Curate of Curiosities

Previously on The Reconstruction, we were introduced to Rehm Sikohlon and his merry crew, and then an old lady who asked us, in the apparent role of God, to set the difficulty for her.

So with that, we enter the game's first chapter, "A Birth And A Prayer."

We move on to the city of Wadassia which seems to not only be recovering its own French Revolution, but also undergoing several biblical plagues at once.

And we finally meet Dehl Sikohlon, our hero. He's here to start a guild in hopes that he may pay some debt he owes to the city where he already works as a guard.

In comes some guy with a pretty goofy-looking eyepiece. This is Qualstio, Dehl's friend. He's a fortian, which seems to be the setting's term for a dedicated mage. It looks like he's the one who's taken care of the recruitment drive.

Aside from Qualstio, there's Zargos. He's a pretty sturdy guy in heavy armor, your typical warrior type.

Santes here is a...special case. A special case of "this is an indie game made in the 2000s, look how quirky we are!"

Now, she's a healer to contrast with her husband's being a warrior. Subversive!

And then we have Fero, who seems to be your typical hunter in tune with nature type. He's a fih'jik, that is to say, a cat person. This should be all of the sentient races of this setting.

And that makes five guild members so far. But who will be our sixth member? I'm sure that there are other combat-trained people in this city who would be willing to join up with a newly-formed guild...or we could ask the literal child who happens to be in the room if he can join!

His name's Tehgonan, and he's raring to go with his magic. Good thing for him that there don't seem to be any truant officers in this city, or we'd really be in trouble.

Now that we've reached the maximum number of active members, it's time to name the group.

Six Stars? Pretty on the nose, wouldn't you think?

There's this fanfare for each member who signs up, for six times in total, and when Qualstio's turn rolls around, he actually complains about it. It is way too early for you to be snarky and meta, game!

While favor was of little use to Rehm and his crew, it's absolutely vital to our guild's progression. This, along with the rest of our guild's affairs, will be managed by Ques, who looks like one of the Cheetahmen going through a mid-life crisis.

Anyways, this game has a mission-based structure, like a slightly more streamlined I Hate You, Please Suffer.

Like the ship in the prologue, Wadassia can be navigated with a cursor. No items to pick up just yet, but there are some NPCs to click on to see what they're up to, such as these two negotiating a slave sale. Yeah, remember when Rehm said that he could negotiate the slave ship issue without anyone dying, only to kill someone right after the slaver was dealt with? What would happen if the guild found itself in a similar situation? Will they be able to handle things as "gracefully" as he did?

Quest Mode also serves as a hub for missions, which is how you progress through the game.

As mentioned at the start of the chapter, these bugs called Tchiitra are overrunning the farmlands that Wadassia relies upon, so they're in need of any hand that can hold a sword to deal with them.

And here's our chapter's first mission, "Crop Dusters."

The objective is as simple as they come, kill exactly ten bugs. I suppose now would be a good time to give a rundown of the combat system. The most basic thing is, everyone has three separate health bars, for body, mind, and soul. For the rest, I'd rather quote the manual:

Every character and foe that participates in battle will have an associated weapon, armor type, and elemental affinity. Exploit your enemies' weaknesses in battle whenever possible.
[...]
The divider bar is not a permanent barrier. By rushing (or using abilities that boost Rush), the balance can be broken, allowing advancement upon the opposing side.
[...]
Caster-type characters may "Enchant" squares with their personal element. Additionally, certain attacks may leave a square or range of squares on the battlefield enchanted. The enchantment left matches the color of the specific element enchanting it. Elemental attacks with the SAME element as the enchantment which land on a target in the enchanted square will be much more effective. Conversely, an attack with the OPPOSITE element will be half as effective. In either case, the enchantment will be dispelled afterward. Attacks with no elemental aversion to the enchantment will have no additional effect, and will not dispel the enchantment.
[...]
The CHAIN is an optional method of chaining together certain skills to boost their effectiveness. The chain is composed of three colors (Red, Green, and Blue) and moves left to right, with the rightmost highlighted colored link being the current link. If a skill is used with the same "Color" as the highlighted link, the chain will advance, shifting all the colors over by 1, and CHAIN COUNT will be added depending on the number of "hits" in the skill.

Anyways, you won't have to worry about the nuances just yet, as most of our party members can down a single hatchling in one good hit.

