Curate of Curiosities

So, as we have just established, The Demon Rush, The D's debut game, is an unbalanced, embarassingly written, cacophonic, poorly coded mess, and it's surprising that it even closely resembles a finished product. It's little wonder that it became a laughing stock on one of the Net's most popular forums at the time.

Undaunted, he turned out another full-length RPG two years later.

There are a number of major differences between this and The Demon Rush, some of which are readily apparent from the get-go. The first is that instead of the combination modern day, sci-fi, and fantasy setting that made up The Demon Rush, this game is set in near-future (at-the-time) Canada. The second is that the game is rendered in isometric perspective, the only one of The D's game's to do so.

The third revolves around the battle system. To start with, there is no separate battle screen. Like in The Demon Rush, the battle system revolves around both ATB and the ability to reposition your party members, but on a grid-based battlefield rather than a free-roaming area. This may seem like a significant difference, but it really isn't.

The character progression is also improved. Unlike characters gaining stat points at arbitrary EXP thresholds, characters get skill points according to a global experience level, which can then be spent on the various skill trees that each character has.

On a more minor note, the UI is much easier to look at now. I especially like how you can actually see the characters' status bars in battle.

And speaking of status bars, you know how Extremes were both overpowered and kind of annoying to trigger in The Demon Rush? Skylight replaces it with the Synergy mechanic, which is mostly similar but with two major differences. One, they take the form of one-off attacks, rather than a powered-up mode, and two, you can only activate them if two or more party members have their bars filled, kind of like the Double and Triple Techs from Chrono Trigger.

There's a story recap option available from the menu, which is useful for figuring out where you need to go next.

The writing, unfortunately, is still an absolute mess. Not only is this game worse with its exposition vomit than its predecessor, but the more grounded setting means that the plot and characterization is far less engaging, even on an ironic level like with The Demon Rush's constant yammering about siphons. You start off playing as two police officers, a woman who's serious and focused on her work, and a man who's an easy-going horndog. In other words, Cherry and Alberto as cops.

Of course, the game has its share of out-there moments. Early on, you take a subway from Toronto all the way to Winnipeg. For American readers, it would be like if there was a subway connecting New York and St. Louis.

This game, for whatever reason, isn't nearly as infamous as The Demon Rush. Someone did stream the game on Twitch more than a decade ago, but all the footage from that stream has since been deleted. So it looks like I'll be flying mostly blind this time around.

We're going to start this in medias res, specifically at the start of chapter 3 of 6, for a number of reasons. One, it's plot is only slightly more comprehensible than that of The Demon Rush, and two, I started taking screenshots after defeating a particularly aggravating boss that I do not want to have to deal with again.

Let's step into the shoes of this young lady as she receives the call to adventure!

This is Bethany McCloud. She was recently hired to work at GTAL, a law enforcement organization operating out of Toronto.

And here's the rest of the force. Tyler and Melissa, we've already introduced. Gregory actually was part of a crime syndicate, so GTAL is the only employer who'll hire him.

Our first assignment is to go to the waterfront and rendezvous with Erin Mitchell, a perfectly ordinary librarian with suspiciously vested interest in the local crime syndicate.

On the way back, we meet this guy. He's the very same guy that Tyler and Melissa dealt with at the very start of the game.

Like in The Demon Rush, this game has a nasty habit of putting you in miniboss encounters that just consist of a random encounter, but with more enemies. One of these instances happens the moment you step in this house.

Now to finally fill you in on the plot so far. A few years ago, the good folks at GTAL started investigating Skylight Medical, due to their distributing a drug that causes its users to go insane and eventually turn into monstrous behemoths, due to it being infused with something called the Skylight Symbiote, a type of self-replicating nanobot swarm. The Queensmen were trying to keep this unfortunate side effect under wraps. Even though we managed to take down Skylight, the Queensmen still have their hands on the symbiote, and have sold it to an electronics comany that conveniently, happens to be operating out of this city.

Oh, and Erin's one of them, but has to disguise herself to avoid getting targeted by them.

On the way there, we have a cutscene where Walker, the owner of the electronics corp, is trying to use the symbiote to develop a cure for the mutations that it's causing. If you've played practically any survival horror game, you can tell where this is going.

Now, the creature we see before us is an Indestructible, one of the people mutated by the Skylight Symbiote. They hit hard, and can regenerate health but are very weak to fire.

It's a good thing that Bethany starts with a skill that does fire damage. But the problem is, she's a bit on the fragile side, with around half the hit points that the rest of the party has, and no way to upgrade them.

Quick tip, none of the dungeons in this game are all that remarkable, even compared to those of The Demon Rush. They all consist of mostly linear hallways filled with unavoidable, inescapable enemy encounters. If I wanted an RPG that was just enemy gauntlets, I'd play Epic Battle Fantasy instead.

Now, on to meet up with Mr. Walker...

We? So this symbiote's a hive mind? This is the first time I'm hearing of it.

But forget about that, it looks like Walker lucked out when he used the symbiote on himself, cause instead of turning him into a monster, it's given him Ultra Instinct.

