Cthulhu Saves the World | a Review
originally published on 25/11/2022;
Hello everyone, I am the eldritch monstrosity of inexplicable proportions and dimensions, G.E.M.Simov, a being wielding forbidden knowledge… Come to share it with you in the form of a review pertaining to Cthulhu Saves the World.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
This is a JRPG. It is almost a joke JRPG, but in reality the amount of effort put into it is quite impressive, thus rendering it a not-joke JRPG, though due to the fact it is a JRPG it is a joke. More on that later.
Much like every JRPG, the game of Cthulhu Saves the World (henceforth CSW) is separated into 3 modes of play: Zone exploring mode, Combat mode, Map exploring mode (listed in order of appearance).
The first mode of play, that being the zone exploring mode of play, requires the use of the WASD keys for movement and the use of the Z key for interaction with things. I will now stop using the keyboard commands because, surprisingly, this game had controller support, and the controller support it had was quite good. So, with A (X button on a PS controller) one interacts, and then one moves with the joystick or the D-pad (directional buttons, arrow keys, you name it). Through the use of the Y button (Triangle on a PS controller, Tab on a keyboard) one can access the menu, which menu allows for a lot of things.
Examples that are not an exhaustive list: Go into a fight as soon as you (the Player) press the A button to confirm your selection of activity; Save your progress (anywhere, anytime - very good addition, mind you); Teleport to ANY previously visited town; Chat with your companions.
There is, of course, the option to manage one’s party - be it equipment or the party’s make-up itself - but that’s to be expected. By pressing the B button (Circle on a PS controller, X on the keyboard) one goes back to the previous menu, or, if there was no previous menu, goes back to the game world. If the Player is in the game world and presses the B button, and holds it down, moves much faster.
In the game world, the Player can find many things, such as chests containing treasures, other intractable objects, fountains (which restore all of the Player Characters’ MP [more on that later]) and propose a SAVE be made, and random enemy encounters - up to 20 (or so). By just running around, the Player encounters random groups of enemies that attack them relentlessly. That’s par for the course in a JRPG, but the fact that there is a limit to how many random encounters can take place is very interesting.
What also helps is that the Player can just use the FIGHT option in their menu to constantly summon enemies from thin air, fight them, gain the benefits of winning, and do so again and again and again, until they (the Player, not the Player Character) collapses in a spray of vomit. Yes, ladies, gentlemen and N-bees, this is a JRPG, so there will be monstrous amounts of grinding.
So much grinding, in fact, that I would like to inform you that I had taken part in more than 200 combats prior to battling the 1st boss, and it was still a struggle… Though that might have something to do with the fact that I had chosen to play on the highest difficulty possible, which: Increases the power of the monsters the Player fights tremendously (as Hard mode already increases their power by some fraction, Insane mode does that MORE), reduces the amount of MP the Player Characters regain after a fight, and, I suppose, does a lot of additional things that are not listed.
I’d like to point out that I’ve not gone and played the game on the lower difficulties, because that’s for weaker beings, and thus this review will be focusing on INSANE mode. Anything I describe might not, actually, be present in the other modes, but that is irrelevant, as INSANE mode is the only option when it comes to playing CSW.
Now, let’s get back to the action. Or, rather, let's get into the menu that will be telling us that there’s action occurring. The second mode of play is combat. When combat is initiated, the screen goes black for a moment, then a number of sprites pop up on it and the battle commences.
The Player gets to pick what actions their Characters perform - of which there are many - and then selects targets for these actions (if target selection is an option), after which they watch as things unfold, pressing the A button repeatedly, giving themselves Carpal Tunnel as they skip through the mountains of text-boxes that pop up to inform them what has happened, because odds are the Player is just mindlessly grinding for resources (gold) and levels (experience), as one does in JRPGs.
So, combat - there are MANY options. There’s the option to normally attack, as usual, but there’s a catch - attacking, or rather hitting with any Player Character (PC) generates a Combo Point. Those are a temporary resource that gets utilized by some PC abilities and, generally, the more you have, the better things will get.
