Androgynous teenagers with gravity-defying hair wandering a mysterious world armed only with cranky comebacks and improbably large weapons? Yes, everything you either love or hate about Japanese RPGs is waiting for you in a convenient Flash package in Ge.ne.sis, a turn-based tactical RPG by An Lieu.
You begin as Neraine, a short-tempered Singaporean girl who provides the lion's share of the crankiness for the game, but you'll soon add more members to your party. Movement and interaction with the world is done through [WASD] or [arrow] keys, with the mouse used to cycle through dialogue and to allocate points when your characters level up. In battle, everything is done with the mouse, and you'll be spending a fair amount of time on these tactics-styled battle screens. In a semi-top down view, you direct your characters to move, attack, and use abilities, keeping an eye on the energy pool, since that's what you need to use the most powerful abilities (with some characters, any ability at all).
Ge.ne.sis has a good difficulty curve, not throwing everything at you at once, but introducing different elements steadily. Before the long you have an array of different options and strategies to try in battle. The game shines when it allows you to indulge your inner Machiavelli—Do you try to keep all your guys alive and slowly wear the other side down? Do you send some people out in a suicidal blaze of glory? Will you keep your tarots (the game's version of summons) on the field as fighters, or soulburst them for other advantages? As the game continues, you increasingly come up against bosses where only one approach will work. Since the game also keeps you on rails for the plot, this can leave you feeling a bit hemmed-in.
Japanese-style RPGs sink or swim on the strength of their stories. The script here is fun, if a little stilted and awkward in syntax in places. Nothing a JRPG fan isn't used to. If you can manage to suspend your disbelief enough to deal with not only the impossible, but also the improbable (an English boy named Gelyan? GELYAN?), then Ge.ne.sis provides the requisite world-shaking mystery involving your plucky adventurers and a few side quests along the way.
Analysis: The artwork in Ge.ne.sis is bright, colorful, and detailed, and the flatness seems to give the world the appearance of paper puppets in a toy theater. The music provides the proper mood, whether whimsical exploration, the heat of battle, or dramatic revelations, but the tunes can get a bit repetitive, and unfortunately there aren't separate controls for music and sound effects.
A word of advice to save you some of my pain: always try to go back to the last save point you used between battles. There are several places where you cannot save for a few battles, and if you get drawn into another fight and then are called away from your game, you can lose a lot of progress. Missing a save point, therefore, can mean that you lose four or five battles worth of progress if, say, your browser crashes or you have to get up and make yourself a sandwich.
This brings up an interesting point: why do game developers still cling to save points? In casual games in particular, the ability to pick up and put down a game at a moment's notice is a high point of appeal, especially for people who might be gaming during a break. Also, Ge.ne.sis only allows three slots to save. Now really, why don't you leave it up to me to decide how much of the cache on my machine I'm willing to devote to save files? Particularly in a game like this, where you may decide later that you want to try a totally different distribution of attribute points, having only three slots is really not enough.
Despite its few technical hiccups, Ge.ne.sis is a great looking and smooth playing browser-based strategy RPG. Save often, admire the scenery, and pretend everyone on your block has a name like Gelyan and you'll do just fine! And if you're in the mood for a little help, be sure to take advantage of the excellent strategy guide.
I LOVE THIS GAME!! It has proven to successfully distract me from other things I should be caring more about :P
I discovered something about the name. Notice the points inbetween?
GElyan.NEraine.SISily.
Yeah.
This game's been out for quite some time; why is it just now getting picked up by JIG?
Good game, but I got stuck on Cerberus, the two-headed dog.
Now I know that in Flash you can use a gradient, given that you use it to great effect it can be quite artistic. However, this is such a thing as too much gradient artwork - mainly when about every other sprite you have in the game has gradients.
Oh my, that was slow... every little move took forever... combat was horrible.
Is anyone actually playing this? I can't imagine how long its going to take.
Love it! I stayed up all night playing it.
But boy does it get hard. I'm on the easiest difficulty setting and I can't make any headway. I mean, Cerberus is the mini-boss. The mini-boss!
OK, seriously? You give her the honey and then she attacks you? And I'm just at the part where you have "at the same time, somewhere else.." I assume both sets of characters eventually meet up.
I actually don't understand the game play at all. Is there an easy way to tell which character is in play? Is there something on the board that explains who you can fight and how close you have to be to instigate a battle. And why, on the rare occasion that I CAN instigate battle, is my character not allowed to fight? It's really beautiful, but the tutorial did not explain things very well.
Yes, I agree, the tutorial didn't really explain that much. I found the strategy guide really useful.
To see how close you have to be before instigating battle, mouse over the character, under "Range".
You are not allowed to fight because you are too far away from the monster, which is where "Range" comes in again.
You can fight any monster on the board if you are close enough.
For more information, I suggest you read the strategy guide.
Is it just me, or are some of the monsters ridiculously overpowered? Even those green Leaper things have an attack that not only does any of your party members a healthy chunk of damage, but heals it for the same. Even knowing how most of the combat system works, this seems really hard for an easy mode. [/shame]
And another thing: Sisily's second Tarot can only be obtained by
donating money to the game's creator.
From what I've read about it, it's extremely useful.
One problem I had with this game when I played it a few weeks ago is that some characters have no "free" abilities, i.e. all their attacks require energy/points/whatever. This means that there are times when they become totally useless...you can't attack with them, you can't aid an ally, you can't do anything to restore their mana. This gets particularly frustrating when they get attacked and you have to sit there and watch them take damage 2-3 times with no recourse.