And then he shoots Melissa in the head. But she survives this thanks to the metal plate she had installed from the last time she got shot.

Oh-so-conveniently, there's a freezer right under Walker's office. If we could get him inside, it could make the symbiote less effective.

And while we're here, Simon Cole, our one-time field medic, has come back to help us. For a medic, he's quite adept with explosives, which is key to trapping Walker.

This might be the very last time that I ever made use of the Search mechanic. During battle, any party member can search the area around them to find items, ammo, or a barrel filled with explosives or acid, that can be attacked to deal the appropriate type of damage to the surrounding area. This mechanic was introduced back in chapter 2, when we were dealing with the Indestructibles for the first time.

Here, we're meant to use the search command to find blocks of ice, and then break them to make the boss vulnerable. Overall it's just tedious, since the effect wears off when he takes his next turn, he has a lot of HP, yet doesn't do a lot of damage.

And one more thing, the tutorial is phrased in such a way that implies that you will eventually face more enemies like Walker, infused with this particular symbiote. This does not happen.

Chapter 4 is off to a roaring start, with the reveal that someone has made off with the nudes of our female party members.

Anyways, the Queensmen are at it again. Without Skylight to serve as their middlemen, they're directly distributing symbiote-infused drugs. I'm not sure what their business strategy is. Mutated users, from what we've seen, aren't very likely to come back for more.

Melissa's higher-up are less than thrilled at the prospect of gathering cops from all over the country to cover GTAL as they carry out the investigation. This is definitely coming out of her paycheck.

As implied before, Erin has a personal investment in bringing down the Queensmen. Not only did they rope her into joining them, but they're also threatening her son, forcing her to relocate him far away from Toronto.

The party splits up into three pairs, and the pair that we control is led to the southeast part of town, but there's nothing there, so back to the west side, home to no less than two different organizations associated with spreading the symbiote.

Why the southeast? Because Tyler thinks there's a strip club there. That and he's watched too many police shows as a kid, and so thinks that being a police officer will be just like them. Never mind that with the Indestructibles, he should have already receieved his rude awakening.

One hallway later, we finally meet up with the Queen, the person responsible for all of Toronto's woes. For being a crime lord, you'd think you'd face her someplace beside a beige, featureless hallway.

And I was right. For all her bravado, she's pretty easy, and that should tip you off that she's not the real Queen.

Now that we've finally met the villain that was mentioned several times, let's get into her tragic backstory--it's child abuse. Her parents hit her, so she became a criminal kingpin (queenpin?) to gain some sense of control. Oh, and Simon is the doctor who took care of her, because of course he is.

In the meantime, Melissa just bought a new house with the increased salary that she earned from dealing with Toronto's drug and nanobot problem, and her mom's even showed up to congratulate her! I guess we could use a bit of levity after everything that we just found out. And, to it's credit, this scene is one of the better written ones, especially compared to the endless exposition dumps The D is so used to.

But of course, Tyler can't resist being a raging horndog in front of his coworker's family. This is why you're not in the active party, Tyler. That and the fact that you're pretty underwhelming in terms of skills.

At least after this, he decides to make himself useful and meet up with his brother, who runs another medical company to get him to stop collaborating with the crime syndicate infusing their products with nanotechnology.

But now that we've made a dent in the Queen's plans, her men are now literally beating down the door to GTAL HQ to kill us. That means several fights back to back, with Melissa's slow ass forced onto the front lines.

And from there, we go to one of the few non-residential buildings in Toronto that we haven't visited, and by sheer happenstance, that's where the Queen's hiding!

Sigh...just when I think that The D has learned something from the reception to The Demon Rush, I'm brought back to reality by yet another horde encounter.

And do you know what makes this even worse? There is somehow less enemy variety than The Demon Rush. Aside from the Indestructibles, enemies come in only a handful of variants, guy with riot shield, guy with pistol, guy with rifle, guy with shotgun, guy with assault rifle, guy with flamethrower, and guy with rocket launcher, sometimes with different colored shirts.

This boss is a bit annoying. She counters everything you do to her, even skills that don't deal damage, with a skill that covers its target in gasoline, making them more vulnerable to fire. Doesn't sound so bad, since she's only got a pistol, right? Well, when after taking enough damage, she switches to a flamethrower, which does immense bonus damage to doused targets, so unless you can get rid of the gasoline, you're pretty much boned. Incidentally, she uses the exact same strategy that the game teaches you early in the game, and that you're encouraged to make regular use of.

This is John A. He looks like a 6-year-old trying to draw the cover for a Tom Clancy game. He knows a lot more about the ongoing plot than the party can hope to, and so adds a new option to our menu promising to give us the truth behind what's been going on.

Oh yes, I've completely neglected to bring up the diegetic elements of this setting. Whenever you bring up the menu, you're actually using the characters' PDAs (the game was released when smartphones started to gain prominence, but given that they're called Workstations in-game it's likely that The D had PDAs in mind when implementing them into the setting). These devices use something called Competency technology to link with their users nervous system to enhance their physical capabilities. This same technology is responsible for the skill tree system and the game's equivalent to magic.

