Epic Battle Fantasy · 7:45pm Aug 3rd, 2019
Hello everyone. Sorry if the publication has slowed a bit since a moment, but I think that you will understand that it's hard to write while it's around 40°C outside. But another reason is that I have discovered a video game saga, named Epic Battle Fantasy, which I have been playing a lot. I don't think that you have heard of them, because they are free-to-play RPG made by nonprofessionals, pretty much like Undertale and Deltarune, but without all the publicity and the sudden popularity boom. So I'll present those games to you, in case they may interest you. They deserve that, their job is really good. I would even say better than some of the games made by professionals.
So EBF is a saga of five games + 2 spin offs, all free-to-play, but for EBF4 and EBF5, more complete versions, with super bosses and bonus dungeons between other things, can be purchased on Steam, same with the second spin off, Bullet Heaven 2.
Like I said, they are RPG. Well, for the first two games, they are more battle rushes RPG style, meaning that they are a succession of fights until reaching the final boss, without anything else. It's only from EBF3 that the saga takes a more RPG form, with an open world, pnjs, quests, leveling, etc... As for the spin offs, named Bullet Heaven and Bullet Heaven 2, they are Touhou-likes, and oh god, at difficulty max, it is REALLY Touhou-like.
It's very cartoonish, with a constant humor and many references, often going into the very dark, like sometimes in villages, you can see a Pikachu hanging from one of those sticks where the hunters put the corpse of the small animals they have killed. Or there is that minor boss, named Beholder, which is an eye with tentacles, and it has an attack... Well, if you have seen hantais, you know what this attack is (thankfully, it's censored).
Starting from EBF2, the ost is made by Phyrnna, and if you have listened to the two themes I have posted, I can tell you, it is beautiful. You can easily find her You Tube channel if you want to listen to more. Just watch out for the spoilers in the comments.
As for the gameplay, it's an RPG old school with turn based fights, the main difference being that the enemies are visible on the map, and they don't move, so if they aren't blocking the way, it's up to you to start the fight with them. You can also run away from almost every fights, even the bosses, so you can enter a fight, scan the enemies to discover their weakness, and run away to come back more prepared. Well, again, for the first two EBF, there are none of that. The fights happen one after another almost without stopping. Your HP and MP are only healed after the bosses, and there are only one or two occasions where you can buy potions with the few golds you earned from your fights. This makes those games extremely strategy based, where you have to watch out the consumption of your MP while making sure to not take too much damages to avoid having to use your precious potions too often. And this means making sure not to drag the fights. Knowing that in those first two games, your party only has two characters, this makes those games rather hard for the ones that are used to go berserk and just stomp on the enemies with everything they have without thinking.
Something else that I haven't seen in any other RPG, when you find a new equipment, weapon, hat, armor, so on, you can't sell or throw them. The reason is that all the pieces of equipment have their use in the right circumstances. Remember when I say that you can run away from any fight after scanning an enemy to come back better prepared? That's why. Each equipment has strengths and weakness, in various stats, elemental and malus resistances, buffs and debuffs, or can even have some special effects, like giving the character wearing it a chance to counterattack or to activate a certain skill or invocation at the start of the turn. They can even imbue some attacks with an elemental effect! So one of your goals throughout the journey is to find all the equipments and to upgrade them to maximum with the forge to be able to prepare yourself against anything. Note that you can change your equipment in the middle of a fight, but it costs a turn, but against enemies that can change their weaknesses, or in fights against more than one wave of enemies with different weaknesses, you may be forced to do this. The skills can also be upgraded. And yes, the enemies can come in waves, and there are no limits of waves, and each wave can have maximum five enemies.