Like with the prologue mission, there are a few bonus objectives to fulfill for more favor. They are: finish the mission without any party members getting knocked out, avoid stepping on the farmers' crops, and take out the slightly stronger bug at the other end of the map. It's so tough, it can take up to three hits to bring down!

And with that, we are promoted to Rank 2!

So far so good. Now that our guild's rank has gone up, more of the city's inhabitants will start to take notice. Hopefully none of them will take issue with an 11-year-old traveling with several grown adults.

For now, let's talk to this one guard who, like everyone else in the city, is concerned about the increased Tchiitra activity, and asks the guild for help with coming up with a plan for keeping it in check before they can threaten Wadassia further. Unfortunately, he is approached by perhaps the one member of this guild who's most unsuited for the job.

Which means we're getting shuttled to who knows where because Santes is an easily-distracted womanchild.

Quest number 2, "Watch Your Ankles."

This quest involves us going through a muddy swamp to find out where the Tchiitra are crawling out from, while in the meantime trying to avoid getting spotted by them. As the screenshot above shows, this is a bit harder than it sounds, even though their sight range is as variable as that of your average Pokemon trainer. And not all of them have the courtesy to stand in the open where they're relatively easy to see.

The main puzzle for this mission is to gather tufts of grass scattered throughout the map to build a bridge across a patch of mud. The one in the screenshot above is obviously a trap.

And on the other side is our goal, a bunch of tunnel entrances. I guess there are worse places that Santes could have gotten us shipped to; at least now we have a lead on the source of the problem. Though I feel that the guard who gave us this mission should have suspected that something like this was happening.

But it's not like this setting has invented Raid, so there's not much that can be done about it yet, even with all six of us.

Yep, two ranks in a single mission. Definitely takes the edge of the severity of the Tchiitra situation.

There's this guy named Brenetto who wears a goofy-looking eyepiece like Qualstio, who's here from out of town with his cool invention. Unfortunately, said invention got busted up on the way here, and he needs our help to find them.

But the first component we find is literally right behind him. Clearly that lens he's always wearing isn't doing him any good.

And one of the others is in the hunting grounds outside of town. It seems you're meant to use this to grind for experience, but this is the type of game where your success is far more dependent on tactics than raw stats, so there's no real need to grind.

We can't pick up the last piece just yet, so we may as well do some more errands in the meantime.

"On Patrol, Part 1": One of the guards is having trouble with some bigger, stronger bugs suddenly popping up, so he entrusts their disposal to a gang of upstarts.

The goal is to kill five Tchiitra soldiers. They may look like scouts, but they can be much nastier, especially if you face two of them at once. They have a chance of using an AoE mind attack which can hit really hard. If two of them get off that same attack, that's at least two party members down before you can do anything.

Next mission, "One A Day." The bugs are going after this farmer's apple tree, like they've been doing ever since the first quest of this chapter, so you know what we have to do.

The secret objectives for this mission are to find the farmer's tools, which are in the open, and to find his missing coworker.

A Firefiend. That sounds like exactly the type of creature you want nowhere near your crops.

What's more, it's accompanied by two scouts and three hatchlings. And while previous missions gave off the impression that they posed little trouble, if any at all, this battle shows just how threatening they can be if left to run wild. One of them managed to take off a good half of Qualstio's body health in one attack.

Friends of Six Stars, you've acquired... Rank Five. A great service, indeed.

And now that we've ranked up enough, it's time for Dehl to officially retire from his job as a city guard.

Huh, so this really is like I Hate You, Please Suffer, what with the main character leaving their former job to be an adventurer full-time. Except Dehl's leaving his job as a city guard of his own will. And he's facing more fantasy racism, which he responds to by...bandaging the offender after Qualstio blasts him. I'm just saying, you wouldn't see Ramona trying to patch up her landlord or anything like that.

Yes, the de facto leader of this guild is a bit of a doormat. Between this and Santes'...idiosyncracies, it's a wonder anyone has any hopes for this guild. I guess the Tchiitra situation is making the townsfolk particularly desperate.

Speaking of, we have our next mission: "On Patrol, Part 2."

We go to a beach that's positively lousy with Firefiends. Come on now. We just fought one of these things as a miniboss, and now you're asking us to kill five of them. To this game's credit, they're a lot more manageable without backup.

Wait a minute, didn't that Brenetto guy say he lost one of the pieces for his invention on the beach?

Indeed he did. So I guess that's all of them.