And that's the end of the chapter.

I guess old habits die hard with The D, as now we're pivoting onto the most generic RPG plot: "Slay the evil dragon humanoid kaiju thing before it destroys the entire kingdom all of Canada!" Meanwhile, the creature itself looks like something you'd see drawn in a notebook belonging to a disturbed middle-schooler.

And the whole screen is shaking during this scene, including the text box, so good luck trying to read this without a screen recorder.

It looks like GTAL's gotten so popular, that they've made a TV show based on their adventures.

I feel that this is supposed to be a dig at how TV adaptations take liberties with real-world events, which would be far more effective if this game's writing were any good.

Another thing, for all her efforts, Melissa is now chief of GTAL. Not bad for someone who got shot in the head twice.

From here on out, whenever you explore Toronto, there is a chance that you'll end up in a fight with an Indestructible. And keep in mind that you can't escape from battles, and that they regenerate health every turn, so you'd better come prepared when heading to whatever the next plot dungeon is.

You want to know what's worse than fighting a single Indestructible? Fighting three of them back-to-back! And with two characters that can't exploit their weakness as effectively as the other party members!

And when you catch up with the rest of the party, things don't get any better!

Remember how we learned Cherry's tragic backstory 10 minutes into The Demon Rush? This game holds off on Melissa's until about 9 hours in! Here's how it goes: she grew up poor with a widowed mother who pushed her to be the best in her class. While it is the reason for her working her way to her current position, it has also left her with practically no time to live her life. It's a good thing that The D likes to spoonfeed his character backstories to you, even after dialogue that strongly hints at it.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does this game. With the Queensmen officially out of the picture, a new villainous faction arrives on the scene. Meet the New Canadian Order. Unlike the Queensmen, which are basically responsible for the entire plot so far, they do nothing other than generically antagonize our protagonists.

There's a bit of a "mutated behemoths are people too" thing going on here, even though they're the ones smashing up our forces.

Things have gotten really bad. Melissa's AWOL, and Gregory gets abducted by some former members of the force who have defected to this new organization. This game is so much of a drag, that I had to look through the story recap just to figure out who these characters were.

The thing about aerosolized nanotech is that they tend not to respect regional or national borders. So there's a very good chance that some Symbiote particles have crossed the border into the United States. And your plan with the Anti-Symbiote is to use it to burn up the Skylight Symbiote, as well as anything else that happens to be in the same neighborhood as the symbiote. This plot is an international incident in the making. In fact, something very similar happened in 2023, though not as the result of deliberate effort.

It's the usual thing, go down a hallway, fight horde of mooks, then a boss.

I didn't want to believe this at first, but that is indeed Melissa. Looks like the stress of her job, the Indestructibles overrunning the city, and the fact that I haven't used her since chapter 2 have gotten to her. But given her position, she of all people should be more wary about taking drugs, especially since they're connected to the mutations that we've been seeing over the past few years!

And just so you don't forget, while all this is happening, some Attack on Titan reject is laying waste to Canada, one city at a time.

Also, most of the GTAL members get abducted and taken to a mansion in the the residential district. Why? Who cares, we need another dungeon to cap off this chapter.

The mansion basically consists of two hallways, one leading from the entrance to the missing party members, and another leading to the boss of the area. A lot of the dungeons in this game are like this, and they're little better than, say, Final Fantasy XIII's endless hallways.

But the worst part about this is that for the first half of the dungeon, you're stuck with just Tyler and Bethany. And you mainly fight enemies with flamethrowers here, who can douse you with oil before going in for the kill. Neither of them have an innate status-curing skill, so you're stuck having to stock up both of their (very limited) inventory with items.

By the way, guess how you purchase items in this game. Is there a dedicated shop somewhere in Toronto? Nope, you have to go to the Shop submenu in the Items menu, and only in save points or areas without enemies.

Another horde miniboss. Just come in with full Synergy bars and wipe them.

This boss is pretty unique, which doesn't amount to much. He can use a Synergy just like the ones your party has been using. It does far more damage than any of your party members can be expected to withstand at this point. Did I mention that revival items are really hard to come by, and only two party members can learn a revival skill?

That aside, he's not really hard with a good offensive strategy and a bit of luck. So far, that's 3 points for dogged persistence, and a big fat goose egg for common sense.

Melissa, you should really stop shooting those things, that'll only make things worse!

Not that it matters anymore, it's already too late. The Anti-Symbiote is already in the air. In mere hours, Canada will burn. Yes, I know how little sense that makes, but you don't play The D's games for a sensible plot. Or enjoyable gameplay. Or anything with any merit at all.

I'll give the game this: unlike The Demon Rush, in this game, the party manages to accomplish things, like bringing down two criminal syndicates. But of course, when it comes to the big bad plots like this, they're utterly helpless. But that just puts it on the same level as the RPGs that inspired The D to begin with, doesn't it?