Return Of The Grand Beans - Jelly Quest, Ugh

Review by moolatycoon on Thursday, August 2nd 2012
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Click to play GrandQuest Darkest Hour

GrandQuest Darkest Hour is a game created by ravicale

So yesterday I was walking down the street and saw a box of jelly beans. I bought them for like 2 bucks. When I got home, I saw Ravicale released Grand Quest 2. Wait, Jelly Beans, some Grandquest? Let’s get started.


Personally, I have been waiting for this game for a long time. Ravicale is a brilliant game maker, and to see a sequel to one of my favorite games was a plus. It has been hyped for quite a while, but I wasn’t burnt out on the game. Grand Quest was a fantastic game, decent storyline, great gameplay, but it had its flaws. It got a bit repetitive at times, and was laggy at some levels. Hopefully Ravicale has fixed, and improved upon these aspects since the review. Let’s see just what Ravicale can do. *Omnomnomnom* Yeah, I am eating my Jelly Beans, nao, ONTO THE REVIEW!


*Cough, Hack, Cough* Ugh, I got a brown one, coffee flavored? Joy. Well, I got to level 8 of 9 in this game. Let me say, it was very well done, and I would choose this one over Grandquest I any day. It had minimal lag, and great puzzles. Let me go from negatives to positives per usual. Every game has its “Brown Jellybean” and I think I found Grandquest’s. The difficulty is annoying. It is easy after the first few tries (like number 8 or 9) but it is rather frustrating to get there. It takes more than 3 runs to get a good strategy, and like 8 or 9 runs to be able to breeze through it, for me at least. The main combat centers mostly on using the whip to slaughter enemies that would usually be hard, such as the snarly, and the Archie. The whip is much underrated, and I realized that after playing through this game. Everything was well executed, and Ravicale placed every enemy with that in mind, however, going back on the difficulty, if you are not skilled with the whip then this is not going to be easy. The abundance of snarlies makes it almost required to have the whip on you at all times, and to be honest, the whip is not the best weapon for every enemy.


*Meh, Not bad* I never liked Orange Jelly beans, I never hated them, but, they aren’t my favorite. I found something in Grandquest II that acted like my orange jelly bean. That would be the enemy choice. Not the enemy placement, but the choice. Ravicale mainly only used Snarlies, Archies, and Ninjas, with the occasional Thor, mutant and Thug, mainly Snarlies though. Most of the fights with these enemies were redundant. Trap Snarly, whip. Shield, get close to Archie, stab to death, jump, kill, run, stab. The battles were not really as enjoyable as they could have been. Don’t get me wrong, they were still fun, but I wish he had not made the Snarly his main foe. *Mmm* these pink jelly beans are pretty good. Not the best bean in there, but…ugh, you get the point. The enemy placement Is like this pink jelly bean, yummy, but not overdone. Like I said in the previous paragraph, Ravicale creates the game so the combat revolves around using the whip. He uses brilliant layouts, and great enemy placement to insure that the whip is helpful. He discovered that the whip can hit a snarly just out of there fire range. While the Snarlies are overdone in that game, it is a brilliant concept, and I think it is a job well done on Ravicale’s part. Nothing to sniff at, but as usual, there are better things.


*Mouth waters* Green jelly bean, It’s nice and uhm, clean. Yay, I have splodey rhyming skills. I wonder if Ravicale can rhyme erm I mean I wonder if Ravicale can count time, more like the times that he has hadwonderful scenery. I mean, the scenery in this game is beyond brilliant, he uses the right brick tiles and back tiles to combine and make a wonderful game. The grass and the ideas just worked well together. I liked how the big floating temple looked. Just the décor concept of the game was great. Ravi was very diverse in his style and never kept me bored. The decoration really caught my eye while playing this game and it really impressed me a lot. Each level had a different theme to it. One level was an submerged cave, another was a floating fortress. While Grandquest I’s scenery was good, Grandquest II’s scenery surpassed it by far. The style and the texture were unique, and it just overall improved the gameplay. It was shweet, like this green jelly bean. It looks good enough to eat – the game, even though I’m sure eating an electric monitor would be dangerous…and expensive. Anyway, good scenery, nuff said.


*Buh buh….BLUE JELLY BEAN!!!11* Blue raspberry jelly beans are hands down my favorite flav-owait, you guys don’t care. R-r-right. So, I’ll put my opinions on jelly beans in a little box underneath, wait, I just realized, you guys still don’t care. Anyway, Grandquest 2 had 2 Blue Jelly beans for me. =3 The puzzles and traps were amazing. Ravioli kept me on my toes throughout the whole adventure, forcing me to think. WOAH, I ACTUALLY USED MY HEAD IN A GAME? ZOMG! Anyway, in my review of Grandquest I, I stated that he got a bit repetitive in his traps/puzzles. I am happy to say that Ravicale fixed this problem in his sequel. While there were a couple repeats, he kept this to a minimal. He not only used unique puzzles, but he used and abundance of them as well. This made me very happy, even happier than I am when eating blue jelly beans. The puzzles he created were brilliant, and as usual they were diverse, using many different items and objects to make the game that much more enjoyable.


I said that there were two blue jelly beans *HEEEEAAAVVVVEEEENNN*well, let’s get to the other one, shall we? The best thing by far in this game was the block layout. The map was spectacular. All of the different places you could go, the sheer size, everything seemed to flow brilliantly, in this case taste. He had diverse paths, and many optional and hidden thing you could do along the game. You can tell that Ravicale put effort into making complex and well done maps and ideals for each level. Well done Ravi. Did I mention that he did all this without having any to minimal lag? Impressive work, I was very pleased. Onto the ratings, yah?


Cons

-Too many Snarlies

-High Difficulty (Through beginning runs)


Pros

-Great enemy placement

-Amazing Scenery

-Great Puzzles/Traps

-Phenomenal Layout


Ratings


Difficulty ___/_____:
 
Resourcefulness ____/_____:
 
Enemy Choice ___.5/_____:
 
Enemy Placement ____/_____:
 
Scenery ____.5/_____:
 
Puzzles/Traps _____/_____:
 
Layout _____/_____:
 
Overall ____.5/_____:
 

Even though both games earned the same score, I think Granquest I < Grandquest II. There were flaws that I hope to see fixed if he ever makes a third one, but the good things outnumbered them. Ravioli, nice job, great game, see you guys again when I buy more jelly beans,


Moola

 
 


GrandQuest Darkest Hour Reviewed by moolatycoon on Thursday, August 2nd 2012. Return Of The Grand Beans - Jelly Quest, Ugh - A game review written by moolatycoon for the game 'GrandQuest Darkest Hour' by ravicale. Rating: 4