I’ve never liked reviewing episodic games. They are, by definition, incomplete products. I feel as though it’s like attempting to review a television show during the second commercial break, an album after the fourth track, telling your daughter while she’s putting her makeup on that she looks like a whore, or complaining that a four course meal isn’t “foody” enough only after you’ve received the soup. It doesn’t help either that it’s been nigh on four years since the soup came, and we’ve been patiently waiting for the entree of Penny Arcade Adventures since then. That’s a long time to be hungry. So very, very hungry.

Penny Arcade Adventures, in case you didn’t know, has changed hands. While episodes one and two were developed by Hothead Games, they declined to produce the third entry in the series, instead opting to focus on Ron Gilbert’s Deathspank games. Episode 3 was produced in a prose format on the On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness website, but all hope of it ever becoming a game had been abandoned until a couple of years ago. Zeboyd Games, developers of the indie RPG hit, Cthulhu Saves the World, has taken up the mantle of designer and brought us the penultimate entry in (the first?) Penny Arcade Adventures.

Apart from the rather obvious change in graphics (and if they appear to you not as obvious as I suggest, it might be worth your while to visit an optometrist) mostly everything remains intact in episode three from its written progenitor and game predecessors, setting and characters alike. The player created character has mysteriously disappeared, presumably finally having sorted out their living arrangements and pursuing a vibrant and rewarding career in the field of… raking… things. This doesn’t really come out as being too damaging to the story though, as the role of the player character was to serve mainly as a foible to the dialogue of Gabe & Tycho, a system that would seem oddly out of place in a 16-bit styled, retro RPG.

New Arcadia. 1922. Spring. May. The 8th. Daytime. Round about 3pm. Maybe a little before.

As far as retro style RPGs go though, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Pt. 3 does a few unorthodox things. Its overland map is more a connected series of points that unlock over the course of the plot, each point opening up to a new area that’s visibly populated by the baddies. Unlike many of its 16-bit relatives (but like its prequels) finite amounts of monsters sit static in these areas, allowing for players to only generate limited amounts of experience and income. While purists may lament the lack of grinding, I feel that it continues to serve as a benefit, allowing the game to focus more on the strengths of the content rather than repetitive tasking. Each combat has you starting with full HP and zero MP. During combat, each turn provides characters with a single MP, which are used to trigger abilities and spells. Leveling up will provide new abilities, active or passive, and will even sometimes reduce the costs of existing abilities.

Speaking of leveling up, Episode 3 does have a pretty pleasant surprise in a somewhat unique class system. At the start of the adventure, all the player characters have a class that we’ve become accustomed to: Tycho is a scholar, Gabe is a fisticuffs enthusiastic brute, and so on. During the course of the game however, “class pins” are uncovered and allow the player to pick and choose secondary and then tertiary classes to supplement their abilities. These humorously named classes (such as the Delusionist, Slacker, Dinosorcerer or Hobo) all level up regardless of having them equipped, and give you the option of switching them out, or changing them around to confront a situation with an alternate strategy.

The power of the Crabomancer is to taste incredible with garlic butter on it.

This doesn’t seem to come to bear on the difficulty of the game very often, which by most of my observations is pretty reasonable (and choose-able at the start). I did come across a touch of frustrating trouble at one point in time, with the game trapping me in a satirical tangent aimed directly at NES era Dragon Warrior/Final Fantasy titles. For nearly two hours I butted my head against the wall of the boss of the area, frustrated that there was no main plot on the line to speak of, and bothered I was unable to return to the overworld and re-spec my equipment. After consultation with my colleague, Austin, I discovered that I may very well suck at video games. (Editor’s Note: He totally does)

But not having had any problems with any of the game before or after that point in time, I wonder if it was one of those “you’d better be playing the game a certain way, or else” moments I hate so much in games (see: Alpha Protocol, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines). Nobody else might have any trouble with it, but being stuck there in a pointless joke of a plot tangent, without any usable stores, and thus the only avenue of adjustment available to me being swapping classes around at random, trying to find the magic combination was an unpleasant mark on an otherwise great experience.

I've seen that guy. He's famous. He's *INTERNET* famous.

The writing unsurprisingly comes off as pretty clever, with plenty of inside jokes and winks at the fan base, dotted by some very funny flavor text, such as the monster descriptions. This could easily come off as alienating, but it’s improbable anybody will be purchasing or playing the Penny Arcade Adventures without being fans of the comic in the first place, so it’s safe to say it’s a non-issue. Unfortunately, by now it does seem as though the narrative cohesion of the overarching plot suffers a touch, whether from the base formula for the adventure as a whole, or through the time gap since the release of the second episode, or even the format/developer change. The whole affair lacks a focus or distinct direction of travel. The ending comes as a distinct cliffhanger as well, begging the question that if episode 3 had been all but written off, do they even have a way to write themselves out of it?

Nobody expected Penny Arcade Adventures to change the face of gaming altogether, and it doesn’t set any similarly unrealistic goals for itself. Relying heavily on our love of classic RPGs, while adding just a touch of new class mechanics to it (that may or may not backfire on you) to keep things fresh. You’ll have fun with On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 3 to be sure, but it’s really just an interactive comic book in the end for fans of Penny Arcade’s goofy shenanigans, and clever puns.

A copy of On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 3 was provided to Blistered Thumbs for review and played through to completion over the course of eight hours on a PC.

You may, of course, take the time to heckle Johnny about his strange difficulties with that one boss over his Twitter account, or even take the time to write up a nice long, well constructed e-mail about his inadequacies, and why he should never show his face in public again.

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Ep. 3 Review

By Johnny Maloney

Though that precipice may indeed be rain-slick, and overlooking a whole lot of darkness, Johnny brings some light to it with his review of Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, and a flashlight.