Perilous Plunge Lite
A review by SDHawk
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I was initially going to review this game as having been unable to get past the first floor. Fortunately I gave the game one last shot and that is no longer the case. I am now reviewing having been unable to get past the second floor.

The primary hook of Perilous Plunge lite is that it attempts to infuse roguelike elements with traditional Final Fantasy systems, the most prominent being that of permadeath (deleting the save file after a character dies). Unfortunately the authors failed to take into account what makes these elements work in a roguelike.

In a traditional roguelike, combat with a simple enemy is as quick as pressing and holding the move button in their direction until someone dies. Countless easy enemies can be slain in seconds while more difficult enemies take more finesse and thought for every turn by using various items and commands. Likewise, entire rooms can be cleared in a matter of seconds since the majority of roguelikes allow movement with a sort of inertia of quick movement while holding a key. Finally, the terrain and monster layouts tend to be randomly generated with few if any static puzzles.

Contrast this with Perilous Plunge: battles that can be won with just mashing attack can take anywhere from 10-20 seconds, you're limited to the same slow walk speed at all times, and the game relies heavily on static switch puzzles as well as the exact same terrain and enemy formations with little variation. Connecting the dots: dying in Perilous Plunge is excruciatingly annoying and gives players little incentive to suffer through it repeatedly to beat the game.

To be fair, the creators didn't place it in the game simply to increase the difficulty. The game features a rather enjoyable character creation process which allows the player to assign each stat to their liking, choosing between stat growth or initial starting stats, giving interesting choices as whether to start strong and end up weak or vice versa. Obviously, such a system would be incredibly annoying if a player picked poor stats and had to levelbust for hours to get anywhere rather than simply killing them to say their choices suck. Additionally, permadeath fits nicely within their system of giving each floor a theme which teaches a life lesson. It would lose its punch quite a bit if players simply ignored the advice, got themselves killed, and reloaded as opposed to the current fear of death which forces players to try to do it right the first time.

Unfortunately all the annoyances related to permadeath simply outweigh its benefits. On top of the frustration of just dying, the game makes you sit through a two minute cutscene with no option of skipping it. After that it starts the first floor which is possibly the game's biggest aggravation. It's filled with 10-15 (possibly more) random encounters which are generally easy depending on your character build, with the only goal being to walk to one side of the room, flip a switch, and walk to the other side to fight the boss. I counted roughly thirteen minutes to reach the boss, but you'll generally have to reload the floor and fight all the battles again in order to beat him. So that's basically thirty minutes of dull button mashing battles just to get to a less mentally insulting floor. Then you'll probably die on the boss and have to do it all over. (And really, while it has more switch puzzles, seemingly fewer random battles, and an interesting but easy floor theme it's still more of the same slogging through dull one-hit battles until you get to the boss).

Ultimately the game smacks of a development team failing to bring in people outside of the team to point out obvious problems that are nearly invisible to its creators. By the time a game like this would be completed, the first floors would be wiped out in short order by anyone intimately familiar with the designs and how combat works. Additionally the game throws the complete battle skill list at the player immediately, giving no time to see how they work since they're unnecessary for random enemies (and random enemies have a "stun" ability which will frequently cancel the player's turn while they're trying to peck through the rather large skill list) and bosses attack too frequently to do much with them unless you know how they work to select them instantly. Again, anyone familiar with the game wouldn't have a problem since they know how every skill works off the bat, but it's overwhelming to newcomers.

In the end, Perilous Plunge is a harsh game that may or may not yield rewards to the patient. The graphics are certainly of high caliber for the OHR, and the music fits the setting even if it does border on the tedious boredom of the rest of the game. The story has a unique style to it reminiscent of plays (at least, of what I saw) but doesn't initially grab the player's interest, which is unfortunate for a game this demanding. It's pretty clear that the development team is talented enough that there are probably far more interesting floor themes later in the game as well as strategic uses of the skills, but for this reviewer two hours of boredom with promises of more was too perilous a risk to plunge into