Pros:
-Nice and cute, very friendly feeling dungeon crawler
-Not too much complexity to the game
Cons:
-Distracting mouse placement in chats
-Not much to the game
-Very fast paced with little-to-no guidance or tool-tips
I was given the wonderful opportunity to review this game which I had heard a little bit about before in the past. I looked more into it and found out that it was originally a game on PlayStation 2, which I thought was really cool and made wonder how good it would be on PC. From the first bit of the game, I played I liked it!
It was cute, simple (to an extent), and was a good game to just put on and play if you were bored. Anyone could play it and enjoy it. I liked many aspects of it; like the art, music, and dialog. They all just suited the game and it didn’t feel like the game was trying to hard to be something it wasn’t. Though like all games it has its flaws which will be covered later.
A nice thing about the game is that it has very little requirements in order for it to be played on PC. The game is so simple and nice that al you basically need os a working computer with some storage and I would most likely play!
Zwei is a nice and simple RPG mixed with dungeon crawler (but with additional puzzles in the mix). The game itself does not have much complexity besides that but its own plot. The plot follows the PlayStation 2 version of the game wherein a world with mysterious floating islands was a peaceful place until demons fought mankind in the great sorcery war. There were six demon lords who were opposed to one another; the two goddesses Aplyes and Espina.
It was five hundred years before the war ended because of the princess of the kingdom of Vance, Tiara, and her crusader Paradys. Another five hundred years later and we are now following the two fourteen-year-olds (Pipiro and Pokeke) of the town Puck, who one day see a mysterious man in a mask appear and steal the six idols of their villages temple. They then get permission from the town’s mayor to go out and pursue the thief.
The story and game itself weren’t bad at all. Zwei: The Arges Adventure was nice and cute and very straight to the point. It had a nice phone RPG/Dungeon crawler vibe to it almost. It had unique twists that made it different from others, for example, there was the system for leveling up. In order to level up in the game, it wasn’t based on what you killed in a dungeon, but what you ate and combinations of them.
Food and items you would get out of a dungeon are what gave you experience in order to level up, and when you had multiples of the same item you could take them into the Puck restaurant and combine them for more impact and recovery when ingested.
Just like in Monster Hunter and other RPG type games, in this game, you also did get an animal sidekick that would help you out and you could give commands. You would get your pet fairly early in the game, which is good and helps with each battle in the game. You could put the pet on defensive or offensive modes depending on what you were needing.
Battle in the game was fairly odd and interesting for a PC game. With battles, you would enter a dungeon and then you could choose who you were playing as (you could switch characters in the dungeon as well) Either Pipiro who had long ranged magic attack or poke with short ranged attacks. Attacks were not turn based but were instead just push a button and you would attack the enemy you were closest to.
It was not what I was expecting from a PC game at all, you would most likely see this in a mobile RPG game. It’s not a bad way of battle at all if anything it gives it a nice relaxed and hack ‘n’ slash feel. Another interesting thing was that in battle your life gauge is just heart that is broken up into quarters and they are easily drained making battles pretty tough at all levels.
Something that did make the game nice and unique was that the commentary is funny and interesting. Not much to say here besides every chat has its perks. Either you’re gaining an item, reading a funny chat, or you’re getting a mission. The chat and texts were different from most games because they were either just nice and cute funny or were roasts about characters in a relatable way. Conversations between characters didn’t feel like the creators were trying too hard to make them work, but in the end, they came out right.
Music in Zwei: The Arges Adventure is cute and friendly, which fits the game perfectly. The music was simple (just like the rest of the game) But that’s what made it perfect for the game. With changes in locations, the music would change with it and would be fitting. It was almost always serene music that would be calming and simplistic. It just fit the overall theme of the game nicely.
A bit generic though, but also expected. The music did fit the game and don’t get me wrong, but even that was super generic. It was music that you would hear for any other game of this type, I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece soundtrack, but there wasn’t anything that made it special from others.
