Antagonist

It starts as a really fun game that has lots of references to many other games. Names were changed of course. I even recognize the one from Borderlands series (thanks Ayan).

It's funny and quirky and it helps that the D'vil is hot and Ralph is not that bad looking and at first you are like "Yeah! This is a good challenge!" And then... Then you get to a certain part and...

You can maybe do one or two actions before you are constantly Staggered (stunned) and die over and over again. The challenge is sky high (it's not even a Boss!) on that one fight and since you can't control your partner (AI) or whom they target... Much less what moves they use... It's over in an instant.

Staggered also means that your action bar is slowed so you have no choice but to just sit there and wait... While the enemies flail on you and... -.-"

Also the way this game works... There is no grinding for levels. You get levels/skills given to you at certain points and that's it.

Overall... That non-Boss battle just ruined it for me. Thanks for showing others what's it like to be entirely useless and powerless.

Maybe one day I'll retry it and GET SUPER OVERLY LUCKY AND everything goes just right and all the STAGGERS MISS! (From the enemy side that is).

Ah well. I'll take what fun and enjoyment I had and say thanks regardless. :>

A very fun, very nice game.
(In my opinion) adorable main characters, very interesting character interactions, comedy, drama, everything a good visual novel-rpgmaker game hybrid could need is present.
The copyright-friendly characters are quite hilarious also, if the general story humour isn't enough to amuse you.
I believe the music made it that I got really hyped at the final boss of one ending, it really sweeps you off your feet emotionally, if you fall for characters rather quickly.
The final boss of the other ending can take quite a while and a few attempts if Lady Luck isn't on your side, but it's not too tough.
Although I would always love to see an even more fleshed out version of something good, I believe it's ideal as it is in pacing and thus also keeping the tone of the game.
Overall I definitely recommend this game for the comedic and sweet gem it is to such a low price no less!

Yeah, I bounced the hell off of this one in the snap of a finger, I'll be honest. I ain't in it for this visual novel shit, and if you're gonna try to get meta on me, then you need to back it up with a turn-based combat system with real legs to stand on.

Esse jogo é tão bom e criativo, repleto de várias referências. É possível ver como ele foi feito com muito amor e carinho. Os personagens são cativantes e únicos e as paródias e referências são simplesmente geniais e as batalhas são muito divertidas! Nunca pensei que poderia me apegar tanto aos personagens originais do Rpg Maker VX.

Just finished both endings and I have to say I found this game very interesting and fun! I don't play a lot of mainstream? popular? games so I didn't understand some of the character references, but it didn't taint my experience one bit.

I love their take on the generic hero vs villain story too!

The game wasn't also that hard for a casual player like me who's more interested in the story rather than battles and game mechanics.

A short, fun parody game with simple combat that has just enough going on to avoid it being a chore.
If you're looking for a nice contained experience, absolutely give this one a go!

A short, fun parody game on the villain vs hero. The combo attack was tricky (or based on luck). The game description says it has multiple endings but... I don't plan on going back and pick different choices. Kinda satisfied with the choices I made and be the end of it.

I thought the story and characters were charming. I guess I'm a sucker for parodies, references, and/or puns. I wonder if there are books on this story concept.

This is a short full of comedy game. The amount of jokes and parody this game has will make you smile throughout the whole game. The battle is ok at best. You need to act right after your partner to execute a combo, which is often interrupted.
My score for this game is 7.5/10

A short and sweet story with a simple but also entertaining combat system.

The writing, story and characters is quite charming, and while the very obvious references can be a bit groan inducing at times, they do hold a certain charm to them.

The combat system is the usual RPG thing. You pick an attack, you hit, you get hit, and so on.
Unique to this game is a combo system, where if you chain moves with your companion, you deal extra damage alongside a possible extra effect.

If you're not one for buying short games, get your hand on this during a sale. But if you're genuinely interested, give it a shot.
It's decently cheap, and it'll leave you with a smile on your face.

