lol, I think I had it right the first time, but that's just my opinion. you're entitled to yours.
Just started playing Mazes of Fate for the GBA, and I have to say, I like the style of it. For those who haven't heard of this game, let me give you a brief synopsis of it:
You start out the game and get to choose between 4 characters: A Warrior, a Magician, A Rogue, and a Custom character you can make yourself, using one of the character images from the other 3. Yeah, this part is kind of lacking, so bear with me as I continue along. Warrior is an obvious one, choosing brawn over brain. They're not too good at Magic and not too good at Roguein', so it's back to the standard of hack the crap out of everything. Whoo!!! I love Warriors, lol. Next is the Magician, which is another obvious one. Forgoing the physical strength, they choose instead strength of mind and magical precision. Very handy to have along for any warrior for a good balanced team, but kind of hard to play on your lonesome due to the tiny little factor that they wear paper for armor and have no defense to speak of, but hey, killer spells, whoo!!! Love these guys too. Next is the Rogue, which is your basic sneaky figure, adept at unlocking locked things without a key and finding hidden paths and traps. Also good at the sleight of hand and some basic spells. Not too good at physical fighting, not too good at magic, but still nice to have along for all your little dirty work. Now we get to the Custom Character. This one starts you out with 20 stat points for each stat, and gives you 20 more to play around with to custom fit your character as much as you can. Unlike some other games like Robotrek for the SNES, this one allows you to deduct from the base 20 for each stat and lower it to give yourself more points to work with. pretty nifty. Also, you then get 4 skill points to add on to, well, whatever skills you want to raise a little bit. This is stuff like, small weapon, 1-handed weapon, 2-handed for physical, then you have your magic users options, like increasing your mana, etc, and then your rogue options, like bargaining, lockpicking, search, which is the one that allows you to find hidden paths and traps.
I chose the custom character. The game play on this isn't unique, by any means, and the story line is almost non existant, so far, but there is still some interesting quest work to be done, so hold on to your hats as we dive on into the basis of the game. Your goal is to collect information by talking with the natives of the town you start out in. Your best bet is to go to the Pub and talk to everyone. If you play your cards right and choose the right options, you can get some pretty good information out of the people, but don't worry if you choose the wrong options, because you;re given the chance to try again. I know, still pretty lame, but what can you do. Some people would ruin their games pretty early by being stupid and making wrong choices, when talking to people.
The town is pretty easy enough to maneuver around in, allowing you free movement and has some assorted places you can enter, and some you can't enter... yet. They open up as you find quests to do and some close up, or open and then close, you get the picture. The dungeons, though, is what grabs me. If any of you have played Ultima: Exodus for NES, or old school Doom, you might be able to imagine what movement you have in the dungeons. It's a straight one person view, and you can either move forward or backward or turn to your left or turn to your right. Using your L and R buttons, you can side step, and you fight enemies as they come at you. You can see them coming, except for the ones that come up behind you. then you press A to open up your attack options and you can choose between three options: Attack, Magic, or Item. When you're not attacking things in a dungeon, you're following paths and finding things, which is where your B button comes into play. Pressing B opens up a little slidebar of your items, allowing you to discard them, but when you're in front of something you can pick u p, it will target it and you can press A to pick it up. Same mechanism for levers and locks that open doors. For levers, it's the same thing exactly, just stand in front of the lever, press B and then A. For Locks, its a bit different, you press B, cycle through your items to find the key that fits, and then press A twice.
Start opens up your menu, and select opens up your map (in dungeons). when you first hit start, you have a total of about 6 options: Camp, Character Status, Automap (which opens the same thing as the select button), Questlog (obvious), Save Game, and Settings. You can save the game anywhere, which is a plus. And Camp, while I haven't used it, yet, allows your person/party to rest up, heal poison (if they have the skill and it's strong enough), etc. You can do this in dungeons, too, though if you're seen by a monster, the jig is up. Character Status will bring you to a menu you may be more familiar with, showing you your main character. When you get another character in your party, you can cycle between them with L and R, but just starting, you'll only have one. You have 5 options here, starting with Equip items, and going down the list to Use Item, Other Items (non-usable from menu), Skills (where you can view your skills and spend your 3 skill points that you get for each level up) and Spells.
This game is pretty easy to figure out and isn't too hard to play. On a grading skill for games, I would give it a... C. It's kind of lame in some aspects, but can still be pretty fun as you get into it.
