Curate of Curiosities

Obviously, the first game that we'll be going through is The Reconstruction, being Space Lizard's first RPG. It can be downloaded here.

The description:

Would you stake your life on a world that cannot be saved? Follow Dehl Sikohlon and his rag-tag guild, who strive to rid the world of turmoil!
Want to see what happens when someone pushes RPG Maker XP to the limits? Then check out The Reconstruction, a turn-based strategy/tactical RPG by Deltree. This game holds nothing back: it features a ton of custom battle systems, a quest-based storyline, stylistic graphics, and nearly 30 hours of gameplay. If you're looking for inspiration on how to make something completely atypical for RPG Maker, then look no further!

"Rid the world of turmoil." Despite all the technical stuff that was done with the gameplay, that plot hook feels dishearteningly vague.

Anyway, no time to get concerned about lack of details, it's on to the game. Our story begins precisely 47 years before the present day.

On the deck of the W. S. Vigor are three figures, a lizard man, a young woman in a battle bikini, and some other guy. They've just taken on a new member, Private Clap. That's...not the most flattering of names.

The captain wants Clap to come up to the deck to show everyone his new outfit.

What, is he his mom or something?

But no time to complain about our private's fashion sense, there's a ship straight ahead for us to board for whatever reason.

You just know that one of them will end up dying within an hour.

So far, their purpose hasn't been made clear. Are they pirates, members of a private militia, or something else entirely?

Now, here's the first thing that sets it apart mechanically from other RPG Maker games. Pixel hunting, you know, one of the most annoying mechanics from point-and-click adventure games! Though, to its credit, due to the way RPG Maker works, it's more of a tile hunt, which is far more manageable.

While I definitely applaud Deltree or Space Lizard or whatever he's called for mixing in elements of other game genres, there has to have been a way to make the controls for this a bit smoother. It's like every time the cursor moves one tile, it has to take a breath before it can start moving again.

There art two things that you need to examine before moving on: the trident near the stern of the ship, and the bag of suspicious chemicals on the deck.

And after that we go back to the captain for our first mission. Despite what the text box may say, you have as much time as you need to finish any mission. Good thing too, because time-limits and turn-based RPGs tend not to mix very well.

And just our luck, the ship from earlier is already within ramming range! And all in the interest of "negotiating" with its crew. Yes, I'm sure that having a ship's prow stuck through your hull is a perfect start to negotiations. And here we get more terminology, but unlike with The Demon Rush, there's not a lot of it, and some of it even gets explained.

And it looks like the captain and our scaly hero know each other. Despite this, he's in inital disbelief that a filthy Shra--evidently that's what lizardmen are called in this setting--could have commandeered the Vigor. Oh dear. Fantasy racism. From my experience, the care with which this topic gets handled varies, but I don't expect this game to handle it particularly well.

So our captain's name is Rehm Sikohlon. Funny, that's almost the same name as the main character in the game's blurb! Is this supposed to trick players who were too careless in reading?

And we're off! Be sure to really drink in the stock RPG Maker music and thick-outlined JPG environment objects. Our stated objective is to make our way to the bottom level of the ship and find the captain. Getting there's pretty simple, but we have the opportunity to earn a few extra points in the process.

Many of the missions in this game have these optional objectives, and for this mission, they are to reach the captain without getting into any encounters, and delivering an item to a certain NPC. And unlike with the time limit, the score is something you'll actually need to pay attention to, just not with this mission in particular.

To a first-time player, it might not seem possible to avoid running into any of the guards stationed throughout the ship, but if you're willing to carefully explore the area, the way forward will eventually become clear: right below the deck is a canister of gunpowder, which you can use to clear a path around the guards. That's another thing that the game borrows from adventure games: inventory puzzles.

And then we meet Captain Yat, and since negotiation breaks down immediately due to his being just as racist as he was established to be 10 minutes ago, we have to beat him down.

I'm sure someone might be wondering what the hell is going on in this battle. Why is everyone moving around so much? I'll explain most of the mechanics later, but for now what you need to know is that each enemy and party member has three different health bars, for Body, Mind and Soul, though you only need to bring one of them to zero to defeat them. Like the mission leading up to it, this boss can be rather tricky, especially given his and his minions' habit of ganging up on the nearest party member.

And then we get the purpose behind Rehm's attempt at negotiation: this ship is a slave ship ferrying not only the lizard-like Shra, but also some humans, much to the humans' indignance. Yeah, real subtle racial allegory you've got there. And frankly, that would have been nice to know before we boarded the ship.

On the deck of the ship, Rehm gets yelled at by another Shra about his not wanting to take part in conquering the world, before running him through. Like the rest of this prologue, it raises quite a few questions. Why did Rehm stab that guy? Who is this Tezkhra that he mentioned? Why would Rehm's dad take issue with him killing this "Si'Shra," as he's apparently called? What even is a Si'Shra, and what sets them apart from ordinary Shra?

Meanwhile, elsewhere, two old men are busy playing a board game instead of carrying on their Watch. Who or what it is that they're supposed to be watching, we don't know. Now, they call this old lady their mother, but whether she's their actual mother or they're taking part in some roleplay thing, we also don't know.

Oh, and this guy's here too. He's probably not important.

Then the old lady turns to us. So does that mean that we're God?

We're told that there's this guild of adventurers that are apparently who these people are supposed to be watching, and she needs our help with setting the way forward for them. We're asked to set their strength, the enemy's strength, and how much essence that they'll gain. I pick the medium option for all three of them, which gives us a favor gain of 100%. What that signifies, we'll soon find out.

And that was the game's intro. I guess it won't be long before we meet this guild that this old woman's been hyping up.