Sequence Review
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Early on, Sequence is outright confusing, but the game does a good job of providing tutorials that players who have never even played a rhythm game before should be able to follow. Concepts like attacking, defending, casting spells, switching playing fields, etc. are all handed out one at a time along with the story details, and it gives you enough time to build up the mental discipline and coordination necessary to excel in the game's later stages. The game is divided up into seven floors, with each floor bookended by a boss battle, which usually puts the new spells and dexterity you've learned to the test. By the first floor, I found I had already mostly come to grips with the game, and by the second and third I was ready to tackle the tougher challenges. Sequence, though driven almost entirely by keyboard (on the PC), is quite functional and easy to play once you get used to the controls. Buttons are fully remappable, and what's more, it's possible to set up multiple binds for the same functions, which means you can play one-handed or two-handed; personally, I found that using my right hand on the arrow keys combined with my left hand on the Q, E and number keys worked well, considering the multi-tasking Sequence requires. As the game is also on Xbox LIVE, it also supports gamepads - these controls worked just fine, though I did feel that the keyboard was ultimately a bit more precise, so I'd probably pick the PC version over the console version if the choice was available. The learning curve is steep, but the sense of progress you make over the course of the game is quite palpable.
The RPG side of things is functional and straightforward. Level-ups are gained for defeating standard enemies and bosses, and influence hit points, mana, offense and defense. These automatically increase on each level-up, but different types of equipment (weapons, armor and accessories) also allow for bonuses. Equipment can also provide some interesting effects, like faster spell cooldowns, so often the decisions to choose between one piece of equipment or the other aren't so clear-cut. The sense of character progression is good, and while you'll be able to decimate enemies that previously gave you a hard time at earlier levels, the game's challenge level is relatively constant, with a big jump in difficulty in visiting each new stage, and slowly leveling off as you gain in experience.
Back to the Grind
Unfortunately, even with its innovative rhythm battles, Sequence is far from a perfect game. The biggest problem, which becomes visible even fairly early on, is that the game is heavily geared towards grinding. As some readers may know, I'm not a big fan of grinding to excess, and Sequence requires perhaps the most grinding of just about any game I've played lately, casual RPG or otherwise. In a game largely pushed forward by the prospect of new songs and story developments, being forced to play the same songs and fight the same enemies again and again really puts a damper on the experience.
The bulk of this grind makes itself manifest through the game's crafting system. In order to make progress through the game's floors, it's necessary to craft keys to unlock the way forward. Crafting ingredients are obtained through fighting enemies, and these have varying drop rates to them, some as low as 15% or so. This means right off the bat that just to progress, you'll potentially need to fight the same enemies several times over to make it to the next stage of the game. There were times where I had to fight an enemy about 20 times over in order to get a single ingredient, which, quite frankly, sucked. In this case I think going for pseudo-random numbers rather than true random numbers would have really helped the game - gambler's fallacy or not, at least it would make for less grinding.
If that was all there was, I could bear it. Unfortunately, that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to grinding. The best weapons, accessories, and spells must all be created through crafting, and these pull from the same ingredients as the keys needed to progress. What's more, crafting costs experience points to perform, and your chances can never be absolute - sacrifice almost an entire level's worth of XP and you'll still only have a 95% chance of success. Spells must also be crafted, and yet more XP must be sacrificed to attempt learning them (which is by no means a sure thing with some of the harder spells).
While in practical terms you'll rarely be let down by those 95% odds, when you consider that you'll need to battle monsters many times over to collect rare ingredients, and then add in the fact that you'll likely want to fight more to regain the levels you've lost, plus the fact that you'll potentially have to do it all over again due to failed crafting attempt, it becomes clear that much of the game's structure is devoted solely to extending play-time in the most artificial way possible. As fun as the core battles are, and the storyline is engaging, when you have to grind so much in between to make progress, it becomes easy to lose sight of where the fun is supposed to be. The sole saving grace is that at least you don't need ingredients from the earlier floors to craft items on the later ones - otherwise I think I would have quit the game out of frustration.
The crafting system and emphasis on grinding reveals another unfortunate truth in Sanctum - aside from the battles, or performing related challenges to learn new spells, or watching story sequences, there really isn't a lot to do in the game otherwise. Battles are selected through menus, with no exploration, dungeon-crawling, and so on to be found. Even the Puzzle Quest series had overland map navigation to break things up a little, and while I respect that Sequence is an indie game made by, more or less, two people, it's hard to get around the fact that it can grow repetitive. Even the ability to walk around a little, or go room-to-room like an old-school dungeon crawler would have been neat. Getting to a safe room should feel like an accomplishment, escaping the enemy hordes by a thread - instead it's just a menu screen you craft and battle from. Ho-hum.