Its a fun visual novel with rpg battles. There is a combo system that can sometimes be tricky to get the combos since you don't control your partner in battle only the main character. Keep stocked on your healing potions and watch your partners health. The story is enjoyable and battles have a good challenge level not too hard or too easy. You get too retry the battle if you lose any.
I had fun playing the whole way through. If the developer ever made another vn/rpg like this I would check out.

Okay, look, I am recommending the game but only because it is so cheap, now, the story parts are fairly amusing, the idea is unique but the story is nothing special, still, like I said, it's fairly amusing. The Main problem this game faces is the battle system, it's, quite frankly, shit. It's basicly an absolutely standard jrpg fighting system just that you really nead to rely on your partner, who is completely Ai controlled, you do the math. Also the game crashed once when I ended a fight with a counter attack skill and the enemy wasn't finished with her multi hit attack when she died. Right, I should probably also mention that the battle system doesn't completely work either, some skills work just sometimes, like the counter skill, it's really good but sometimes just doesn't do anything.

I love this game! I’m very fond of parodies and other ways to play with narrative cliché, and Antagonist is particularly charming. As far as I gathered, different paths can be taken, and I’m interested in seeing all possible endings; however, I am also quite content with playing as a nice not-evil-whatsoever Ralph-supporting D’Vil, and allowing him to become a real Dark Lord would be… quite trying and heartbreaking. :D So I don’t know if I’m going to replay Antagonist in different manner.

The characters are very likable (except for these ones who are not meant to be likable), and I got almost all the references. And learned about RPG Maker cast, which was very enlightening! The way Ralph’s and D’Vil’s friendship developed was adorable and touching, and I especially liked how not thick-headed Ralph was for a classic hero, raised and forged on the hate towards evil and Dark Lords (or one Dark Lord in particular). I also grew very fond of Teeth and her friendship with D’Vil. It is quite unusual and very welcome to find real female-and-male friendship without romantic overtones and will-they-or-won’t-they.

Visuals, especially character sprites, are very pleasing to the eye. As for the combat system, I really don’t understand why so many reviewers disliked it. All battles were plot-related and challenging enough to be interesting (except for the first ones, which were pretty easy), but not so difficult that they would become frustrating. I found the idea of aligning attacks with your partner and unleashing deadly combo with new sorts of abilities awesome! You just have to be very attentive to what your partner is doing and whose turn to act it is. The only reason for grief that I had was that Ralph didn’t heal D’Vil, not even once; I thought is would be extremely cool, if he did that as a way to signify the moment when he started considering D’Vil his friend. However, probably, his ability can only heal himself?.. And it would be unfeasible from the gameplay point of view, I guess.

All in all, for me, Antagonist was an extremely enjoyable game, and I would certainly play anything else from the same creator. I recommended it to my friends and will cherish the memory of experiencing it!

An amusing Visual Novel with rpg elements, or an amusing rpg with VN style cutscenes?

You decide.

There are a load of entertaining video game parodies in Antagonist. There’s ‘Loud,’ a spiky yellow haired hero with a giant boom box sword and headphones. There’s ‘Pink,’ the hero of time, with her ‘quadforce.’ There’s ‘Chefiroth,’ a silver haired chef’s hat wearing villain.

And several others. I won’t spoil them all here, but they’re very amusing.

There are basically two endings to the game and I’ve only gotten one. It’s pretty short and I enjoyed it, but I’ve heard the second ending is much more difficult to get on account of the final boss being almost impossible to kill.

I can see how that could happen, actually. The battle system is at first pretty straightforward, but unlike most rpgs, you can’t grind enemies to level up on your own. You will face an exact number of enemies in each playthrough and your levels, stats, and abilities are very much predetermined for each fight.