Then there are Techniques, then there are Magic Spells, then there are Unite Techniques… All of which are some variation of a spell, but have different designations and thus interact with status effects and other characters differently. The most interesting thing, I would say, are the Unite Techniques, which are incredibly strong and costly from an MP perspective, and take up the turns of a number of characters, not just 1 character.
So what is MP? MP is the resource required to use any of the three listed special abilities, and, as previously stated, the Player Characters recover some MP after they win a battle, but they get the mountainous quantity of… 1, maybe 2 MP. Now, consider, if you will, the fact that the cheapest MP spenders require 3 MP and you (the reader) might be seeing an issue.
Of course there are some solutions to this, right? The Player has access to potions, which means that they can, at a later point in the game, obtain potions that restore MP… Right? Well, that was the thought process of one who did not know yet. However, in CSW, Potions are exclusively and only 1 thing. There is a single Potion type of item, and it restores all the health of a character whilst also reviving them.
It is very useful, considering the fact that the PCs die in 2 or 3 hits on INSANE, so having Potions is very good. But, alas, where is everything else? Where is my utility, where are the consumables? Those could spice a JRPG’s boring combat up - as spicy as things are made by the application of salt, that is, but it is still something. Now, those are gone, and with them the availability of funky stuff to make fights more interesting.
What I’m visualizing here, mostly, are items that apply a status-effect, or what is called in SCW an ailment. Ailments in this game are, essentially, debuffs which weaken the character affected by them. Some act as a means of reducing damage done by a certain percentage - like Insanity (which also makes virtually every enemy do more damage on INSANE mode) - others prevent one from attacking - like Blind - while others yet reduce resistances and deal damage every turn. They are present in CTW, but they can only be applied by special attacks (Techniques, Magic or Unites).
In any case, this game is a JRPG through and through, and by picking the INSANE difficulty, what one subjects themselves to is a grind that goes beyond insane. I mentioned 200 fights before the first boss was even remotely killable, well, the second boss - who is somewhat optional - will require at least 2x that… On top of it. That’s owed up to the fact that the amount of damage it does is around 50% higher than that of the first boss, as well as to the fact that enemies in the area have 100% more Health Points than the enemies so far faced by the Player, whilst also dealing about two times as much damage.
The grind is obtuse, especially considering the fact that every time the Player Characters level up they need more experience to reach the next level, leading into an unbelievable amount of killing the same thing over and over again. Carpal Tunnel, as I said. Spam the A button and wait for your bones to turn to dust.
I must admit that the monstrous difficulty really makes the combat intense, but the fact that one needs to engage in combat hundreds, even thousands of times to even be able to squeak out a win feels wrong.
Lastly, there’s the Map exploration mode. It is as one could expect, similar to Zone exploration mode in the fact that the Player can do absolutely everything they can do in Zone exploration mode, safe interact with objects (as there are none). They can (and do) get random encounters, they can chat with their companions - everything under the sun.
It is through the Map that the Player gains access to other zones, including friendly areas where shops can be found. Shops, unfortunately, only sell weapons and armor, and feature the most astounding part of this game - armor that costs 500,000 gold coins, with the player generating such magnificent amounts of gold that getting 20 after a fight is a rare sight!
Of course, this is an end-game piece of gear, but considering the fact that there are MANY of those to be acquired - one for each Player Character - that adds up to… Millions of gold. And the way to get those millions is to grind away!
Now, dear reader, grinding is a wack concept, especially if it is mandatory and the act of doing it is not fulfilling. The act of grinding in a JRPG is as far from fulfilling as possible, because the moment-to-moment gameplay is so dead. I’ve made it clear that this is a great misgiving, and, thus, it is not good.
However, there are a few other things I’d like to mention. There are some special attacks that target a group. While that would normally mean that a group of enemies is targeted, in CSW it means something different. It targets enemies of the same type who are adjacent to one another - in other words, it is a single-target spell that’s less effective than its actual single-target counterpart 90% of the time, because it neither does damage nor does it increase the Player’s combo.
