Final Fantasy: Endless Nova was programmed mainly by a single person, using an RPG Maker program. Seeing this, I immediately downloaded the game. I was expecting a lot of great material to write a nasty review with, but I was shocked to find one of the best games I've downloaded at abandonia thus far. Truly the only game I've enjoyed more would have to be Civ2, and they had a fully staffed development team! At first glance Endless Nova seems like just another old style FF game, most resembling FF2. Young blonde man with a sword? Check. Girl with amnesia? Check. Evil Emperor out to seize all power in the galaxy? Check. What, then, sets this game apart from the others?
First of all, 'leveling up' is a thing of the past. Endless Nova encorporates a system where each individual attribute has different requirements that must be met in order to have a chance of rising after a battle. Want to increase Hit points? Show you need them by losing almost all of them during the fight! Need more speed? End the battle by running away! Does it sound a little like the NES FF2? There's a key difference that seperates this awesome game from that broken one: You cannot attack your own party members. This simple adjustment eliminates all the cheap methods for gaining ridiculous amounts of power that we saw in FF2, and ensures that you must fight monsters that can actually hurt you if you want to improve your HP & VIT. The entire system adds a second layer of depth to battle strategy by making it necessary to not only defeat the monsters, but also to carefully plan how you will fight in order to best train your fighters.
Cryna Orbs! These items, unique to Endless Nova, allows you to trap the magical power of your enemies and learn their spells permanently. Somewhat similar to the draw system of FF8, perhaps, but unlike that shoddy game you can never lose a spell once you've learned it. You may be surprised to hear that these powerful orbs are sold in common item shops... but believe me, the costs of buying enough orbs to learn good spells can add up. Which brings me to my next point,
Gil shortage!!! In general you will be short of gil during this game, making it necessary for you to decide carefully what kind of equipment you will need. Is a best defense the way to go? Maybe you need more power? Or blow it on cryna orbs because magic is awesome? A shortage of gil makes the gil precious, and adds yet another crucial element that you'll need to be thinking about during the game.
Warriors in mage robes!? It's all possible. A warrior can wear the lightest mage equipment, and a magic user can wear the heaviest armor. There are three types of armor: Vests, Robes, and Battle Armor. Each gives priority to a different attribute: Speed, Magic, or Defense. It's up to you to decide what your characters need the most, and this customization feature is a handy perk to consider.
The level design, while generally not very large, is always creative. You'll be sliding around on ice floes (literally) hopping from stone to stone over magma pits, avoiding mobile sand traps, rushing frantically to get to pockets of oxygen, and much more. There are also a few puzzles in some of the levels.
Aside from these great features, the game comes with all the standards. Each of the characters has a character specific talent that complements their personality. There are hidden and hard to get to chests and treasures EVERYWHERE, and there are small side quests for your characters later in the game.
So what are the negatives? Few, that's what. Take a moment to prepare for the worst one... you ready?
Bad Spelling and Grammer!!! Heh... you know I'm digging deep when that's all I can come up with. It seems pretty obvious that english is not the first language of the programmer, but it seldom disrupts the game. I guess I can also complain that all the music has been ripped off of other games, but honestly... why don't YOU try composing and recording over 20 new, good scores of music.
This really was one of the best games I've played from this site, and I highly recommend it to all other players, I give it a perfect score of 5/5.
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