If this game sounds familiar to you, that may be because I talked about it a few months back when checking out the press preview copy of the game. That version was pretty short, and a lot has changed since then, but it still gave a nice sampling of what the game had to offer.

Celestial Tear: Demon’s Revenge is a new episodic RPG from White Guardian Studios that tells the story of the world of Hasphal. This release is the first installment in that series, and despite being a simple first episode, this game has an awful lot to offer.

Right off the bat, I think this game does a great job with the RPG Maker engine because the game crafted is essentially like a modern 16-bit RPG. It’s very reminiscent of late-SNES titles, but it has some really great character artwork, nice voice-acting, and cool animated cutscenes that are drawn in a dark, gritty comic book style. And this game is hard. Like, Ys series hard. It’s unforgiving and the difficulty ramps up pretty quick. This might turn a few folks off, but in the end, it forces you to learn the intricacies of the game’s combo-based fighting system (which itself is one of the unique features of this title).

Some may not like the game’s combat, but others will praise its attempt to bring a fighting game style system into an RPG world. Personally, I think it works well.

Enjoy the first 45 minutes or so of gameplay in the video above and, if you like what you see, check the game out on Steam – currently, it costs a mere $5.99, which I think is a very fair asking price.

Me – I’m curious to see what the next episode will bring when White Guardian gets that ready for us! 🙂