The difficulty is rather well dosed. You can do all the games without farming (excepted maybe to farm the materials to level up the equipments), unless you want to lose one hour to level up enough to crush the enemies. After, I must warn you that nor farming means that the fights are constantly challenging. The enemies are always at the right level to counter the level that you should have at this moment if you haven't farmed and if you have fought every enemies visible on the map in your passage, and this makes the bosses worthy of their title. They are strong without being impossible, provided again that you are prepared with the right equipments and that the skills are leveled enough. And that you have kept your Limit Breaks (the ultimate attacks) for the fight. Little note however that the final dungeon of EBF3 is really hard. Normaly, when you reach it, you have reached the max level, and yet, if you don't watch out, there are enemies that can one shot your whole party with just one attack. Thankfully, this isn't the case anymore in the following games. But the final boss of EBF3 took me at least 20 tries, even prepared. The final boss of EBF4 wasn't that hard (only 2 tries), but was still a difficult fight that kept me on the edge for all the duration, over one hour! And I was on normal! In hard mode, and especially in epic mode, you will need to have a mental of steel to beat it. I haven't yet fought the final boss of EBF5, but from what I've heard, it's a worthy foe again. Well, I must say that things are made much easier starting from EBF4 with the appearance of a fourth, then a fifth party member. Only three characters are on the front, and you can switch them with the other character(s) waiting behind anytime without even losing the turn, and if one of the characters is killed, then they can be replaced immediately. This means that if the three fighting characters are killed, then you can use the fourth character to run away or to heal the others. The waiting characters also recuperate HP and MP with time while the others are fighting.
Something else important has been added in EBF5: you can capture your enemies, even the bosses, exactly like in Pokemon! Weaken them by putting them at the door of death, add in a paralysis or freeze status, then throw the cardboard box (or even a container for the bigger enemies), and tadda! You have a new slave friend in your list of invocations. This means that there are almost as much invocations than there are enemies! The number of invocations that you can have in a fight is however limited, so like for the equipments, it's important to choose before a fight which invocations you will put in the list to better your chance. And yes, you can even capture dragons. No, you can't capture the final boss. Oh, and capturing some of the enemies is important to complete some of the quests or to level up some of the equipments. This means that you will have to capture the enemies in question again if you want to complete your collection.
The only downside, as the characters themselves would point out (the fourth wall has more holes than a cheese in this saga) is that the scenario is never really developped, and the characters aren't developped too, they start the game and finish the game without any evolution. This is better worked in EBF5, but don't expect Final Fantasy level of development. The big points of this saga are really the humor, the interactions between the characters, the whacky universe, and like the title says, the epic battles. And I don't mind this. Being able to fire a nuke or an ion cannon on my enemies is worth it.
So I recommend those games. You can start from the fifth one without any problems, but you should at least do the three and the fourth. And if you don't want to do the first and the second, don't worry, you don't miss much, but you should at least see the intro, final bosses, and ends in Youtube (the first game doesn't have any intro).
And don't worry, the next chapter of A Sweetie Dreamland is almost finished.
I am very tempted to try playing those online games, but I'm already busy with an online game myself. Ever heard of the Bloons Tower Defense saga? I'm playing the fifth installment in the series. My rank's 62 and climbing. I would insert a smug Applejack emoji, but I've met players with a rank of 80.
Also, I especially enjoy fourth wall breaks (which is one of the reasons why I love the movie Spaceballs, and the only reason why I would even bother to watch Deadpool; don't get me wrong, he's hilarious, but I had to stop watching the movie because of the F-bomb being dropped many times. I also loved the literal fourth wall break in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team and Superstar Saga, as well as the ones in Triple Deluxe and Planet Robobot when something slams Kirby into the screen. But I hate Mecha Knight+ for that attack! It hit me 3 out of the 3 times I have done battle with him! Note: I fought him 3 times not from losing lives but because I had nothing else to do in the game. And because of The Arena.), which makes me really want to play the Epic Battle Fantasy saga that you mentioned. I like cartoon stuff, humor, and references as well. However, I don't like dark stuff, and if something has to be censored, then count me out. I've never heard of hantais, but don't tell me what they are. I would attempt to use Focus Blast on you if you tell me something that has to be censored. (The reason why I'd use Focus Blast is because my self-insert OC, or Original Character, is Pummel Fist, who was turned into a Machop alongside his mother thanks to Archie and Maxie. Surely you know who those two are if you've played the third-generation Pokemon games.)
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Don't worry, the censored stuff only happens with that enemy named the Beholder, and it's made in a funny way, all the rest is... Well, I will not say kid friendly, but it's not pegi18. All you have to do is look at the final boss of the first EBF to understand why.