Dwarvinity: Wrath of the Orcs
A Demo Review by Calehay
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Dwarvinity: Wrath of the Orcs, Inspiration's new game, is a bit of a mixed bag at the moment. While boasting interesting battles, a decent storyline, and fairly good graphics, there are many sloppy things that keep this game from being a real winner.

You begin the game as 4 dwarves; Terjon, a ninja, MoonTwill, an archer, Manfred, a mage, and Giye, a robot, returning home from their successful battle with the Elves, seemingly their long time enemy. However, they return to find their home in ruins. A dying dwarf reveals that the Orcs destroyed their home and killed its citizens, and that the only way to return things back to normal is the retrieve the Genghis, a powerful orb, from the Orcs' base. Along the way you learn that the Orcs, ruled by Dharlk, are planning a very mischevious plot to take over the land.

What saves this game's cliche plot is it's humor. Inspiration's humor in this game ranges from absurdist comedy to just plain goofball slapstick. To be fair, when I first played the game, it's humor didn't strike me as funny at all. I've found that's it's more of an acquired taste, and will have you enjoying some of the jokes after a while, though it's not likely that you'll bust a gut while playing this game. A lot of humor also comes from the fact that the fourth wall is broken very frequently, using l33t speak and modern references every now and then. Characters sometimes say something unexpected from their character, but the way it is written tends to help set the mood for the game, and isn't a detriment at all. Granted, this type of humor isn't for everyone.

The story isn't without its problems. Sometimes things are unclear due to poorly written dialogue. Every now and then, something will happen without warning or meaning (Having to ask for the mayor's permission to enter Humancity, and lying to the guards after talking to him, or Keihm joining your party because you saved him) but I was tempted to go on because of the very funny gems that I had encountered before. Perhaps if these small things were fixed up a bit, this game could become a truly great experience.

Graphically, this game is solid. The walkabouts and maptiles are well drawn. However, every now and then, a certain tile or walkabout will come up that won't be of the quality of everything else. Sometimes, things do get a little pillow-shaded, but overall, the quality of the maptiles is decent. The only real problem I have is with the Humancity houses. They are drawn in a sort of pseudo-isometric style, while everything else in the game is drawn in the classic 3/4's top down view. Also, for his World Map water, he uses big blocks of different colored shades of blue. While this type water tile would normally be frowned upon, it feels to me like it fits the game's style in general.

The battle graphics, however, are slightly sloppy. On most of his sprites, Inspiration uses the technique of drawing something and scanning it in, even on smaller sprites. It doesn't look so sloppy with his small sprites, since they are colored well, but it became extremely obvious with his larger sprites. The problem is, only some sprites do this, so I think it would be best if Inspiration decided if he was going do the scan method or clean up his lines so they look like the ones that weren't scanned. The battle backgrounds are generally very nice, and very easy to comprehend. His grass in the backgrounds, however, is unlike the grass in the game, so things seem a little sloppy in that regard. The Character battle spirtes are solid, though they don't have as good shading and colors as the enemy graphics.

Sadly, it's here where the nice things end. As of the February 26 demo, there are many problems and bugs that affect the gameplay, and major balance issues that really mar the game from being what it could be.

Inspiration has a good grasp on giving his characters interesting battle stats. MoonTwill and Terjon are strong fighters, Manfred has white mage abilities, Giye is a strong status magic user, and Keihm is a strong attack magic user. Each have effects that can sometimes be the crux of the battle. However, the game is far too unbalanced to notice some of these nice touches. Certain moves take way too much damage and makes the game not even close to being a challenge. The biggest problem is Manfred's Heal spell. It heals everyone, and heals them a lot. It doesn't help that you can overflow HP limits with it either. This small fact makes the game very easy. However, there are times when this can turn into a difficulty. There are no revive items in the game, only Manfred's Revive spell, so if he is to die in the middle of the battle, you can only use healing items. Since Manfred's Heal is weakest on him, there's a small balance to the spell. However, teamed with MoonTwill's ridiculous amount of strength and ability to paralyze most enemies, this is hardly a threat. You also level up way too often. Considering that all of the battles are non-random, there's very few of them. I would assume that Inspiration wanted to up the amount of experience given because of this, but at the moment, it is too much.

Also there's a slew of problems with small things such as people walking out of the wrong door, or walkabouts not disappearing when they should. Late in the demo, it seems that Inspiration might have gotten a little lazy with scripting scenes so that the player can see what is happening (the dreaded tell, don't show) Since this is only a demo, these things might have been placed as placeholders to be fixed later.

Overall, Dwarvinity has the potential to be a good game, but small problems make this game from being a nice RPG experience. If you decide to pick up this game, you might have a good laugh or two and about an hour's worth of entertainment, but it would be best to let Inspiration work out the bugs and problems in the game before giving it a fair look.