Stenmele Osmium
A review by TwinHamster
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Stenmele Osmium is an excellent combination of beautiful graphics and wonderful gameplay. The only unspectacular aspect to this game is its lack of publicity. After five years, it only shows a little over 100 downloads.

I can remember playing a demo of this game when it first came out. I thought that it was one of the best OHR games I had ever played, up until I ran into this unbeatable boss who slaughtered me in two hits. Realizing that I could progress no further, I left it somewhere in my collection of OHR games to be remembered as a nice compilation of graphics and interesting plotscripting.

However, as luck would have it, Corak of Evos, one of the creators of this fine game, returned to Castle Paradox in a drunken fit one Saturday the fifth of August in 2006 and presented an updated version of Stenmele. I instantly saw this as a chance to redeem myself, so I downloaded and played.

This version that I played had weird debugs, including full lists of support skills, free items, and overpowered skills. With this said, I easily defeated this game and felt a wave of relief. In fact, just a few weeks ago, I decided that the public had to hear about this game, so I pledged a review of it for HamsterSpeak. In the middle of the writing of this article, another pleasant surprise occurred: Sajim of Evos, Corak's counterpart, had decided to release a third update to this game! I saw that this new version would contain the challenge that I faced when the game was first released. I was convinced that I simply had to defeat this new version.

The game begins with a pleasant series of backdrops and blocks of text emphasizing the inner struggles of the main character, Ra Koda, between duty and freedom. Being, what appears to be, an engineered super-dude, Koda is under the complete control of Dr.Hydiek, a mysterious figure who does not appear once the introduction is over. It seems that Koda's leaders have some guff with the natives of the planet, so they order Koda to kill the native chieftain. With complete loyalty to his commanders, Koda complies.

Everything in the game is, well, pretty. Really pretty. From the very first map, it is evident that a lot of effort was put into the mountain tile-set to prevent the malevolent effects of The Grid. In fact, the tile placement is so refined that it is actually quite challenging to identify where one tile begins and where it ends. I wouldn be surprised if every tile-set was completely filled up in the production of these maps. Not only do they look nice, but they are also in the same styles that the character sprites were made in, creating a very pleasing effect between sprites and tiles. The battle graphics are also magnificent. Each enemy has two to three varieties of poses, making battles look especially nice. Unlike most OHR games, the hero graphics of Stenmele actually look like they are fighting. Instead of the standard stiff-walking and weak animations, the graphics of Stenmele emphasize every movement of the sprite.

After a few battles, I had quite a bit of experience and moolas (Currency of the game). Now, Stenmele has an interesting system for leveling and money. Whenever a character levels up, you are shown a stat-distribution screen to use your stat points. In the past versions, you would only be given five points per level up; however, the new version gives the player seven points, making the game significantly easier. Similar to most games that allow the player to distribute their stats, this system makes for interesting build options. I was actually caught between a Speed build and a Defense build. In the end, I decided that I would achieve invincibility through defense.

Money that you receive through battles can be spent on new skills, armor, or weapons. These skills vary from stronger offensive techniques to fancy support skills.

No matter the selected character build, fights are generally very balanced, making sure that the player won't be able to breeze through the game while making sure that the player can actually beat it at all. As you progress, you gain access to a variety of colorful (and useful) new skills. Battles are also designed so that even if you have to power level a little bit, you won get bored as fast, due to a stunning variety of monsters to face. In fact, I enjoyed just about every fight except for one. Which one? This one:

In this fight, you're facing a tornado, right? Well, it's impossible to touch it and your only option is to run away. In fact, at this time, this battle seems completely useless.

All of the characters in this game have very clearly defined personalities. Although they may not have the most complex personalities, they are consistent enough to make their interactions enjoyable to watch. The dialogues are also done quite well, as they are free of grammar and spelling errors and present enough information to be understood, but not so much that the player becomes confused.

In the course of the demo, the player is able to play in the shoes of three characters. Although they start off in different positions, it almost seems as if their stories all tie together. However, as of now, the player is given little tidbits of the entire story but not enough to understand what the heck is going on. Fortunately, this is only a matter of content, so the next release should easily fill the player in on the big story of the game.

Stenmele is a masterful example of an ideal OHR game. Play it NOW.