artifacts in the set and arriving at the final boss arena just in time to watch the final boss get summoned. I say technically because realistically, this game parodies RPG tropes so much that it's blindingly obvious that things are going to work out that way for much of the game. The humor relies on a lot of self-referential jokes (there is no fourth wall here) and culture or gaming related parodies, and while one or two of them felt like an unfair shot to me, the whole thing still manages to be very amusing.

It does manage to be a legitimately challenging RPG, in addition to a parody, though. Particularly if you turn the difficulty up a bit - then one is forced to rely on the right combinations of debuffs and buffs to survive long enough to win. There is a level system that increases your base stats and a skill point system which can be used to buy new skills, whether out of a character specific pool or out of a shared skill pool. There's a surprising amount of creativity in deciding which skills to level first and which skills from the shared pool should go to each character; it's easily one of the more fun parts of the game.

Overall, I highly recommend it.

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