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Ends of the Earth vs. Iblis
Ends of the Earth Boring pointless information of doom
Download: 1.61 MB
Play Time: 3 hours and 30 minutes
Review # 4 for Iblis Boring pointless information of doom
Them's Fightin' Words
    People were ecstatic when this game was first released. Why? Because it was completed in an era where that simply did not happen. To a bunch of people who constantly play games that are not and never will be finished, this was miraculous.

But I'm afraid that doesn't change the fact that this game isn't worth playing. There's simply nothing outstanding about it except that it's complete. Maybe it was good in 1999, but it just doesn't stand up to what's being produced today.
    Some of the maptiles and attacks are relatively good. I liked the later towns in the game, though the buildings were a little dark for my taste. Concorde was kind of cool. The forests were decent enough, but got kinda monotonous after seeing the same stuff over and over again. Also most of the maptiles used way too much airbrush for my tastes (though my taste says that NO airbrush should be used so it may not be a problem for you).

I did NOT like the walkabouts. Not at all. I'll admit that part of this is just cause the sprites are very much not a style that I like, but I just don't think they work in this case. They're kinda supposed to be more "realistically" proportioned than, say, Final Fantasy, but considering that most of the creatures in this game are weird non-human things I just don't think it works. Most of the sprites look like weird colored blotches of stuff and you can't make out many features. If they were a more deformed style and had the giant heads then we might be able to tell what some of the people were supposed to look like. The heroes mostly look okay though, they're not quite as freakish.

Hero and enemy sprites were fine. Nothing special, really. Backdrops were mixed. Some of them looked pretty good and some of them looked like garbage.
You're the only centaur in your village and you go off to find another one. You notice something's wrong when you see the main character is named "Centaurus." You're sure that you just read it wrong, but you look again and there it is. Confused, you decide that he must have had some extraordinarily boring parents. You continue on your journey and find a minotaur-guy named Azalahad. You're relieved to find that his name is not Minotaurus. But, once again you're confused as every text-box refers to him as "Alzahad." He says that he saw a centaur, and despite being chained up he was able to discern that the centaur went east.

You go east and eventually end up at a water town. A fish-person-thing named Equuis joins your party because the townspeople are mean to him. You leave the town through a mysterious escape tunnel in his house and head north, because the other centaur went that way or something. You go north and then go to the flying city "Concorde" because that's the only place you can go. Some people say the centaur is talking to the prince, Areolys, and you go there and the centaur, Caramawn, makes you fight some monster and then leaves. The prince joins you because he is lonely.

You go back down to the surface to follow Caramawn. You try to cross a bridge but there are some griffins blocking the way because they like to. They demand a sacrifice of one of your party members and you give up Areolys because he's a weak useless lump. The griffins use the body in a cruel practical joke on the citizens of Concorde. Or maybe you give up Azalahad or Equuis because you have no sense. The griffins flip you off and call you an idiot.

Then there are some zombies and a summoner and a dragon and after this point nothing makes sense and you just quit the damned game. The end.

Aside from a couple jokes, all of that is true. I don't know how the same person who made "Azalahad," "Equuis," and "Areolys" came up with "Centaurus," "Shadow" (a ninja), and "Archangel" (an angel). Of course, quite it's possible that all of them are just as uncreative and I simply don't know where the former three are from.

Having to sacrifice one hero is completely stupid. The only reason they did it is so you'd have an even four when Archangel joins you and then another even four when Shadow pops in at the end for no damn reason. And there is no reason to sacrifice anyone except Areolys, which is kinda sad since you just took him from his city a short time ago. Azalahad and Equuis are already on higher levels and it'd be a waste of time levelling up Areolys when you already have them. Of course, the game is a waste of time anyway, so no big loss I guess.

Caramawn is a stupid villian. He wants to destroy the world and never really gives a reason. He's just evil because he likes it I guess. The ending is one of the worst I have ever seen. It's completely unsatisfying.

The dialogue is just as terrible as the story, perhaps even more so. I'm sure you can already see that from the upper-right screenshot. A large number of NPCs say something along the lines of "Welcome to _____." When characters join your party, they might as well just say "LOL JOIN PARTY!!1" cause that's about as much reason as they have. All important story dialogue is boring and all regular NPC dialogue is pointless AND boring.
    Random note cause I have nothing else to put here: there's a piece of equipment (Swift boots, I think) that raises your speed by 200. Seriously. And your speed was already around 80 or 90 at this point in the game. So you go pretty damn fast. At least it's better than too slow.  
    Nothing spectacular here. Each character has an ability set based on what element they are. They have some offensive moves and some healing moves. How much MP is required for a skill doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how good it is. Battles are dull. There is nothing innovative or interesting about them.

There are some good points about the battles. Skill tend to do more damage than regular attacks (however some skills that take zero MP are way better than regular attacks). The speed is set high (WAY TOO FREAKING HIGH, actually) so the battles are boring but generally go by quickly.
  Map Design
    Towns are small and boring and the only places you need to go are shops and any houses that have new characters. Dungeons are small and linear and boring, which the exception of this one huge castle thing. That one is huge and boring.  
    This one is varied. In the beginning the only way you can reasonably win fights is by getting a secret character in the first town (if anyone doesn't know how, feel free to ask me). The secret character rains doom down upon everything in your way and without him you would die constantly. With him it's really easy, and you can level up much easier.

The secret character leaves after a while and by that time the balance is really easy. This lasts for a long time until you fight a giant suit of armor. That fight is way too hard because you do 100-200 damage with each hit and it can heal itself over 1000 HP. It took me forever to beat that stupid thing. And it wasn't the fun kind of challenging, it was just long. However, this might have partly been because I had the secret character at the beginning and didn't have to level up as much. So, if you for some reason download this game and don't get the secret character, this boss may be easier cause you'd be on a higher level. After that point the game is easy again. The last boss can be defeated by only using the regular attack and never healing yourself. It's a quick battle.

You get very little experience. Sometimes I took older characters out of my party so I could increase the amount the newer characters got to level them up faster. It still happened pretty slowly most of the time.
    It was largely original, I believe. One BAM packaged with the OHR was used in the intro sequences but I think that's the only one that wasn't original. However, the music wasn't particularly good. One of the two battle themes was kind of exciting and good, and the other one was dull and crappy. The victory music was pretty bad. Most of the songs are pretty repetetive and boring, but I recall that a few were decent enough (the song from the forest/town you start in, for example). I'd have prefered some good ripped music, myself.  
    I kind of enjoyed the part where I had the secret character and killed everything. But after that the game just drug on and I only went through the whole thing cause I wanted to review it and lower its grade which is WAY TOO HIGH.  
Final Blows
    I guess this game just didn't age too well. I know it's supposed to be a classic, but I'm afraid it massively sucks. Sorry.

For those who're going to tell me that I "don't understand it" or some nonsense because I didn't play it when it first released, I say that I in fact DID play it when it was first released. I didn't understand all the hype back then either, and the only reason it's still rated so well is because of the nostalgia factor, and cause people think they need to be nice to it cause it's so old.
Kind of a weird looking backdrop

Kind of a weird looking backdrop
Final Scores
Graphics: 6/10.0
Some of this was good enough, but nothing worth any real praise
Storyline: 1/10.0
Vomit inducing horror
Gameplay: 1.5/10.0
Dull and repetitive
Music: 3/10.0
Original, but not in a good way
Enjoyment: 1.5/10.0
Do you even need to ask?
Overall Grade: F+
Final Thoughts
    Don't waste your time on this crap.  

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