The story began with Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup getting ready for school. That was where the normalcy ended. The cutscene followed the girls to the kitchen, where they expected the professor to be waiting. He wasn't there. The game took Twilight's trademark dark turn when they went to check his room.
"He's dead!?" Rainbow cracked.
"Natural causes. One of the most unexpected ways to go. There weren't many clues to his age in the cartoon, but he was almost fifty years old."
"How did you even figure that out!?"
"The episode Get Back Jojo. He was eight years old in 1959. Add thirty-nine years and you get the beginning of the series in 1998."
"That's insane!"
"If you converted that to real time, he'd be fifty-three now."
"Holy crap..."
The music from the title screen began to play. Rainbow read through the dialogue intently.
"Guess we can drop the act now..." Buttercup said somberly.
"They were expecting this?" Rainbow questioned.
"I told you Blossom possessed tremendous foresight. She was well aware he could go at any time for any reason. That's not the kind of thing you can keep from your siblings for too long. Friends, family, teachers, they all fade away with time. The question is, what do we do when it happens. Keep reading."
"Jesus Christ, this is horrifying!"
"That's the intended purpose. Real life's scarier than any horror movie if you ask me."
"You're not wrong, but damn. We just started and I already feel like shit."
"We got the biggest shock out of the way early. Now we can concentrate on the game. There's a few twists and turns I think you'll find rather fascinating."
Twilight gained control of Blossom's avatar.
"We can change clothes now."
Twilight used her keyboard to guide Blossom back up the stairs. She approached the closet by the southern wall.
"How long did it take to design the stages?"
"Not long after I binged the show. I made detailed notes of where each building was located and improvised stores for items, weapons, and accessories. I took influence from Shadow Hearts and gave the player three accessory slots instead of just one."
"What kind of weapons are there?"
"Blossom uses swords, Bubbles uses staves, and Buttercup uses guns: a reference to DoomGuy's version in Mugen. You can even fight bare-fisted if you want. I'll show you how combat works after I collect our gear."
Twilight located the Toy Staff for Bubbles in the toy box, a rolling pin for Blossom, and a nine millimeter pistol in the professor's room.
"I did something a little sneaky and put a side-quest here. If you examine the professor's body, you'll bury him in the back yard. Blossom will take the key to his lab where you can stock up on a few healing items and a new piece of armor for Buttercup."
"Does the armor change your look in battle?"
"Nah. I prefer the aesthetic of hoodies and jeans over fantasy armor. It's solely for defense and evasion. The only thing that changes are weapons"
"Fair enough."
"Anyway, now that that's out of the way, let's get out of this hellhole."
"Agreed. I'm gettin' chills just thinkin' about the plot."
Twilight exited the former home of the powerpuff girls.
"You can see the enemies on the map?"
"Yeah. Figured it'd be less frustrating if you could avoid battles at will like in Chrono Trigger and newer versions of Dragon Quest."
"Speaking of which, we should play Chrono Trigger sometime."
"It's already on my bucket list."
"Didn't expect any less."
"Just let me open the menu real quick and get everybody geared up."
"Damn. You matched up everything to their colors."
"It's the same in battle. I wanted to give them each unique traits."
"Seems like it worked out pretty well."
"Glad you think so."
After a few moments of flying, Twilight encountered their first conflict: a robot created by Mojo Jojo.
"The command screen is here at the bottom. The frame is solid black while the outline changes color depending on which party member's turn it is. They're the only playable characters in the game, so I didn't have to put too much effort into it."
"I just hope Bubbles' animation is better than Aerith's or Alice's. Mages always look stupid attacking."
"I thought so too, so I had her do an impalement attack with the end of the staff before doing a rightward swipe. It's way more fluid and pleasing to look at than most mage animations in single-player RPGs."
"I see two of the options are question marks. I know one of them's magic. What's the other?"
"Summons. You can use those later on to deal heavy damage."
"Sort of like FF7."
"Kinda, except you don't have to attach materia to your equipment. All of your abilities are gained through leveling, side-quests, story progression, optional bosses, and weapons."
"I follow you so far. What about the gauges?"
"Well, there's you health which correlates to the girls' colors again. The dark blue meter is your energy, used for summons and abilities. The third gauge is taken straight from FF7, but instead of limit breaks, they're called fatalities."
"Another Mortal Kombat reference."
"Yep. Your fatalities change depending on what weapon you have equipped, and they build up depending on the damage you deal. In other words, the stronger you are, the easier it is to fill the gauge. Much more sensible than in FF7 where they got harder to fill as your level increased. Here, you're free to grind to your heart's content without being penalized for it."
"I definitely like that feature."
"One more thing. To compensate for the difficulty in Creation mode, I made them deal ten times damage instead of two like the devs did in FF7. If you're looking for a challenge, that's the mode you want. I gave the bosses skills exclusive to that difficulty specifically for replay value."
"Gotcha."
"The last feature I added is the ability to dodge at will. The higher your evasion and agility, the more frequently it does it automatically, but in the early game, it helps out on higher difficulties. When an enemy's about to attack you, press the D key to jump backwards."
"Nifty."
"Let's finish this and move on with the story."