Friends Beyond 1
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- Author(s): Wesley McElwee
- Categories: D-Mod, Romp
- Downloads: 441
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Storyline: After having finished this D-mod I was still wondering what the story is about. You can search for some blue flowers to help a sick kid and find a light sword to stop an angry girl. But those did not enlighten me to why I should do that or what was the meaning of it.
Map and graphics: The map is quite big, but decorated beautifully. There are new monsters in this game: some sort of pillbugs (they do not look like pillbugs, but act like them) which look very good and some blobs which look also very good.
Music: The music is good.
Good: You can press R to walk faster; depending on how strong you are, you can run for a certain time and after that you will automatically walk at normal speed again. But you have to read the controls.txt to know that this feature even exists – this should have been explained in the game itself.
Not so good: The most irritating thing about this D-mod – apart from the bugs – is the fact that there is no story what so ever. Sure, you can do two things, but that is it. I was left in the dark as to what this is all about or why I should walk huge distances back and forth to accomplish eventually nothing at all. You do not see the results of your actions. You can fight monsters until you drop dead, but that does not add anything. So the gameplay in this D-mod is zero. And the walking gets boring really quick. The map, although it looks beautiful, is way too big for the couple of things that you can do. The screenlocks with the slimes in the first caves and on the screen in the second caves (before the note) did not unlock. And there are no savebots before the screenlocks, so you have to go back to your last saved game and since that savebot is no where near those screenlocks, you can again do some serious walking.
Remark: Since I had no clue what to do, I finally checked the walkthrough. At first I thought I had the wrong walkthrough or the wrong D-mod, but that was not the fact. And after I had read the other reviews I was even more confused, since it really looks like we are all talking (including the walkthrough) about other D-mods. In the walkthrough it says something about fairies and a dead man, but I never saw those, since I met an angry girl and a sick boy in the D-mod – but those are not mentioned in the walkthrough. And in one of the reviews I read something about a scorpion, which I never saw, and something about sound effects, which I never heard.
Overall: No gameplay, no story, no fun.
Fit for: If you want to have a look at a beautiful map.
Map and graphics: The map is quite big, but decorated beautifully. There are new monsters in this game: some sort of pillbugs (they do not look like pillbugs, but act like them) which look very good and some blobs which look also very good.
Music: The music is good.
Good: You can press R to walk faster; depending on how strong you are, you can run for a certain time and after that you will automatically walk at normal speed again. But you have to read the controls.txt to know that this feature even exists – this should have been explained in the game itself.
Not so good: The most irritating thing about this D-mod – apart from the bugs – is the fact that there is no story what so ever. Sure, you can do two things, but that is it. I was left in the dark as to what this is all about or why I should walk huge distances back and forth to accomplish eventually nothing at all. You do not see the results of your actions. You can fight monsters until you drop dead, but that does not add anything. So the gameplay in this D-mod is zero. And the walking gets boring really quick. The map, although it looks beautiful, is way too big for the couple of things that you can do. The screenlocks with the slimes in the first caves and on the screen in the second caves (before the note) did not unlock. And there are no savebots before the screenlocks, so you have to go back to your last saved game and since that savebot is no where near those screenlocks, you can again do some serious walking.
Remark: Since I had no clue what to do, I finally checked the walkthrough. At first I thought I had the wrong walkthrough or the wrong D-mod, but that was not the fact. And after I had read the other reviews I was even more confused, since it really looks like we are all talking (including the walkthrough) about other D-mods. In the walkthrough it says something about fairies and a dead man, but I never saw those, since I met an angry girl and a sick boy in the D-mod – but those are not mentioned in the walkthrough. And in one of the reviews I read something about a scorpion, which I never saw, and something about sound effects, which I never heard.
Overall: No gameplay, no story, no fun.
Fit for: If you want to have a look at a beautiful map.
When I first played the original FB I was very disappointed. It had nothing interesting in it and I thought it was a bad start for a trilogy. However, this remake sheds a whole new light on the d-mod. It's the perfect romp you might say. Then again, I wouldn't really call it a romp, which will become clear throughout this review.
The map is slightly more decorated than the usual FB map, but still isn't on par with many others. It didn't really disturb me this time around though, but that may be due to the new enemy appearance scripts, which succeeds in filling the screen multiple times. You have a one on four chance of an enemy not appearing on a screen. Unfortunately, this is the origin for a nasty bug which is in the game. Screenlocks are done away with by killing pillbugs. But, if that pillbug happens to be left out due to the random factor you won't be able to get out of the screenlock anymore. I quickly wrote my own 3-line key triggered script to get past it. Next to that, other things I can say about the map is that it's complex and features a lot of height differences, which can be considered a plus in this case. There are also a lot of labyrinths, both in caves and ordinary plains. They're extremely well laid out and require some insight to get through. There are secrets spread out all over the map, but you'll have to look very closely to find them, some are even unnoticable without burning some trees.
