The Neon Empire is a theatre of a war between the humans and the
machines. The humans are ruled by the aristocracy and have several
non-human allies like typical fantasy dwarves, kitarians, oak-people and others. The humans have soldiers but
also sorcerers called Tarot Mages. On the other side there are robots
and machines, that instead rely on hi-tech weaponries and huge
automatons.
The game starts with a trio of soldiers of the human army, Myth, Granin and Renders (respectivel a dawrf, a human and a kitarian) fighting a desperate battle against a huge machine. Then, lost in the wasteland they befriend a robot named Bolt and get a vehicle to reach the Neon Empire Capital, but the machines are chasing them.
The prologue ends and we start playing as Wagen, a recently promoted soldier, after he was the only survivor of a bandit ambush. Captain Charnetski assigns him to a team that has to investigate Zakran Pass, where a noble and his son were ripped apart by some monster. He will be aided in this investigation by Sebastian Rosengale, an exceptional swordsman member of the Archilles elite, and by Shield Ninja, a boorish assassin.
Rainbow Nightmare Chapter 1 is a collection of different episodes during the war, exploring various characters during the war. The game is mostly an adventure game where the most impressive aspects are graphics and cutscenes. There is combat, but it's super-simple since there is no inventory management, nor consumables or equipment. Most characters have two or three special abilities, often one is a
healing skill or a TP recovering skill, and the TP are the "tactical
points" used to perform some special moves, basically the equivalent of
mana in fantasy games. That's it, and combat encounters are usually pretty easy.
Wagen in the base has a little fetch quest that involves a
character named TFT. Yes, that's TwinFoxTails. And among the soldiers
at the base there are also some other Rpgmaker developers you may
already know.
Random Fact: the game had a spin-off called Rainbow Nightmare - Libra, that focuses on a particular squad operating in a corner of the Neon Empire, but only a prologue was released, anyway see below for this game.
Final Verdict: the first Rainbow Nightmare game is pretty simple but still charming, since it presents many different characters and places, and all are realized with a charming style that seems to belong to a comic book. Moreover the dark setting of a war between humanoid races and automatons is probably unique among the Rpgmaker games.
EXTRA - Rainbow Nightmare - Libra: Also (apparently) called "RN short stories", it is a prologue that starts with a letter of
Duram, the new squad leader of the Rudhira team to his fiancee, Lisanne.
Duram is unfortunately stuck with Priss the Medic and Lutwig the
flamboyant noble, two troopers that hate him, when the machines of the
Neon Empire attack. Things are going badly when Lutwig remembers a
teleportation spell, but being an incompetent fool, it also mixes it
with a polymorph spell! The day after the trio gets assigned a scientist
they have to escort, and guess what? The scientist is Lisanne, Duram's
fiancee. But the machines, lead by Captain Marlwulf, attack the place...
The game uses basically the simple combat system of the first game and focuses on the story, although this time with a single protagonist and his squad. There are in fact no separated scenarios like in the first game, even if a bad guy is briefly playable, but all takes place inside the same base at the same time. Graphics improved from the first game, but there is less variety since there are lesser locations to explore.
Random Fact: in the first game in fact the various playable characters were all soldiers of the human army or neutral characters and civilians, instead here there is a short part in which we have to play as the machines, that are basically the bad guys of the story.
Final Verdict: another excellent demo, more focused on a single situation and team, but unfortunately the story ends just when it becomes interesting, with the arrival of Lisanne and the attack of the machines. What a pity! In any case it's also graphically superior to the first game.
