VED Review
Is Teleportation Just Discount Time Travel?
The concept of time-travel is not new to video games, but offers plenty of ways for developers to experiment. Karaclan’s hand-drawn visual novel and turn-based RPG hybrid VED‘s take sees it utilize teleportation into an alternate magical universe, only to appear later in time than when the protagonist left. This mechanic combined with a delightful art style and engaging storytelling makes this a sleeper worth looking into.
VED establishes its world’s recent history by showing an event thirty years prior involving a rogue Ved named Dook who plots to betray his order. The Vedic order has been established to prevent the human world from interacting with the magic one. However, Dook has fallen in love with Fairy and wants to ensure they are together; just how plausible this starstruck love story affects the future is up to some of the choices players make as Dook. The game then jumps forward to the present day as protagonist Cyrus wakes up in his bed after recently moving to the steampunk fantasy city of Micropolis. Cyrus has the ability to see only vague outlines without any details, giving him a unique perspective on the world. Micropolis is mired in a battle between tradition and innovation and Cyrus gains the magical ability to transport to a fantastical universe, where he can see fully. Cyrus is quickly scouted out and encouraged to join the various factions fighting for control. Cyrus’ base personality is malleable enough that each perspective is a reasonable choice to follow, with the one consistent element being a connection with Alice, a mysterious girl he meets early in the journey.
Being torn by so many decisions makes Cyrus an easily relatable protagonist. There are plenty of twists and turns in VED and all of them feel organic. Core ideals that shape the characters remain the same as their role in the story shifts depending on which direction Cyrus’ choices ripple. There’s always something new to learn in each playthrough, there’s plenty left unanswered, though the endings wrap up their own routes neatly enough.
Cyrus and his surroundings always show up clear, but characters he interacts with are built based off of his mind’s eye due to his blindness.
Depending on the situation, Cyrus’s decisions are impacted by dice rolls. For activity outside of the combat system, such as overcoming an attacker in Cyrus’s original world or unlocking a trapped treasure chest in the magical one, there is a list of options and a skill check. These skill checks cover Strength, Dexterity, or Magic, and a 20 sided-die is rolled with points added based on Cyrus’s current attributes. Attributes are raised after three relevant skills checks, so at times when Cyrus is presented with options to sense the magic of a treasure chest, search for traps, and open the chest, it’s recommended to try every preparatory option available to maximize attribute gains.
Cyrus’s original world is typically where most story decisions are made as every single one has a ripple effect. Some shift a character’s perception of Cyrus, which can change whether certain future choices are available. The magical world’s choices mostly result in player buffs and debuffs, with the biggest choices usually involving physically moving Cyrus to portals that return him to the other world. Cyrus has a vague idea of where he will appear, but not when, or who may be nearby.
Teleporting to the magical world starts Cyrus off in the Troglodyte Village, which players can build up. Players use orbs, granted by defeating enemies, to build new structures in town that in turn give new abilities to Cyrus for use in combat. As Cyrus explores various magical areas new troglodytes can be met and if dialogue choices are favorable they will join the village as well. They provide cool designs and a little flavour but a lot of the village aspects feel secondary to the story and the choices players can make.
There’s even adorable talking mushrooms.
There are some hiccups with the dialogue options. VED feels as though it assumes players make one choice early on and have stuck with the options that follow it without any possibility of veering off that designed path. This leads to a character being angry about a choice that the player might never have made, or missing someone’s introduction because of going down a path the game didn’t expect. While it results in head-scratching moments, they pale to the interesting weight the game’s characters bring to the story.
VED has cool visuals in spades. The hand-drawn artwork style is integrated excellently with both the darkness of Cyrus’ sightless world and the vibrant colours of the magical world. Every step looks carefully crafted and uses an expert level of shading so that it feels like a highly stylized watercolour painting come to life. Designs for each of the characters all stand out and even the relatively small selection of enemies all have a wonderful sleekness to them. This layer of hand-drawn intricacy makes Micropolis, the magic world, and its inhabitants, all have an added layer of mystery that helps propel the story forward with an emphasis on fantasy.
Exploring the magical world sees players teleport to islands with monsters on them. Combat at first looks complex but is really pretty simple. Twenty-four different abilities can be learned but a lot overlap in how they execute. Cyrus can move side-to-side through four zones, each with four abilities available to use while on them. Each turn, he moves between the zones, dealing damage to enemies while aiming to avoid ending his turn in the zone being targeted by the enemy. Ending on a targeted zone results in potential critical damage, while avoidance provides a chance for a miss. Enemies can do the same, but Cyrus has plenty of abilities that can hit all enemies regardless. Extra elements like buffs, debuffs, and healing vary things up a bit, but the limited variation of skills and enemies leaves combat effective but unspectacular. While the story is constantly shifting and presenting something new, combat feels like something that breaks up story beats to let things sink in rather than something to focus too long on.
Health recovers between fights so strategy becomes primarily a matter of just staying alive. Enemies telegraph what they do to make positioning and planning easier, while dying just sends players back to the Troglodyte Village with no penalty. This allows for ample practice time to get the hang of moving around and utilizing abilities to their fullest potential to most easily reach the next story beat.
An electric left jab would take out most fungal monsters.
Rewinding to explore other story options isn’t easily done as VED has three save slots and all of them start at the beginning. Autosaves come into play after each decision, so the only way to see other options is by restarting a chapter. This can be done at any time but deletes the choices made afterwards, effectively making each playthrough a fresh start. Players will need to remember what options were taken on prior playthroughs but luckily there’s a skip option and a story combat mode to make skimming through to the new content easy enough. Dialogue choices rarely cause game overs as dice rolls usually shift story elements and keep it moving forward. Some of the more interesting options come up after failing skill checks, but can be difficult to recreate on purpose.
The audio presentation of VED unfortunately doesn’t match that of the visuals. The soundtrack is alright but never really gets a chance to stand out or heighten any situation. There is voice acting for each line, and it can be a distraction. Some lines are delivered perfectly, but way too many feel like they are being directly read off a script, complete with awkward pause points mid-sentence and little emphasis or emotion to be compelling.
VED is a very ambitious title. It takes a lot of hand-drawn intricacies and combines them with strong, thought-provoking character building and interesting storytelling. The first playthrough is rather quick at around six hours and subsequent ones finding new information are even quicker. The lower caliber of its voice acting and lack of depth to combat prevent it from becoming a full indie darling, but seeing how industrial and magical ideologies mix with the lawful and chaotic mindset in a fun fantasy world is consistently exciting. The game will do well with those who appreciate its visual novel tendencies, and the gameplay holds up well enough overall to encourage others to explore the mysteries of Micropolis.
Disclosure: This review is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.
Unique hand-drawn art style always impresses
Story takes many turns and every route stays true to the characters
Fun use of teleporting that acts a little like time-travel forward as well
Voice acting is often distracting
Soundtrack blends in too much to be memorable
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