The plot is very thin, a strange thing to start a trilogy with, but it succeeds in driving the player to the end. All there is to it, is the introduction of the main bad guy in the trilogy. You don't even get to fight her. There's only one quest and a pretty simple one. The dialogue is scarce and feels as if it shouldn't even be there. The NPCs in town are nothing more than decoration you might say. Overall you shouldn't play this d-mod for the story, but if you wish to play the other parts of the trilogy it's a good start.
On to the graphics then. There are some new graphics in FB1.5 and they're very well done. They consist mostly out of enemies, but there are also some new inventory graphics and decoration. Wesley also added a small technology test to show off a mirror. It's not very fast to mirror things, but as he said it's an interesting idea and it needs some adjustments. As a last graphics example he included a real fade in animation, one which doesn't look bad, but can run a little slowly on older computers.
There's only one thing I can say about the music. It's absolutely gorgeous and sets the mood in every part. The only downside is that the music often stops and there aren't many screens that reset it.
There are only a few new sound effects, but high quality ones. The title screen uses two of these and I must say I really got the idea the theme of the title screen was "water". Sweet!
The difficulty of the d-mod could be rated as medium if you spend your time leveling up and searching for secrets. If you don't do this I predict it can become rather difficult, but only in situations with a screenlock.
So what's the conclusion? This shouldn't be called a romp, but a quest. The map's far too large for a romp and the new graphics aid in placing it out of the category in my opinion.
So, as long as this is called a romp, it will be the best romp so far. I'll review my score if it ever gets promoted to quest, but this is my temporary decision.
MAP : 8.5/10
GRAPHICS : 9/10
STORY : 4/10
SOUND : 10/10
INNOVATION : 8.5/10
OVERALL (Not necessarily an average) : 9.2/10
The map is slightly more decorated than the usual FB map, but still isn't on par with many others. It didn't really disturb me this time around though, but that may be due to the new enemy appearance scripts, which succeeds in filling the screen multiple times. You have a one on four chance of an enemy not appearing on a screen. Unfortunately, this is the origin for a nasty bug which is in the game. Screenlocks are done away with by killing pillbugs. But, if that pillbug happens to be left out due to the random factor you won't be able to get out of the screenlock anymore. I quickly wrote my own 3-line key triggered script to get past it. Next to that, other things I can say about the map is that it's complex and features a lot of height differences, which can be considered a plus in this case. There are also a lot of labyrinths, both in caves and ordinary plains. They're extremely well laid out and require some insight to get through. There are secrets spread out all over the map, but you'll have to look very closely to find them, some are even unnoticable without burning some trees.
The plot is very thin, a strange thing to start a trilogy with, but it succeeds in driving the player to the end. All there is to it, is the introduction of the main bad guy in the trilogy. You don't even get to fight her. There's only one quest and a pretty simple one. The dialogue is scarce and feels as if it shouldn't even be there. The NPCs in town are nothing more than decoration you might say. Overall you shouldn't play this d-mod for the story, but if you wish to play the other parts of the trilogy it's a good start.
On to the graphics then. There are some new graphics in FB1.5 and they're very well done. They consist mostly out of enemies, but there are also some new inventory graphics and decoration. Wesley also added a small technology test to show off a mirror. It's not very fast to mirror things, but as he said it's an interesting idea and it needs some adjustments. As a last graphics example he included a real fade in animation, one which doesn't look bad, but can run a little slowly on older computers.
There's only one thing I can say about the music. It's absolutely gorgeous and sets the mood in every part. The only downside is that the music often stops and there aren't many screens that reset it.
There are only a few new sound effects, but high quality ones. The title screen uses two of these and I must say I really got the idea the theme of the title screen was "water". Sweet!
The difficulty of the d-mod could be rated as medium if you spend your time leveling up and searching for secrets. If you don't do this I predict it can become rather difficult, but only in situations with a screenlock.
So what's the conclusion? This shouldn't be called a romp, but a quest. The map's far too large for a romp and the new graphics aid in placing it out of the category in my opinion.
So, as long as this is called a romp, it will be the best romp so far. I'll review my score if it ever gets promoted to quest, but this is my temporary decision.
MAP : 8.5/10
GRAPHICS : 9/10
STORY : 4/10
SOUND : 10/10
INNOVATION : 8.5/10
OVERALL (Not necessarily an average) : 9.2/10
After my 4 (and a half) year absence, I was able to download and play this game almost as if I hadn't written it. I didn't really remember the specifics of how to even beat it, so I feel that I can fairly review it myself objectively.
There is virtually no story as a stand alone game. The "ending" is almost non-existant especially if you don't play through the other games in the series.