What changes are the skills you use and what basically comes down to luck in the turn order. Your AI partner will follow a semi-random attack pattern, which if you're lucky enough to get in a turn right after they do, you can pick the same move they do, and you’ll both do a combination attack which is much better than most of the things you can do on your own. However, the AI will not match their attacks with yours and the chain is interrupted by enemy attacks, making this mechanic extremely random.

You can’t buy gear, so you’re best off to buy about twenty to thirty potions and spend the rest of your money on revives.

During my first playthrough, I only encountered a couple of fights where I had serious difficulty, and that was mostly due to multiple enemies repeatedly attacking one character or the other during the fight. This is rather hard to defend against.

On the whole, Antagonist has a fairly entertaining story, marred by somewhat troublesome combat mechanics. A single playthrough will probably take you a couple hours and the price is pretty good for the content you get, so I’m recommending it.

Oh, but don’t hit the F12 key. The steam overlay does NOT work and hitting F12 is the default key for dumping you back into the main menu without saving.

My only other complaint about the game is the blip beeping noise it makes with the text. You can hit a button to display it all at once, but that makes all the blips happen at the same time, which sounds very strange. Should be an option to turn off the text blip noises.

I don't always review, but when I do...its either because the game is super good or super crap.

And this...was soooooooooooooooooooooooo GOOD.

Humour, Interesting comboing battle mechanics, amusing characters...this was such a treat to play. Although if you are good at being creative, you can guess the plot pretty quickly, but that doesn't take away from the sheer enjoyment of this little gem. It was totally worth the purchase.

And I'm not afraid to say it! I so badly ship D'vil and Ralph. xD <3

Really fun game with an interesting plot. The characters are are easy to invest in and the art is especially well done. Good quick game. 10/10

Short n' sweet and to the point with ya: Game is short I beat it in an hour but that's cause I'm a quick person and chose the good guy route (I didn't go through more then one route) but the game is amazing. You can tell nothing but pure effort was put into not only the characters but the story itself! it not just steps on the hero vs dark lord troupe- but dances on it! I can feel happy with my purchase when I say this game made my day.

If a game follows a visual novel format and places RPG elements as part of the story, then you have this game. I have enjoyed it a lot and found the characters enjoyable. Hard to imagine a plot that this game gave. All of the work put into Antagonist shows another side of life if the villians were playing a part and just actual evil beings. Well, except for Wowser and Dr. Robot Nick

However, the only thing I had a problem with this game was that Ralph has a revive spell and he used my stock of Revive item. Oh well.

This game is not for someone who is looking for a deep narrative or long experience. Its a simple and short Visual novel with  a handful of RPG battles that mostly serve as plot devices. 
 
However this game IS for someone who wants to spend 3 dollars and leave an hour or two later with a smile and a sense of satisfaction. The humor in this game is all about video game parody, puns, and silliness. If you like that sort of thing i recommend this game. A specific naming pun near the end of the game had me laughing to myself for a while.

Overall i would honestly call this less of a game, more of a neat short story.

One of those super fun indie games to get invested into, its not perfect but as said, super fun! The smile on your face when you finally finish a battle after many game overs, or the seriously familiar referances in the humor (dont wanna spoiler about this). This game is worth the investment and time and for just over $3, why not? overall a good game to talk about and hope to see more!

Antagonist is a cute, short visual novel/RPG-lite with an endearing cast and a fun plot. It's cliche, for sure, but sort of revels in its own triteness and uses it for its comedy.

Combat is ATB JRPG-style, and works primarily on using combination attacks between the protagonist and your AI partner. It works well against a single target, which is a majority of the fights, but multi-target fights really bring out the issue with the system: you need to go directly after your partner to use a combination attack, and the more enemies there are, the more difficult this gets, even with abilities that manipulate when your next turn will be. A certain three-target fight took me an almost unforgivable 15 tries to complete when the rest of the battles were largely a vessel for the story.

Don't expect something you'll rave to all your friends about, but for $3, I'd say go for it.