Of course what really turned me off to the game was the cranky dialogue. The girl you start off with is rude, irritable and utterly unlikable. I had a hard time caring about her plight given the way she treated everyone around her. Maybe I am just getting too old for this kind of game....
Hey, there is a way you can see how far something moves-attacks from! Just scroll over.
Likewise, you can see how someone's in action by the pulsating hexagon beneath their feet.
I thought anyone could get the secret character, they just have to find the secret content in the game.
Well, at least that's what it says in the strategy guide.
I actually like the girl that we start with. The dialogue made me laugh a few times.
Hmm, I thought I submitted this game a long while ago(though it could be I decided not to). I just went out and finished it(on easy). IMO, it was very easy on easy, but I was too bored to do it on a higher difficulty levels. Anyway, some tips:
For people with energy problems:
Use the magician's power energy tranfer
A way to beat Tale with nera as a power build(at least on easy):
I conjured Hang Man, Death and the magician and placed nera on the choke point, sisily right behind her. Next turn I soulbursted the Hang Man, and casted death's soul eater. I used moon waltz to keep nera alive. Next turn, I casted soul eater and soulbursted death, and I conjured the fool. Since Tale is stunned and can't defend, attacking now is really useful. The next turn, I conjured the high priestress. Then I could freely attack Tale, while getting healed, and because I attacked, I recovered health(the fools perk). The high priestress Grand Blessing is extremly powerful from this point, and you should cast it on nera every turn. I managed to give nera a power of 32. From this point, wait with the priestress, attack with nera, wait with the magician, attack with sisily, attack with the fool, attack with gelyan, cast grand blessing on nera, and finally, cast energy transfer. Continue to do this every turn, and tale will get beaten
I don't know what to do next, I've come to the point where I can't use the holy egg to fight anymore. When I use the holy egg, it just said there's no more "memories". Is this the end of the game?
I also finished the game, though it ended at 98%. Wish there were like training maps that can increase the characters levels, not just doing missions >. According to this walktrhough guide, this is part of a message from the developer An Lieu..
~What is in it for you? Once you have donated, I will personally send a thank you letter and hint to a secret contents in that game which will lead to an extra character. More donations also speed up development of the sequel. Most importantly, it shows your supports to small independent developers encourage them to make more free great games!~
Hopefully a sequel would be comming out soon.
Spent all last night playing it, it was great! I loved the plot and combat, even if the battles did get pretty hard. Btw, anyone know how to get the secret character?
If you keep in mind that there is a WAIT ability which allows you to switch up the turn of the players you should have an easier time. I didn't even look at the thing (or use it) until after I had beaten about 80% or more of the game, after that I ran through it because my options opened up. I was able to use the Magician at the very end in some battles where I knew I would run out of energy while on the defensive. It worked out nicely, on regular difficulty.
How come gelyan doesnt attack the monsteR?....
when i walk him...
then the action phase doesnt come out..
the orange one
Hey Aw,
Jelly (my nickname for Gelyan) is a "one-turn character". That means he can EITHER move OR act. His action range is even larger than his move range :) But to get to action, you must SKIP THE MOVE PHASE. OTHERWISE YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO KILL ANYTHING, WHICH IS SAD. :P So yea I love the game, some enemies are a little too overpowered for my liking, whatever I can put up with a few small flaws. :D Play it NNNOOOWWW!!!!!!!!! >:)
HOW DO I BEAT THE GOLD FEEDER??? ALL MY ATTACK DOES ONE DAMAGE, IF THAT!!! Before, at the beginning, the Feeder was being hurt normally, but all of a sudden, um, ISN'T!!! Help :(
This is such an awesome game! I love the music and the combat abilities! The bosses are very challenging but that makes it fun!
loved the game! does anybody knows if there is going to be a following one? i got suck at 98% after beating the "tale".
I LOVE THIS GAME!!!
The weird thing is that Gelyan is the only character that has any importance to the story. The game would be just fine if it was only him (Although it would be really hard!). The game is a bit hard. On easy I couldn't defeat cerberus, but that why we have side quests! I really didn't like how you level up. There is now expience system. Each battle levels someone up... Well... Most battles. I'd like it if they had random battles. Or if they had monsters you could chose to fight like in dragonfable. This way it would be possible to level up using some kind of expirence system.
To kill the gold feeder,
kill the gold heart behind him, you should use Gelyan to get him out of the way to the lower place, and make the others go the upper line
How do you get past Ceberus?!
use choke points to kill bosses
I just have to say, it realy upsets me that all of these people hate the game just because they either werent paying any attention to the tutorial, or they didnt check any of the details, even getting mad when a major plot point puts them into a fight, i mean seriously? when i first saw the bean i imediatly knew it was going to be a boss-fight, when it told me to get the hunny i knew i would be fighting it directly afterwords.
anyway, i personaly gave up on the re-match with beholder, simply because of how hard it is, still technicaly beat the game so oh well, off to wings of Ge.Ne.Sis (But i feel like I'm missing something, Who is the "Creator"? Who is "Gen?" I feel like the second game just threw me into the fray without an explanation... and thus lost the plot. here's hoping that genesis 2 has some explanations._
where is this shackpots house?? leave reply fast..!!
it's a great game but what is the magic word
that leads you to the other cave i had it but then i forgot plz tell me i'm stuck on that bit. :(
Can someone help me with getting past the baby yeti part when we first meet Sisi cuz I can't get past the part to save my life. The red worm guy is useless and cant do anything. Emi can only do her powerful move once or twice and Sisi's moves basically don't do anything really bad to them. Help me please!
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