Recent reviews by Zombie Girl :)

Very passionate, witty developer with a knack for realising what he's good at and consistently outputting more and more of that. And unlike buckets and buckets of skittles, you never find yourself saying "well, that's too much of the same stuff". You'd think after the fifth installation of the (mostly) same characters, the (mostly) same enemy types, the (mostly) same elemental-based RPG system, it'd get old. It really doesn't.

I enjoyed EBF1 and 2 as turn-based RPG games originally on Newgrounds. It was a cool duo of flash games to play when you're bored. When EBF3 came out, and I realised I had a world map to explore, characters to level up and gear to get instead of an already-maxed-out RPG fight-engine experience, I became hooked. But I never enjoyed playing those games on browsers....

So the decision to boot the games over to Steam was phenomenal. I don't know what's wrong with me, but booting games up on Steam and earning Steam achievements is my motivation to play a lot of my games.

Matt Roszak has branded his own image, based on typical JRPG tropes and characteristics. You can see a lot of the characters in this game in other genres if you go play his flash games, including a bullet-hell game and a QTE game.

Enough of the context. Here's the summary:

It's a turn based fantasy adventure, as you'd expect. You may think "wow, that's totally original, never seen that one before" and I'd be on your side. But the charm and care, the humour and references combine into an homage that singles itself as something new, something familiar and something reliable.
It plays out like a normal JRPG. You fight monsters (not randomly, thank Godcat), you level up - you get stronger. You venture weird and wonderful realms, you slave away for NPCs who stand in one spot and command you to get stuff.

If you're a fan of JRPGs and turn-based combat, you may look at the art-style and go "wow, this looks so trash" and as a result denote it as drab, boring, or potentially easy. But there's a lot of depth in this game. And each instalment adds in new mechanics that change up the game DRASTICALLY. In EBF3, it was pretty basic, but the whole appeal was (aside from being able to use Lance) acting like a standard RPG as I mentioned before. EBF4 added in a prime new character, a deeper story, the backup system, end-end-game content and NG+, more status effects and elements, and this one adds in summons, weather which affects statuses between turns, and removes a chore: mana, instead implementing more cooldowns for more moves, which previously, the 'good' moves would just give a negative debuff to the user.
You'll warm up to it, even if from the get-go it looks lacklustre. I personally enjoy the art style and the humour, and there's a huge difficulty curve on bosses if you play on epic.

One thing I didn't like about this game were amount of shared skills there were, it's a cool feature but it was annoying to be able to dedicate a true 'healer'. The equips, especially the flairs in this game are amazing, though, so it offsets nicely. I wish you didn't have to use captured monsters as materials for upgrading, and I wish you couldn't catch bosses. It made me painstakingly have to re-fight each boss on both Zero and Epic, for the capture and achievement respectively, and it burns my completionist complex where I've been collecting one of each monster, just to have that monster now be a gap in my Bestiary in terms of capture, then I have to go back and catch an extra.

The haste mechanic is nice, but it feels like the Viking Monolith ends up being an end-all solution to summoning. I'd rarely.. just rarely... find myself using any 50 SP+ Summons because I may not have SP for Viking Monolith, or I need SP for Stumpy Gloop or Slime Bunny.
I think the summon system needs work, a good idea would you'd be able to have two non-backup monster slots and you could summon specific monsters to help fight in some way.

A solid experience. I'm 50 hours in, and I still need to do the on Epic. I've gotten close... but I wish there were more strategies to those fights other than set guides I've seen online. It feels like on Epic the fights just overwhelm you with constant nukes and AoE, and you can't cover all the elements through resistances.

The 'equip' function during battle would come in handy here if it didn't consume a turn. I get it'd be really unbalanced to be able to change equipment on a whim - maybe you can only change one equip per turn, and any more than that consumes your turn? According to the devlog Matt wanted to take this feature out completely but it was contested highly, I'm not sure why though.

Overall, a charming, funny, solid experience. It's not game of the year, and it's not the best story-wise, but it doesn't try to be. It offers a nice amount of content, surprising depth, and differs enough from other instalments to warrant its pricetag.

I'd recommend it to anyone who has time to spend on turn-based RPGs, and I love the developer to bits, so please check out Kupo Games and Matt's humble beginnings.