That’s a very poorly implemented mechanic. However, in relation to it we can find an interesting and decently well implemented OTHER mechanic. Leveling up - whenever characters level up, they are granted a choice - well, the Player is the one granted the choice - as to what kind of improvement they get at this level.
The improvements are many and varied. Some are really interesting and incredibly useful - such as passive abilities that are constantly in play, be it as buffs for the characters or as improvements for certain special abilities - others are par for the course, such as new special attacks, while others yet are stat increases.
This is something I’ve no memory of seeing in a JRPG, which indicates a great measure of goodness. It allows for customization of the Player Character in a way that goes beyond just the visual (which is not even an option in most JRPG, including CSW). As an example, take Cthulhu. He can either be a Strength Based Fighter OR a Magic Based Caster, as a result of focusing on a certain type of improvement. Of course, there’s always the option of going for a hybrid approach and making a mish-mash of those two archetypes, and then there’s the optimal approach for INSANE mode which is AGILITY and HP (to act first so you can get revives when one of your party members dies and to die less often), as well as single-target options that apply an ailment with as high a % of success as possible while also doing damage and providing combo points.
It is a very simple addition, but it is an incredibly interesting one that spices up things. However, it is irreversible and one can’t respec (re-specialize, which would be the ability to make the choices once again). When it comes to someone playing the game for the first time, that’s not as good a move as allowing for a certain measure of flexibility would have been.
There are a few extra things I’d like to say. In combat, every consecutive round… Oh, I haven’t told you about rounds, because that’s so integral to JRPGs that I feel as though it ought to be known by default. So, combat is split into rounds. During each round, each character has a single turn. When the last character who has not had a turn has their turn, the round ends and another begins. The funky thing in CSW is that every round grants a 10% empowerment to the enemies, scaling… Potentially infinitely, which means that the longer a fight goes on, the less likely the Player is to win it.
HOWEVER, there is another intriguing mechanic in this one. It’s called the One-Up, which allows the Player to retry a fight they have just lost. However, there’s a very limited quantity of One-Ups, so they’re best used sparingly.
Now, in relation to the Zone exploring mode, there are some issues to be found. Namely the fact that every zone, excluding friendly ones where there are no enemies, is a maze. There’s a Presentation issue, but more on that later, yet this is level design stuff. Everything being a maze is not fun, especially due to the fact that every few seconds the Player is beset by a random encounter. Sure, one could say that the zones are all maze-like and very lacking in waypoints or waystones or any discernible visual artifacts, which leads into there being a large amount of wandering around, which leads into a large amount of fighting enemies, which, in turn, prepares the Player for the boss at the end of the zone, but, still, does this make it fun? No.
In addition to that, there’s barely any reason to really explore, aside from the chests that can be discovered by the Player. They are tucked away in dead ends of the mazes and that’s where they tend to be. In friendly zones, where no random encounters take place, the Player can also find chests, but they’re tucked away in a room that’s slightly out of the way. There’s no emphasis on exploring. There’s no point in walking around the buildings and checking behind them, or looking for a walkable path through the foliage for a treasure, because those either don’t exist or don’t lead anywhere, and in the rare cases that there is something there… It’s either a potion or a new weapon, the latter of which is totally worthless except as a source of a little bit of gold, because you’ve already bought the most powerful weapon you could (not for the lack of gold as INSANE mode demands you fight 3x or 4x as many enemies as you’d need to fight on normal mode to progress, so you’ve got the moolah).
There’s a very pronounced lack of things, even if there are things. It’s very barren, even if everything is monstrously swamped by random encounters which leave the impression that there are many things to deal with, when, in reality, there aren’t.
