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    Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4

    Game » consists of 2 releases. Released Jun 07, 2013

    The last game in the Penny Arcade "Precipice" quadrilogy and the second from Zeboyd Games.

    machinerebel's Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4 (PC) review

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    Satisfies that craving for SNES JRPGs with modern conveniences

    The newly released Rainslick Precipice of Darkness episode is the exciting conclusion to the Rainslick series. While mechanically very similar to Episode 3, the execution is quite different. Combat still revolves around the same turn-based battle system familiar to anyone who’s played a Japanese RPG, but instead of having four party members with a class system, Episode 4 mixes things up with a system not dissimilar from Pokemon – as you journey through the Underhell, you discover various monsters that you trap in your “monstorb” and use them to fight for you. Monsters can be equipped with weapons, stat-boosting relics, and a trainer allowing you to customize your party even further than the previous episode.

    As your crèche of monsters grows, experimenting with different monster and trainer load outs is not only interesting, but necessary. One monster ability could make all the difference between getting wiped out, or defeating your enemies. You can use an item in battle to swap out monsters if necessary, but each fight gives you the opportunity to tweak your team beforehand as well. Episode 4 continues to have the same great enemy and skills design as Episode 3, and some of the hidden bosses are downright assholes. Sometimes getting lucky with a team heal or a weakness-probing move is all you need to win a fight, and thanks to the generous failure system, where a loss restarts your right before the battle, experimentation usually wins out. The other big change from the previous game is that there is an overworld map similar to Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. The game world overall is less linear, with optional dungeons and monster fights leading to new items and even new monsters for your party. Towns in the game serve to point you in the right direction, whether it be towards the monstrous living hell train or the series of three pillars that act as the main story dungeons in the game.

    It’s still a fairly linear journey with story beats and the occasional shift in perspective from one party of heroes to the next, but it certainly feels more open than Episode 3. Eventually you even unlock the ability to use a sort of airship, though the manner of the vessel is pretty unique and funny. If you enjoyed the humor in the past games, this continues to deliver and the chemistry between the characters, which mostly consists of petty bickering and insults, drives the narrative forward without becoming stale. I liked the music from Episode 3, but 4 ramps it up featuring one of the best battle themes I’ve heard in a game like this for a long time. The dungeons are a lot more varied too. Though there are quite a few generic caves, you’ll journey through a chaotic zoo inside a giant tree, a series of dungeons known as the Underunderhell, and a techno-future tower full of robots. The game culminates into a satisfying ending that wraps things up rather sweetly. Overall, it’s easy to recommend Rainslick Episodes 3 and 4 to those craving an old school JRPG experience, but don’t want to deal with how archaic the classic SNES games are. Zeboyd seems to have mastered the art of the modern SNES-era JRPG and their passion for fixing or removing the annoying tropes of yesteryear truly make these games a Rainslick experience.

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