Old RPG Review #21: Golvellius: Valley of Doom.
NuMetalManiak #21 pits us with a Sega Master System game that I just randomly stumbled upon. It's known as Golvellius: Valley of Doom and it is an action-adventure game. It's in the style of Legend of Zelda in how it's played, but unlike Crusader of Centy, it wasn't enjoyable at all. I'd even say it's the worst RPG I've played so far.Gameplay: Well, overworld navigation and gameplay is as simple as Zelda, you smack enemies with a sword and defeat them. What sucks is that most enemies don't flinch when hit, unlike Zelda, so you need to back it up. Movement is very awkward, as it seems, should I say, tile-based. You're unable to walk between "tiles" so that means that you need to fully move a space in order to turn. This freaking sucks. On screens, enemies spawn in, and killing enemies actually makes them respawn. Totally not cool. On the overworld, you get to go through caves with specific characters like the old woman (gives you upgrades), Randar (health refill), Dina (gives you gold at the cost of a health bar), and Winkle (passwords). The last one actually shows us what the save system in Golvellius is, and really, I just hate password systems.
Now to make it interesting, there are two types of dungeons with different gameplay mechanics. One is a side scroller where you go from left to right. The worst thing about these is that you cannot scroll back left and if you attempt to go left you leave the dungeon instantly. But these are better to contend with than the top-down dungeon, where you are forced to move upwards. If you get snagged on a wall you end up getting kicked out of the dungeon as well. And enemies in both types of dungeons can be quite annoying. At the end is a boss, as always, and they are all predictable. But it hurts to touch them. In fact, I've never actually beaten Golvellius (not the final boss, I know that's his name but I actually never got to him or his dungeon), I stopped at a certain boss because it was just f****** frustrating. The gameplay here is just horrible. Grade: D+
Characters: The main character is a green-haired lad named Kelesis, who wields a sword and boots. Not very armored, he practically just has that "Link rip-off" thing. He's off to save, whaddya know, a princess, named Rena. I wish I didn't have to do this section when the characters are just awful. Grade: D
Plot: There's not much plot either (that's actually a good thing for me). So there's demons and monsters attacking the Aleid Kingdom and they want water. In doing so, they endanger humans, and causes everyone including the king to get sick. Princess Rena goes off on her own into the valley to find a special herb that can cure everyone, but venturing alone means that you'd likely never be seen. So a random kid named Kelesis decides to find her and make sure she's safe. Or whatever. Grade: C
Music: I can't even remember what the music was.
Overall Grade: D+
Don't play this, guys. It's really another Zelda clone but with a lot of frustration given the wonky controls and annoying enemies. The dungeons being different kinds is cool but also annoying because messing up means starting all over again. And there's passwords and useless NPCs to boot. If you want a Zelda clone that is good then you might as well go with Crusader of Centy. Avoid this.