Then there’s the Map exploring mode, which is lacking from that same problem plaguing the Zone exploring mode, only a lot more pronounced - there’s no point in exploring, everything is either led towards via text (quests) or it is en-route to your (the Player’s) destination. The only thing that one might find if they try exploring is a vast number of random encounters AND a zone that the Player isn’t meant to be walking around just yet, at which point the members of the party will pop up and tell the Main Character that they have no reason to enter THIS place, but that totally random cave was very reasonable.
There’s a lack of consistency and a measure of restriction, restriction which is not amusing or sound. There’s a lack of reasoning to play the game, considering the gameplay is a painful, infinite, repetition of the same boring process. There’re many things that could have been done better but are, unfortunately, left as they are.
One of the things that was done, but I’ve no idea why it was done, was the addition of alternative modes. One mode without Cthulhu, one mode with only 1 character, a mode in which you fight bosses BUT UNDERLEVELED (what fun) and a mode in which you win a fight and hit level 40. It’s cool to have those, but are they adding anything, really? No, not really.
Thus, this game is best played on the lowest difficulty and completed as quickly as possible. 1/3
Presentation
This game’s presentation is both intriguing and unfortunate. It is unfortunate due to the fact that the developers have chosen a 16-bit style to emulate, which is not something that provides an opportunity for high fidelity. As such, the appearance of the game is exclusively pixel-art of varying quality and degrees of complexity.
There are a few things that I’d point at and say: “this looks unreasonably uncanny!” such as any human character, but then I would like to turn around and look at most of the inhuman characters and say that they look really interesting - an example would be Sharpe. The same applies for many things in the game.
The Zones that the Player explores are very same-y and visually boring, but then when the Player enters combat the background of the fight is reflective of where the Player Character is in the Zone, which is an impressive feature, and, not only that, but the backgrounds all look impressively good!
Then, however, there’s the sprites of the enemies, which tend to be very generic, in a sense, very tried and true, and there’s a LARGE amount of recolors - using the same sprite but it’s blue instead of red, this time. Simultaneously, though, some of the sprites are really funky - an example would be Snailey, who is your friend until he no longer is, or the Shogoth, or the Whale. But that’s anomalous. What’s really impressive and actually supremely cool is the fact that every single enemy has an alternative sprite for when they are affected by the Insane ailment, and those tend to be VERY cool - again, the Whale comes to mind.
This game does that very adequately - contradicting itself. There are musical scores that are very good, then there are those that are annoying, at best, made far more annoying by the fact that whenever one enters a battle the music cuts out and swaps to the SAME music track that plays over EVERY battle, which track cuts out as soon as the battle is over and the old music starts playing again. Experiencing songs in snippets of 10 seconds is not a good way of doing it, and the constant cutting becomes grating and annoying.
There’s the issue of everything being monstrously loud, which potentially only exasperates the issue of the battle/zone tracks swapping constantly, but then it is very appropriate for the quieter, moodier and more atmospheric tracks that really make this game sound good. ALSO, the ambient music in R’lyeh is definitely NOT a good pick.
The sound effects aren’t anything spectacular, but then there’s the fact that combat animations take an incredibly short time, which is such a god-send in a JRPG, for when I compare this to most other JRPGs it’s one of the most rapidly going combat systems out there, and that’s because the animations are all very brief and tiny.
The game features some really good art in the cutscenes, and I really like it, but then it features some very bland and almost bad sprites for ordinary townspeople…
In response to the Developer commentaries, I quite liked the bridges. The layered levels were the one engaging thing about the zones, frankly, with the exception of the Ghost Forest, which actually looked really cool.
I suppose one could say it’s a game of opposites. We’ve got well delivered jokes that are somewhat amusing and then some that are just overwhelmingly cringe-worthy, there are some interesting implementations of stuff and then there are ones that make me want to bawl my eyes out. It is a joke game, but, still, the presentation is so wibbly-wobbly that I can’t put my finger on it. 2/3
Story
As previously mentioned, this is a joke game. As such, almost (if not everything) in the game exists with the goal of being utilized as a funny, or as the foundation for a funny. The funny can be an actual joke, or something amusing, or something that induces vast amounts of cringe. That leads into the story being nothing special (or worthwhile) and thus results in a lackluster experience. At one point I was asking myself why I was playing the game, considering the fact that there was no fun in the playing of the game and there was no fun in the unveiling of the story.
