Developer: Jaime Paz Lopes
Publisher: Jaime Paz Lopes
Available on: PC
Tested on: PC
Bleeding Sun – Review
Bleeding Sun is an Indie RPG game made by independent Brazilian game developer Jaime Paz Lopes. After having some time of experience in the industry, he thought it was time for a game of his own. The game is made with RPG-Maker and it is the first title he created.
Story
The story of Bleeding Sun all revolves around Yori Takenaka. He lived on an island with his father and the other members of the Takenaka household and he had a happy childhood. Until everything changed when Ichiro, an enemy of Yori’s father showed up with a powerful evil witch called Chiyo. Yori’s father and his friends were defeated but when Ichiro wanted to lay his hands on Yori, the ninja Tsuru got in the way and took Yori and his friend Kenzou and escaped with them. Unfortunately, it was too late to save Yori’s father so he died. Fifteen years after these events, Yori returned to his family’s lands to face his father’s killer.
The story progresses in the form of six acts. When one act ends, you will get a summary of your decisions and then it will continue with the next act. All these decisions affect the outcome of the final Act and all these decisions can lead to six different endings. Every decision will reward you with an active or passive skill that you can use in the rest of the game. For example, when killing the first ghost-like enemy, you have the choice to kill it or absorb its power. By absorbing its power you gain a new attack that deals a considerable amount of damage.
Graphics
The graphics of Bleeding Sun are comparable to that of games on the Nintendo Gameboy Advance. If you look at it purely graphics-wise, it looks a bit like the old generation of Pokémon games. The graphics are not great, but it’s not the most important aspect of this game. This game is played more for its story than for its graphics. Animations of attacks aren’t spectacular but they’ll do for this type of game. Only the pictures of the character speaking when in dialogue are drawn well and look good.
Sound
The music and sounds played in Bleeding Sun sound like they’re from Japanese RPG games. Many sounds are exactly like games from the Naruto franchise, especially the clicking sounds. These sounds fit the genre and setting of the game but if you’ve played some of the games from the Naruto series you’ll notice the resemblance. There are only a few tracks available and when you’re walking through the lands of the Takenaka family, these sounds will easily begin to annoy you as it will always be the same. The fighting tunes are also the same in every battle.
Gameplay
Bleeding Sun is an Indie RPG game with turn-based battles. One of the best points of this game is the ease at which this game can be played. This game can be played entirely by only using your mouse. Every option can be accessed with only a few clicks with the mouse. You can enter the menu by clicking the right mouse button and then access your inventory, equipment save games options etc. your character moves by clicking the place you want to get to and It will automatically walk to that point. In combat, you can choose your commands by clicking on the preferred skill and then click the opponent you want to attack. Cancelling a command can be done by clicking with the right mouse button.
There is a bug in combat. Often, the opponent’s health isn’t shown and you’ll have no idea how much impact your attacks will have. This happens randomly so it isn’t clear if this is intentional or not.
Eventually, you’ll have four characters to control. These all have different types of attacks and have other requirements to use them. First, your own character, Yori Takenaka can use his skills at free will but will have a cooldown after usage. He has a large number of damaging skills available and fighting with this character gives no problems at all.
The second character, a monk-like warrior called Kenzou who has lost one arm uses a barrier to protect himself and your other characters and uses the power of his barrier to attack. He uses a skill to regenerate his barrier. When this barrier is fully drained or has little power left, this skill will be used instantly and a second attack can be used to either attack or protect. This character functions great in combat.
The ninja character, Tsuru uses equipment to use ninja-like skills. Equipment will generate after a fight is won. But a skill has to be used multiple times in one battle to even win the battle and only one or two skill equipment will be regained after winning a battle so you will eventually have none left and need to find a place to rest to recover all of them. This means backtracking to a place with a bed or tent and this means you need to leave the area you were exploring. If you don’t, this character will eventually only be able to use his basic attack and this doesn’t cause a lot of damage.
The last character, an elder mage called Haruki uses spells to attack enemies and heal allies. This character uses crystals to attack and healing items to utilize his healing and protective skills. These won’t be found everywhere and need to be farmed for quite some time to have enough of them to be used in battle. When you don’t have any of these left, this character becomes completely useless as he doesn’t even have a basic attack move. The only thing he can do at this point is guard and he won’t even be attacked by your opponents.
Some items like healing potions can be crafted at character houses. Some items like crystals need to be collected in a mine or as a drop from winning a battle. Later, a person can be given the task to work in the mine to collect crystals for you, but this collecting of crystals and crafting of potions will take a few minutes to complete each, prolonging the time you spend playing this game with a few hours.
Conclusion
Bleeding Sun is a simple RPG made with RPG Maker. It is the developer’s first game and seeing that it’s his first, it’s not so bad. Sure some characters need to be improved because, for example, the mage Haruki will be useless when you are out of crystals. The story can be amusing to experience. The game is somewhat short as the game features 3-4 hours of campaign. But the necessary grind for items to use skills can easily lead you to spend more time with this game. A great first game and with some improvement in character development, it could be even better. If you like a simple RPG game, with multiple endings depending on your choices this could be a fun game to play for a reasonable price.
Bleeding Sun - Review,
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