CrossbowPig Reviews Issue 5 (midseason finale): Realm of the Mad God

Yeah, it's something like this.

Think of the toughest maze you've ever walked through, be it a corn maze, a hedge maze, or something else. Now think how much tougher it would be if it was moving around you, you had to get to the center, and touching the walls meant instant death. Now imagine the center was moving. Now imagine that smaller mazes of death walls were spinning around you, and you had to maneuver around them too. Multiply that by two, and you have Realm of the Mad God by Wild Shadow Studios. Welcome to mid-season finale of CrossbowPig reviews. Today, we'll be reviewing Realm of the Mad God.

Graphics: Like many of the games already on this list, Realm of the Mad God looks old. Except it isn't really, because like many independently developed games on the market today, Realm of the Mad God is designed to invoke nostalgia. The simple colors of the 8-Bit graphics appease the eye and remind one of games from the 80s, like The Legend of Zelda and Dragon Quest with a dash of Final Fantasy. This fits the main premise of the game - a bullet hell (genre where you usually pilot a spaceship through a maze of lasers while firing your lasers at the other spaceships who tend to be the origin of the maze) fantasy MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) - to a T. 9/10

Gameplay: Compared to everything else I've reviewed thus far, Realm is an entirely different beast. There are multiple classes to choose from, from wizards and mages to rangers and huntresses, and each has their own special abilities. You use these abilities to defeat monsters, monsters who can fire insanely complex bursts of lasers at you and can often kill you in only a few hits. You can find Dungeons in each randomly generated world that take you into small mini-maps where you can find even more difficult monsters and awesome treasures. Once a certain amount of bosses are killed in the main realm, the main villain Oryx will summon everyone in that realm into his castle, a perilous dungeon of its own. Once Oryx is defeated, the realm resets. Oh, and if you die, it's permanent. Classic MMO staples such as guilds mix with new concepts - like fame points, currency you get by dying in spectacular ways - for an addicting experience that left me coming back for hours. 10/10

Sound: For as good of a game that Realm is in other respects, sound-wise it is surprisingly lacking. It has only one music track, for starters, which you will likely mute to play your own music, and the sound effects themselves are memorable but really nothing special. 6/10

Difficulty: Each game that I've been reviewing has been more difficult than the last, and I have a feeling that this will be the most difficult one I ever get to. It's unforgiving and sometimes plain unfair, with some bosses requiring a good 20 people to even come close to beating. Count yourself out if you know you are faint at heart or a casual video game player. This game is spicier than fifty Ghost Peppers.

Verdict: With all of these scores added up, and the factor of my own personal enjoyment added in, I have given this game the score of
9.75 - Bordering on a masterpiece
The only thing really holding this back from being a masterpiece is the sound, and with the money this game makes I fail to see why they can't hire a composer to do some music for the game - or even just to make the music change in tempo and instruments based on what environment you're in, like Banjo Kazooie for the Nintendo 64 - and this'll be a 10 - Masterpiece

We will not be posting next week because of our midseason break.
This is CrossbowPig, signing out.