Looking forward to future releases.

Very passionate, witty developer with a knack for realising what he's good at and consistently outputting more and more of that. And unlike buckets and buckets of skittles, you never find yourself saying "well, that's too much of the same stuff". You'd think after the fifth installation of the (mostly) same characters, the (mostly) same enemy types, the (mostly) same elemental-based RPG system, it'd get old. It really doesn't.

I enjoyed EBF1 and 2 as turn-based RPG games originally on Newgrounds. It was a cool duo of flash games to play when you're bored. When EBF3 came out, and I realised I had a world map to explore, characters to level up and gear to get instead of an already-maxed-out RPG fight-engine experience, I became hooked. But I never enjoyed playing those games on browsers....

So the decision to boot the games over to Steam was phenomenal. I don't know what's wrong with me, but booting games up on Steam and earning Steam achievements is my motivation to play a lot of my games.

Matt Roszak has branded his own image, based on typical JRPG tropes and characteristics. You can see a lot of the characters in this game in other genres if you go play his flash games, including a bullet-hell game and a QTE game.

Enough of the context. Here's the summary:

It's a turn based fantasy adventure, as you'd expect. You may think "wow, that's totally original, never seen that one before" and I'd be on your side. But the charm and care, the humour and references combine into an homage that singles itself as something new, something familiar and something reliable.
It plays out like a normal JRPG. You fight monsters (not randomly, thank Godcat), you level up - you get stronger. You venture weird and wonderful realms, you slave away for NPCs who stand in one spot and command you to get stuff.

If you're a fan of JRPGs and turn-based combat, you may look at the art-style and go "wow, this looks so trash" and as a result denote it as drab, boring, or potentially easy. But there's a lot of depth in this game. And each instalment adds in new mechanics that change up the game DRASTICALLY. In EBF3, it was pretty basic, but the whole appeal was (aside from being able to use Lance) acting like a standard RPG as I mentioned before. EBF4 added in a prime new character, a deeper story, the backup system, end-end-game content and NG+, more status effects and elements, and this one adds in summons, weather which affects statuses between turns, and removes a chore: mana, instead implementing more cooldowns for more moves, which previously, the 'good' moves would just give a negative debuff to the user.
You'll warm up to it, even if from the get-go it looks lacklustre. I personally enjoy the art style and the humour, and there's a huge difficulty curve on bosses if you play on epic.

One thing I didn't like about this game were amount of shared skills there were, it's a cool feature but it was annoying to be able to dedicate a true 'healer'. The equips, especially the flairs in this game are amazing, though, so it offsets nicely. I wish you didn't have to use captured monsters as materials for upgrading, and I wish you couldn't catch bosses. It made me painstakingly have to re-fight each boss on both Zero and Epic, for the capture and achievement respectively, and it burns my completionist complex where I've been collecting one of each monster, just to have that monster now be a gap in my Bestiary in terms of capture, then I have to go back and catch an extra.

The haste mechanic is nice, but it feels like the Viking Monolith ends up being an end-all solution to summoning. I'd rarely.. just rarely... find myself using any 50 SP+ Summons because I may not have SP for Viking Monolith, or I need SP for Stumpy Gloop or Slime Bunny.
I think the summon system needs work, a good idea would you'd be able to have two non-backup monster slots and you could summon specific monsters to help fight in some way.

A solid experience. I'm 50 hours in, and I still need to do the on Epic. I've gotten close... but I wish there were more strategies to those fights other than set guides I've seen online. It feels like on Epic the fights just overwhelm you with constant nukes and AoE, and you can't cover all the elements through resistances.

The 'equip' function during battle would come in handy here if it didn't consume a turn. I get it'd be really unbalanced to be able to change equipment on a whim - maybe you can only change one equip per turn, and any more than that consumes your turn? According to the devlog Matt wanted to take this feature out completely but it was contested highly, I'm not sure why though.

Overall, a charming, funny, solid experience. It's not game of the year, and it's not the best story-wise, but it doesn't try to be. It offers a nice amount of content, surprising depth, and differs enough from other instalments to warrant its pricetag.

I'd recommend it to anyone who has time to spend on turn-based RPGs, and I love the developer to bits, so please check out Kupo Games and Matt's humble beginnings.

Looking forward to future releases.

