The Adventures of Panzer feels like an unfinished game. I wanted to like this game. In fact, I did enjoy the first times I played it. The humoristic dialogs are fun to read and the graphics are nice. However, it has major bugs and graphical glitches. Now, don’t get me wrong. I know this is a “homebrew” game, a labor of love made by passionate people. I know, I am one too. But we are talking here of a commercially released game via a Kickstarter campaign. And as such should be free of (major) bugs.
I didn’t play through the entire game, I couldn’t. Besides the bugs and glitches, you cannot skip the cut scenes! And it’s a big problem. If you die (and you will), you gotta go all over the intro cut scenes again, and each boss’ cutscenes too. This is a pain. The level design is a bit generic, and too linear. The enemy AI is very limited. For instance, there is an archer shooting arrows at you, but if you jump over him, he won’t even bother turning towards you, he just continue to shoot left.
This game was made with NES Maker. I am not a fan of this tool. You probably can do wonderful things with it, but you have to understand its internal mechanic and master assembly to get a nice professional polished game. And, unfortunately, it seems this is not the case with The Adventures of Panzer.
Broke Studio did an excellent job on the physical limited edition, with lots of goodies. I’m glad to have it, and I’m glad to support homebrew developers.
So, I really like the concept of The Adventure of Panzer. I even backed them again for Panzer 2 on Kickstarter! It’s just sad that the first one is a broken game. Still, if you have the love for some fantasy humor and patience for a good retro-platformer challenge, just buy the ROM and make use of the save state to get through it fast.
My score: 6 / 10
Where to buy: https://9panzer.itch.io/the-adventures-of-panzer
with a lot of goodies