Oh, and we clear out the Firefiends, I guess.

Rank Six. This calls for some sort of celebration. Uhm, wooooooo.

Oh, and you want to know what our reward is for helping Brenetto? Something that will allow us to retain a tiny amount of chain between battles. Okay? It's surprisingly hard to get a chain going at this stage in the game, so I don't think we'll be getting a whole lot of use out of it.

You know how I mentioned that rank is vital to our progression? You can exhaust all of the quests in this city, but you need to be at least rank 5 for that old lady from earlier to show up.

Okay, I'll bite. What exactly are you trying to tell us? That we'll be seeing more of the world beyond this little town? Thanks, but I already figured it out when Ques showed us that map of his.

What she actually does that's of any relevance is point us to the guy standing next to her, who is our client for today. He comes up with the groundbreaking hypothesis that there is a boss Tchiitra leading the other Tchiitra, and if someone were to kill it, they would stop eating everyone's crops. Subversive!

So it looks like we're not the only guild in town. Meet Havan and his guild, the Blue Guard. I'll admit, it's a slightly better name than Six Stars. Since there are two potential locations for this theorized boss Tchiitra, they'll tackle one while we go after the other. Though I don't see them having much success, since there's only three of them.

And here's our last mission for the chapter, "Cries Of The Land." Now that we've got a good lead on the source of the infestation, we need to go in and root them out on their home turf.

Because since we're going through narrow corridors, we can't group our party members for this mission. And you need to be careful in choosing who goes where, because there are a couple places that require someone whose stats are above a certain amount. It makes me wonder how later dungeons will refine this mechanic. It is going to build upon the mechanic, right?

Anyways, this dungeon isn't particularly hard, even considering the fact that you'll be facing soldiers and even Firefiends with less than a full party.

Eventually, we reach the innermost chamber...

Huh. So there was a boss Tchiitra after all, or rather, a broodmistress. That makes sense. And it's accompanied by least one of every type of bug that we've encountered so far.

The minions, including the Firefiend, are every bit as dangerous as they were before, and what's worse, they start the battle with regeneration for all three of their health bars. But most of them go down in two or three hits, so it's not much help.

The main threat from the Broodmistress herself is an attack called Carrion Boil, which does noxious mind damage to anyone in a three-column width centered at the target. So if you have multiple party members at the front line, prepare to suffer. It also defiles any affected tiles, causing anyone standing on them to take extra damage from Noxious-element attacks. The catch is that having only one or two front-liners is a lot safer, but makes it a bit longer to chip away at any of her health bars.

Now do you see why I initally struggled to get through this game? That said, I had a lot less trouble this time around.

After defeating her, the guild notices someone else in her chamber...

This is Lani, a guard from the neighboring city of Nal. A bit on the abrasive side, as well. She had the bright idea of sneaking into these claustrophobic, bug-infested tunnels in heavy armor. I get the reasoning behind it, but I feel like wearing heavy armor would be a liability in this particular situation.

So that's it for her, right? Wrong, after we go back to the guild office, she forces herself into the guild. Good thing for her, our guild just underwent a promotion, meaning that we can officially take on more than six members.

Wandertower? That's the name of your class? I get that Space Lizard wanted to move away from stuff like fighters and mages, but these feel more like superhero names than something appropriate to the fantasy setting.

The classes for our current party members aren't much better, with classes like Whiteblade (Dehl) and Spectrumancer (Tehgonan).

And that was chapter 1. Where we haven't seen a single birth (except maybe offscreen by the Broodmistress) and the one prayer was to us. Come to think about it, we haven't seen much reconstruction either, unless you count us fixing Wadassia's ability to produce food.

And as for that whole subversion thing that he was supposedly setting out to do with this game, I'm kind of seeing it. It definitely plays differently from your average RPG Maker game. As for the narrative, I've never really placed that much stock in narrative in games, I'm noticing a couple of cliches being bucked, and they seem to mainly involve Dehl. He's awfully softspoken and submissive, especially with that guard that insulted him earlier--not what you'd really expect from a main character in an RPG. And the plot...it comes across as your typical early game rat-slaying, except with bugs, and we're shown exactly why they need to be slain. And while Space Lizard probably thought he was being clever with this guild business, I couldn't help but be reminded of the fact that they appear in pretty much every isekai with RPG mechanics ever made. So I guess that would mean this game's ahead of its time.