Very passionate, witty developer with a knack for realising what he's good at and consistently outputting more and more of that. And unlike buckets and buckets of skittles, you never find yourself saying "well, that's too much of the same stuff". You'd think after the fifth installation of the (mostly) same characters, the (mostly) same enemy types, the (mostly) same elemental-based RPG system, it'd get old. It really doesn't.

I enjoyed EBF1 and 2 as turn-based RPG games originally on Newgrounds. It was a cool duo of flash games to play when you're bored. When EBF3 came out, and I realised I had a world map to explore, characters to level up and gear to get instead of an already-maxed-out RPG fight-engine experience, I became hooked. But I never enjoyed playing those games on browsers....

So the decision to boot the games over to Steam was phenomenal. I don't know what's wrong with me, but booting games up on Steam and earning Steam achievements is my motivation to play a lot of my games.

Matt Roszak has branded his own image, based on typical JRPG tropes and characteristics. You can see a lot of the characters in this game in other genres if you go play his flash games, including a bullet-hell game and a QTE game.

Enough of the context. Here's the summary:

It's a turn based fantasy adventure, as you'd expect. You may think "wow, that's totally original, never seen that one before" and I'd be on your side. But the charm and care, the humour and references combine into an homage that singles itself as something new, something familiar and something reliable.
It plays out like a normal JRPG. You fight monsters (not randomly, thank Godcat), you level up - you get stronger. You venture weird and wonderful realms, you slave away for NPCs who stand in one spot and command you to get stuff.

If you're a fan of JRPGs and turn-based combat, you may look at the art-style and go "wow, this looks so trash" and as a result denote it as drab, boring, or potentially easy. But there's a lot of depth in this game. And each instalment adds in new mechanics that change up the game DRASTICALLY. In EBF3, it was pretty basic, but the whole appeal was (aside from being able to use Lance) acting like a standard RPG as I mentioned before. EBF4 added in a prime new character, a deeper story, the backup system, end-end-game content and NG+, more status effects and elements, and this one adds in summons, weather which affects statuses between turns, and removes a chore: mana, instead implementing more cooldowns for more moves, which previously, the 'good' moves would just give a negative debuff to the user.
You'll warm up to it, even if from the get-go it looks lacklustre. I personally enjoy the art style and the humour, and there's a huge difficulty curve on bosses if you play on epic.

One thing I didn't like about this game were amount of shared skills there were, it's a cool feature but it was annoying to be able to dedicate a true 'healer'. The equips, especially the flairs in this game are amazing, though, so it offsets nicely. I wish you didn't have to use captured monsters as materials for upgrading, and I wish you couldn't catch bosses. It made me painstakingly have to re-fight each boss on both Zero and Epic, for the capture and achievement respectively, and it burns my completionist complex where I've been collecting one of each monster, just to have that monster now be a gap in my Bestiary in terms of capture, then I have to go back and catch an extra.

The haste mechanic is nice, but it feels like the Viking Monolith ends up being an end-all solution to summoning. I'd rarely.. just rarely... find myself using any 50 SP+ Summons because I may not have SP for Viking Monolith, or I need SP for Stumpy Gloop or Slime Bunny.
I think the summon system needs work, a good idea would you'd be able to have two non-backup monster slots and you could summon specific monsters to help fight in some way.

A solid experience. I'm 50 hours in, and I still need to do the on Epic. I've gotten close... but I wish there were more strategies to those fights other than set guides I've seen online. It feels like on Epic the fights just overwhelm you with constant nukes and AoE, and you can't cover all the elements through resistances.

The 'equip' function during battle would come in handy here if it didn't consume a turn. I get it'd be really unbalanced to be able to change equipment on a whim - maybe you can only change one equip per turn, and any more than that consumes your turn? According to the devlog Matt wanted to take this feature out completely but it was contested highly, I'm not sure why though.

Overall, a charming, funny, solid experience. It's not game of the year, and it's not the best story-wise, but it doesn't try to be. It offers a nice amount of content, surprising depth, and differs enough from other instalments to warrant its pricetag.

I'd recommend it to anyone who has time to spend on turn-based RPGs, and I love the developer to bits, so please check out Kupo Games and Matt's humble beginnings.

Looking forward to future releases.

good game big epic i love it

epic!!