The game had a simple and cute look, which consisted of a nice and bright pixel look. Its fitting art for the game and reminded me of the art of a phone RPG game. Though the art for the cover art and other things like that remind me of the art for the older dot hack games. (they are kinda similar, but also not really)
Cutscenes are quite different though, the cut scenes had more of an odd feel to it. It had some CGI aspects to it for parts while also having just regular 2D art for other parts (all simultaneously). They were also fairly short which surprised me because most cutscenes in RPGs take forever, which was nice. Other than the nice brief cut scenes, they were more often than not odd and slightly weird. I just did not like them that much but others might.
All games have flaws but this one had more than I would have been ok with for a game that was being rebooted for PC. The flaws were ju super distracting and made it kind of hard to make progress through the game. In the Zwei: The Arges Adventure, the dialog was good and funny, but it would be hard to focus on it due to text and mouse cursor. In the game no matter what you did the game would always have the cursor on the text bubble and it would be flashing on the corner.
I did everything I could to make it not be there, but it would always be there and blinking (not matter if you are using a keyboard, controller, or mouse to play it’s gonna be there). Another issue I noticed was that the mouse would also kinda glitch across the screen in the background outside of the game window depending on which way I was walking. It would happen for a little bit but would always eventually stop, but was a bit odd at first.
Missions are super important and sometimes you can’t help but get sidetracked and lose focus. One issue though was that once your mission was assigned there was no way to find it again once they told you. I would get a mission and play for a bit and leave or get sidetracked and I wouldn’t be able to go to the menu for a reminder. It just wasn’t there! I even went to the person who would assign missions and try to ask them for the mission but they wouldn’t have anything to say to help remind me. It was a little irritating but made it a good reason to just binge the game in one go.
Battle was already covered but there were aspects that made it hard to play nonetheless. I had difficulties and would repeatedly die because the life gauge was not much and attacks would be random. I wouldn’t be able to tell who was attacking me half the time and the other half of the time I would not be able to attack because enemies would be floating above me (still don’t know how or why).
Another small bug was that upon entering the building there was a small time discrepancy on entering the building and then actually being on the inside. From the beginning of the game, every part of the game/map was open for you to enter but you could enter one place almost instantly and then enter again seconds later and have it take a bit more time even though nothing has changed.
I was using the keyboard of my computer to play this game and one thing I noticed was that the controls were super sensitive to anything I did. I could be walking one way and just slightly hit a different arrow key and I would be facing a new direction. In battle, if I needed to hit a pot or walk carefully I would be stuck in the same spot for a while trying to do exactly what I needed to do without overdoing it or going way too far in one direction. It made it hard do simple things in the game.
The menu had next to nothing in it. You could save in the menu and the only way to save was through going home. You could only use the menu for game adjustments and to change your inventory up a bit. There was nothing in there to help remind you of missions either, the game could definitely have added more to the menu to make it more useful.
The game had a nice aspect of being kinda being short and that was nice, but that meant that development was super fast as well. The introduction to the whole game took only 20 min (at max) before you were in full gameplay and on your first full mission. It’s hard to keep with the game when everything was moving super fast.
Zwei: The Arges Adventure – PC
Developer: Nihon Falcom
Publisher: XSEED Games
Release Date: Available Now
Cost: $19.99
Explanations of various aspects of the game would come and go so fast and wouldn’t offer as much info as needed. Leaving you a bit puzzled and needing more help. There was one pop-up with info on controls but one it was gone, it was gone. I tried to look in the menu for info but there was none available in Zwei: The Arges Adventure, which made playing it rather difficult. Some in-game advice was rather vague. I couldn’t tell if it was being helpful or giving me a missing piece of a puzzle. They would leave me wondering what I had just read.
Just like I said in the beginning, Zwei: The Arges Adventure has some nice things to it and was an overall ok experience while even demonstrating its own unique bits. It’s just that a lot of the flaws were distracting and made it hard to play. Games, the go by fast if you know what you’re doing. And you just go straight through the game, they go by faster.
The intro itself was only 20-minutes long, as a whole, Zwei: The Arges Adventure is not that long if you sit down and just get to play. Sadly, the adventure would have been a bit better had the game seemed better paced and had a bit more to offer for first-time players.
Our review is based on a retail version that was provided to us by the game’s publisher. For information about our ethics policy please click here.
Final Score: 6 out of 10
About the Writer:
Beth is a contributing writer who has offered a helping hand from time to time. Her experience in gaming is vast, wonderful, and a unique addition to the gaming community.