(1 skateboard, 2 towns, 1 faceless protagonist. That about sums it up.)
Developer: water x melon
Publisher: Drageus Games
Release Date: 9-11-2020
After almost thirty years of searching I think I have finally found it. I have stumbled upon something that only comes along once in a lifetime. My journey through the Nintendo Switch digital dollar bin has reached its apex. I have discovered the most incompetently made RPG of all time. It’s the RPG equivalent of Plan 9 From Outer Space or Paddy the Pelican. It does manage to have a starting and ending point, but between those two points it gets absolutely everything wrong. It’s a game whose mere existence raises a lot of questions. How does something which obliviously lacks any professionalism become a nationally released product? Most legendarily bad pieces of media will remain obscure for years if not decades. It’s not like Ed Wood was well known in his lifetime, and there’s no evidence that Paddy the Pelican ever actually aired. However, in the digital world getting products released is much easier, and a train wreck like WeakWood Throne can be available for a very low price to any of the millions of Switch or PC owners out there who can never have enough RPGs to play. It was released by one of those companies who put out a game in the US and then there are suddenly a couple hundred positive reviews of it in Russian. So I guess it’s a Russian company that makes bad games very quickly and releases them to legitimate markets? It’s a business model that doesn’t make much sense to me, but I don’t know much about money. It’s not like I get paid to write all these blogs. I just play games and tell you if they are any good. Now, let me tell you why this game isn’t any good.
(Why won't you talk to me Marlon? You're an alligator wearing a funny hat. I've never not wanted to talk to you)
WeakWood Throne is a game where every new discovery is a warning sign. It all starts with the stupid name. Seriously, is WeakWood Throne a dick joke? It sounds like a dick joke. It also has the word weak in the title which is never a good sign either. It’s like the game is inviting you to not like it. The game starts with your unnamed character in the middle of nowhere doing nothing with no explanation as to why they are there and what they are doing. The movement is a little slow, but don’t worry the game tells you that by holding down LZ you can ride a handy skateboard. Well that sure is helpful oh wait the skateboard goes slower than walking. How could they make a mode of transport that is actually slower than regular movement? It only moves faster over wooden bridges, so they decided to put a bunch of random holes in bridges just to make it that much harder to travel anywhere. The game is advertised as an open world game, so it’s important to have a good map so the player won’t get lost. Sadly there is no way to access an overworld map, and the mini map provided in the corner only shows some landmarks and not the actual land itself. If you want to know if you are near a bush you can see it on the map, but if you want to know if you are near a town you are out of luck. This game also emphasizes the plants that you can collect but they are mostly useless. I thought there was going to be some crafting involved, but all you can do with your leaves is sell them or complete a couple of quests with them. At least you know they are there however. They are right on the map.
(As promised here's the throne)
So I wandered around blindly for a while hacking away at plants that I thought were going to be important and finally stumbled upon a town. That’s when I seriously thought the game was broken. There are NPCs standing around who look like they want to talk, but nobody would even give me the time of day. Even characters with names are silent unless they have a quest to give or something to sell. The quest givers will speak once to give you a quest, but then they will never speak to you again. Even most of the earliest games in the genre will give NPCs at least generic dialogue. This game is bare minimum incarnate. As a consequence you get vague quests with no unsatisfying resolutions. The characters will talk when you turn in a quest, but never again after this so you can’t follow up on anything. And you have to complete every quest before beating the game too. So if you weren’t paying enough attention when an NPC is giving you a quest you just have to wander until you complete it. Luckily the world is small and the developers got lazy halfway through so there aren’t that many quests.
I wish there were more quests because anything to distract myself from the combat was a welcome relief. There is the promise of melee, ranged, and magic combat, but arrows move to slowly and magic wands are somewhat rare so it’s really just about swords. They try to pull off a twin stick combat style, but the collision detection is so poor that you’re better off just positioning your character in the correct spot. When you level up you get two skill points, but putting points in different skills only seems to allow you to buy better weapons. Giving myself more strength didn’t seem to make me any stronger by itself. Also, nothing really matters much anyway because if you die you just pop back up again from the closest entryway with no other consequence. There is no loss of money, no respawning enemies, nothing at all to motivate you to stay alive. Also, all four bosses are exactly the same. They shoot a projectile three or four times, have some sort of wide range power attack, and sometimes spawn extra monsters all while standing perfectly still. All you have to do is run around in a circle and then attack. It all makes the game feel like a slog even though it’s only around four hours long. Honestly I would normally complain about an rpg only being four hours long, but this may be WeakWood Throne’s only saving grace. If it somehow worms its way into your rpg backlog it will at least be gone soon. In this case the quicker the better.
So that’s the game. I am not going to have a lengthy conclusion like I usually do because I think I have it pretty well covered already. I am sure there are some flaws I forgot about, but if you want to uncover them all you’ll have to play it yourself. Also please don’t play this game to uncover all the flaws. That would just be sad.
1. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
2. Super Mario Odyssey
3. The Legend of Zelda
4. Galaga
5. Donkey Kong
6. Exodus: Ultima III
7. Pac-Mania
8. Wrecking Crew
9. Super Pac-Man
10. Pac-Man
11. Viva Pinata
12. Dragon View
13. Excitebike
14. Drakkhen
15. Arc the Lad
16. Clu Clu Land
17. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX
18. Mickey’s Racing Adventure
19. Metro-Cross
20. Double Dragon
21. Ice Climber
22. Gaplus
23. Dragon Spirit
24. Pinball (NES)
25. Ninja Golf
26. Super Soccer
27. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)
28. Red Sea Crossing
29. Baraduke
30. Evoland
31. Tennis
32. Renegade
33. Hogan’s Alley
34. Gamma-Attack
35. The Legend of “Valkyrie”
36. Galaxian
37. Dragon Crystal
38. Cosmic Commuter
39. Hot Pixel
40. PocketBike Racer
41. Wild Gunman
42. Defunct
43. Gyruss (2600)
44. Looney Tunes Racing
45. Squidlit
46. Baseball
47. Birthday Mania
48. Bad Street Brawler
49. Burly Men at Sea
50. WeakWood Throne
51. X-Men (HyperScan)
52. My Name is Mayo
53. Marvel Heroes
54. Ben 10
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