So, it starts off with Cthulhu about to awaken and bring madness to the world, though a mysterious mage shows up and takes away his power, turning him into a… A mortal being, I suppose, with access to power, but not THAT power - the power that makes everyone insane.
Cthulhu finds out that he needs to become a true hero (through the most reliable source - the narrator) and goes on to do heroic things in his efforts to become a hero. He saves a maiden, Umi, who joins him. She’s a silly anime character that acts as the main source of cringe in the game. Then, he goes and saves a dog, after which he goes and beats a sword in combat, which prompts the sword to join him in his travels. The Sword is the most interesting looking character and is also following in the stereotype of the goodie-two-shoes. Cthulhu then saves a town named after one of the Lovecraft related towns (as are all towns in the game) from Nyarlathotep’s insane zombies (who become good after their summoner is defeated) and is joined by a necromancer named October, who’s just emo and goth at the same time.
Our hero then discovers a UFO aboard which is the ‘not a cat’ Paws, a college friend of Cthulhu’s, and helps it stop the ship… But Umi crashes it, because she’s a clutz (anime funny). Cthulhu goes and saves another city, this time from a disease, by being joined by a crazy old wizard (hmm) named Dacre, killing a Shoggoth in a water temple and feeding the people Shoggoth bath water, after which he travels the seas and saves another city, this time from a scary dragon atop a flaming volcano. The dragon, Ember, surrenders and joins the party at Cthulhu’s behest.
Then, they fly on the dragon’s back and reach ANOTHER city, where Cthulhu’s cult is supposedly operating, but they’re not all that friendly towards him, because Dagon has stolen them! Cthulhu beats Dagon and finally becomes a true hero, thus regaining his powers and maddening everyone. The End.
Then there’s a very swift moment of traveling back in time and, just as Cthulhu’s powers are returning to him, he goes on to ignore his Being, as well as all the source material, because, APPARENTLY, we needed MORE game. R’lyeh, his city, rises from the oceans and threatens all, for it is no longer bound to serve him - since he has rescinded his ‘big bad evil guy’ card.
Cthulhu travels to R’lyeh with his companions and, guess what? He fights a golem of himself. Oh, no, it’s Azathoth. You know, Azathoth - the entity who dreams of the universe and, through that dream, makes the universe be? Go fight him and his 100k health. Cthulhu, believe it or not, kills Azathoth, the universe remains.
Him and Paws repair the space ship and they set off… But not before Cthulhu takes Umi with them, because she was the love interest… In short, “I want die”. For what it was, it was okay. There is an alternative story, there are some shenanigans here and there, but there’s not that much to be spoken of. I did not truly enjoy it, even if it was amusing enough to not be bad.
Also, there is no fourth wall. Is that a bonus or a negative? 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? The concept for this game is very interesting, and I feel that, if it were presented through a medium that was not an obtusely grind-focused JRPG, it would have been a lot more entertaining.
In addition to that, I can not say that I am not a fan of Lovecraft’s work, or rather the concepts he explored in his writings, as well as the humongous amount of extended literature that has been spawned by him. I really enjoy eldritch horror, or cosmic horror, if you will. Unfortunately, this one did not tickle my pickle, so NO, I am not going to give it the point, even if I really liked some of the visuals. 0/1
Conclusion
4/10. Perhaps it was treated a bit too harshly by yours truly, but it is a JRPG. A grind focused JRPG that does not do anything to fix the issues of JRPGs - boring combat that you repeat a billion times. In fact, it doubled down on those, so… I suppose if one were a fan of JRPGs, this is the game for them. In the meantime, watch a play-through on YouTube.
In the Bag of Mediocrity it goes. It’s not a truly bad experience, but it’s closer to being a bad game than a good one. The dust will cushion its fall.