Graphics are all pretty standard. I did ad a new pillbug type enemy that has pincers and moves around. Not the most impressive little things, but it gives a fresher look than just having stronger pillbugs walking around.
The secrets are numerous and at times hard to find. This is a good thing though because if you do get many secrets, the game is laughably easy. The final boss put up almost no fight.
One thing that really stuck out was how much walking around there is to do. I think the game would have been stronger with a smaller map. When you have to walk to town, then search around for items to pick up and then town, then the forest... you get the point. Walking for 2 minutes (approx) to get accross the map with nothing but your destination is sight gets boring.
All things considered, while I had reworked the Dmod in as version 1.5, it was still largely based on FB 1.0 which was my first attempt ever at a Dmod, and in that respect it isn't a bad effort. Ver 1.5 improved on several things and increased the play time significantly while introducing several bugs which were mostly taken care of in Ver 2.0.
There is virtually no story as a stand alone game. The "ending" is almost non-existant especially if you don't play through the other games in the series.
Graphics are all pretty standard. I did ad a new pillbug type enemy that has pincers and moves around. Not the most impressive little things, but it gives a fresher look than just having stronger pillbugs walking around.
The secrets are numerous and at times hard to find. This is a good thing though because if you do get many secrets, the game is laughably easy. The final boss put up almost no fight.
One thing that really stuck out was how much walking around there is to do. I think the game would have been stronger with a smaller map. When you have to walk to town, then search around for items to pick up and then town, then the forest... you get the point. Walking for 2 minutes (approx) to get accross the map with nothing but your destination is sight gets boring.
All things considered, while I had reworked the Dmod in as version 1.5, it was still largely based on FB 1.0 which was my first attempt ever at a Dmod, and in that respect it isn't a bad effort. Ver 1.5 improved on several things and increased the play time significantly while introducing several bugs which were mostly taken care of in Ver 2.0.
This dmod was difficult to get through. Not because the story and the puzzles were difficult, but because of the bugs. The screenlocks refused to unlock after I defeated the enemies. And the game froze twice on me. As has been said, the storyline was rather thin. Download this at your own risk.
I really don't think this D-mod can actually be finished. There is a lot of walking around and not much happening. You get piss bored. I'm not trying to bash the guy who made it, but he should have played the thing or SOMETHING. There are bugs constantly throughout the game. I found myself trying to fix them as I went, but eventually I just got fed up and quit. There is a lot of potential in this mod, I downloaded it because it sounded interesting, but I think the creater really needs to revise and tighten it up. So overall I will give this D-mod an F for playability, a D for effort, and an A for creativity. So you get the idea.
I never played the first release version, so I come to this DMOD fresh. Overall I had a disappointing time. And I stopped playing after getting the lucky charm from the duck... there is no up-to-date walkthru for ver 1.5, and I can't be bothered reading the .c files to find out what I should be doing - and that is my greatest problem with this DMOD. Not enough people to talk to, so they can remind you what you're doing, or at least entertain you. Music stops and you can spend a lot of time walking around in silence - which just adds to the bordem factor.
Pluses - I think the detail in the map work is good. New monster graphics, which is nice. A few new other graphics. There are added functions, but unless you look in the fb1 folder you want know about these - so a plus for putting them in and a minus for not telling the player in an intro screen.
Minuses - Boring gameplay. A few hardness bugs. Quite screens.
Overall a 6.0 - maybe I'll go back and look at the .c files one day and figure out what I have to do to finish the game, but at this point I can't be bothered - not enough in this game to entice me to do this.
Pluses - I think the detail in the map work is good. New monster graphics, which is nice. A few new other graphics. There are added functions, but unless you look in the fb1 folder you want know about these - so a plus for putting them in and a minus for not telling the player in an intro screen.
Minuses - Boring gameplay. A few hardness bugs. Quite screens.
Overall a 6.0 - maybe I'll go back and look at the .c files one day and figure out what I have to do to finish the game, but at this point I can't be bothered - not enough in this game to entice me to do this.
To be entirely honest, I think I preferred this D-Mod before it was remade. The map was too big in the previous version - and this D-Mod makes it even larger, more sparse and requires multiple treks across it.
On the plus side, it includes new monster types, some slick presentation and some cool ideas, however these really seem more suited to a more focused D-Mod. Also, the only things that makes the game hard to finish are the bugs.
It is a good D-Mod, however I feel that the remake not only over-inflates the game, but also detracts from the value of the trilogy as a whole.
On the plus side, it includes new monster types, some slick presentation and some cool ideas, however these really seem more suited to a more focused D-Mod. Also, the only things that makes the game hard to finish are the bugs.
It is a good D-Mod, however I feel that the remake not only over-inflates the game, but also detracts from the value of the trilogy as a whole.
