The games begins with a long narrative about how evil was dispatched and sealed away, and this great evil has a name and title: Lucius the Vampire Lord, commander of the undead hordes.
Many centuries later the real game begins with Ansem, a former member of the Dragon Warriors, starting a personal quest about searching for a cave in the snowy mountains in the North, a place that he keeps dreaming about. Even if this voyage will let him learn something about himself, he will also make a powerful enemy. After a tragic return home, Ansem will start a new quest, a quest for revenge.
The Puppet is a classic story driven Rpgmaker adventure: expect exploration, puzzles, battles and the occasional optional sidequest, if you are looking for extra loot. The game stands out because it's mainly a single-person adventure about revenge, unlike most games that present a cast of characters working together in a party of four or more to save the world. At least this is what happens in this first chapter, because this is an incomplete version where unfortunately many areas are locked or unfinished. For the rest it's surely a high-quality demo of a dark fantasy adventure with lots of edits, custom sprites and nice maps.
Random Fact: the author of this game is well known for two other games: Ascendance, a demo of an epic techno-fantasy adventure that involves multiple protagonists, and Elegy Eve, a short complete event game with suggestive visuals made for the Gaming World Halloween event in 2008. These two works, like The Puppet, are really high quality game and they will be featured here sooner or later.
Final Verdict: dark fantasy adventures are rare, and here the developer created a quality rpgmaker game: this is a pretty large scenario with many areas we can explore. I liked this one, but there are still some odd parts (like Ansem
avoiding some bandits camping in the middle of the road, then meeting
and helping some travellers but totally forgetting to tell them about
the bandits they're going to encounter later! Why? Same for the little
scene with the bard and the mercenary quarreling, but maybe these
characters were going to be more important in another chapter of the
game).
In the end it's a pity that some this game wasn't completed, because the setting is captivating and different from most other fantasy games.
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