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February 18th 2014, 07:40 PM
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Cocomonkey
Bard He/Him United States
Please Cindy, say the whole name each time. 
096: Milderr!! 2: The Adventure in Finland Author: Sharp Release Date: March 21, 2001

As promised, Milder FlatStomp travels to Finland, home of the evil Sharp. This is the first time a DMOD has been set in a real-world location, unless you count End of Time's apparent assertion that Windermere is located in Asia. That map is a nice touch.

Milderr!! 2 is much better than the original in that it's not so broken you can barely do anything. Indeed, apart from some hardness errors and a LOT of depth que problems, everything seems to work as intended, which is nice. It has the same weird drawbridge building exits, but this time you can't simply walk around them and mess up the game.

Although the game doesn't present this clearly to the player, the gameplay here consists of a series of tiny objectives you have to complete before the way to fight Sharp will reveal itself. Some of these are as simple as talking to a person, but they're all independent of one another. It's an interesting format for a small RPG/adventure game, actually, although not much is done with it here, and it's kind of disappointing that there's no way to really know that's what's going on without consulting a walkthrough. Examples of things you have to do include fetching some wine for a person with a drinking problem, helping somebody remember what their name is, perform a funeral, and fetch a "bokkomon" (pokémon) for a kid.

I was surprised by the relatively large amount of content in this DMOD, at least in terms of text. The Finnish cities and regions represented each have several buildings to enter (except Lapland, which seems to have an unfortunate problem with trees growing right in front of doors - I'd heard there was a lot of forest in Finland, but this is ridiculous), and there's almost always someone to talk to inside, even if they don't have too much to say.

Unlike last time, there's some combat here. You'll obtain the fireball spell and use it to fight Sharp. There are some boncas wandering around, and for the Hell of it, I fought enough of them to get to level 4. You can use the gold to purchase this this incredibly helpful (not really) guide to disguise.

The biggest problem with "Milderr!! 2" is that in order to shape the map roughly like Finland (very roughly - the country's many large lakes are not represented, which is fine), there's a lot of empty space. There are screens that are completely empty - no sprites, not even a non-grass tile. What's worse, some objectives will require you to trek back and forth across the wide expanse, which is a drag. Another downside is that there are so many long pauses - waits of several seconds are common, as are sprites that stop everything to move at a speed of 1 and come in from way off screen. Many times I thought the game had frozen up, but actually I was just being made to wait ten seconds or more. Also, it's possible to get into a failure state, and I doubt I'd have finished without the walkthrough, as at one point you must talk to a tree without any indication this is so.

Still, I found this one interesting enough that I wouldn't call it a total waste of time. It's not well-made, but there's a savage cynicism to it that is bolder and more shocking than any DMOD so far. Slaves are casually sold without anybody understanding what your problem with this might be. A girl at a bar offers Milder drinks until he falls asleep, and then apparently rapes him. You find a man claiming his daughter has psychological problems, and it turns out her problem is that she's a serial murderer. It's bizarre and oddly, kind of witty, although I didn't really laugh out loud. It makes me think that Sharp would be an interesting person to know.

Oh, speaking of Sharp, she escapes. A bunch of other characters join Milder and talk about how they'll have to have another part. They all turn to face the player (well, sorta), and say, "I think that big face is watching us. It looks disappointed." Maybe if I hadn't played the original that'd be true, but as it is, this wasn't so bad.