Whithered Reason - Demo 2: the story starts with a young boy being threatened by some bandits: he founds something they want, a Shard, and one of these outlaws, Camden, is interrogating him. Camden is doing all of this because his boss Heiles has some plan in mind, anyway they are interrupted by Aryn, a young martial artist with aqua colored hair that is beating the bandits with his combat staff.
Why is he here? Well, he's a friend of the boy kidnapped by the bandits and he came to the rescue, but we, playing as Camden, will defeat him. After getting what they wanted from their prisoner, the bandits set him free, and the boy finds his friend as he recovers from Camden's beating. But the young warrior is so foolish that he wants revenge and then he falls into a gap as the ground shatters, probably due to something the bandits did with the mysterious shard. And Aryn, now our playable protagonist, finds himself inside an undergrund structure with laboratories, robots, scientists, bounty hunters, murderous androids and teleporting hi-tech soldiers!
Whithered Reason - Demo 1: the game starts with Aryn that is travelling through the forest with a friend. But NO, this isn't the kidnapped boy of the Demo 2, this is a girl named Neis, and she looks like one of the playable characters from the Demo 2, so in the beginning I believed it was a continuation of the story. NO! (again) Because these two friends have no battle skills and are just travelling home (unlike the Aryn of Demo 2 that wanted to fight an entire band of outlaws!). Aryn also seems to be a more calm and less combat skilled/trained compared to the character from the other demo, while the appearance is identical, in fact he is the same Aryn.
During their travels they are surprised by a tempest, so they decide to seek shelter inside a nearby villa, where they are attacked by Kuran (first boss fight, after the avoidable enemies in the forest), the aggressive bodyguard of the scarred Zelan, the owner of the villa that has some problems with thieves (and we learn immediately that Neis is involved). Anyway the two young wanderers are hosted for the night, and we get control of Zelan and Kuran, learning that they are involved in some affairs. After an adventurous night we resume control of the two main heroes, and the story continues.
Withered Reason is a classic fantasy rpgmaker adventure where we play as Aryn: in both cases he's a brave young martial artist armed with a staff and wearing dark red clothes, but he gets involved in different situations, with different friends and foes. Both games use the same system that includes exploration, cutscenes, side-view battles and save points, plus the occasional puzzle. It's well done, edits and custom sprites are nice, mapping is pretty good in both versions and difficulty is balanced. Both versions includes sections in which we temporarily play as other different characters.
Random Fact: for the complete "Withered Reason experience" the author suggested to play the game starting from the Demo 2 and then the Demo 1. That's why I started from the most recent version. And I suggest to every player to do the same, even if there isn't a lot of reasons not to do so.
Final Verdict: Withered Reason is an interesting classic fantasy rpg with a story that seem to be more complex than what appears, however both demos only examine the surface of the plot, concentrating on the protagonists and their adventures. A pity, this could have been very interesting.
