About This Game The Startling Developments Detective Agency springs into action as On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 begins, set in motion by a call from a mysterious source. The ever escalating perils on the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness will season our tender heroes to their very core! Expect cunning evil doctors, a series of unexplainable thefts, a mysterious book of power, enigmatic supernatural forces, hoboids, roboids, time travelling dinosaurs, and more!Key Features:Old-School RPG style mixed with modern design sensibilities!Bizarre and humorous story written by Penny Arcade & Zeboyd Games!View the town of New Arcadia in all its pure, 16-bit glory!8-12 hour quest with even more content to be added later via free updates!No random battles!Gain the powers of the Tube Samurai, the Hobo, the Apocalypt, the Dinosorcerer, the Delusionist, and more through a unique multi-class job system!Disrupt enemy attacks with powerful interrupt abilities!Rechargable MP & items! Unleash your full power in every battle!Leverage "Help-Yu," our haiku-based help system. An Industry first!No previous experience with Rain-Slick 1 or 2 necessary! 7aa9394dea Title: Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3Genre: Indie, RPGDeveloper:Zeboyd GamesPublisher:Penny Arcade, Inc.Release Date: 25 Jun, 2012 Penny Arcade's On The Rain-Slick Precipice Of Darkness 3 Portable Edition Incredibly hilarious and surprisingly deep story and RPG elements. A basic, SNES style RPG that gets by on comedy and nostalgia.Here is a game that largely matches expectations without exceeding them. If you're looking for solid, retro-RPG combat and witty writing then you'll find it here at a very reasonable price. However, the story behind all the sarcasm and jokes, while entertaining enough, lacks tension and impact. It sets up the following game for a more interesting setting and conclusion, but that's not enough to elevate this game's narrative above "mostly forgettable".Precipice of Darkness 3 does a great job of bringing complexity and flexibility into its turn based combat. Each party member has one permanent base class that matches their personality. In time you'll unlock two additional class slots for each character that can be swapped at will between battles. You choose from a pool of bizarre classes that allow you to easily experiment until you find a winning combination. I really like that unused classes still gain experience and level up, just at a slightly slower pace than the in use classes. This negates the chance of any class becoming under leveled to the point of discouraging you from trying it.In battle the game uses a combat bar to queue actions that is much like the old Grandia series and, more recently, Child of Light. It is one of my favorite turn based systems that allows for characters and attacks of varying speeds as well as strategic interrupts of enemy actions. To be victorious I needed to make proper use of buffs, interrupts and adjust my strategy to account for enemy weaknesses and resistances. I played on the Veteran difficulty and found it to be on point except for in one area called The Bank of Money that had a frustrating and unusual spike in difficulty. The city map that you use to navigate from area to area is very plain with linear paths that don't allow for any deviation or hidden surprises. The exploration areas are genre standard mazes of corridors, barriers and rooms. Their layout is pleasing, including treasure chests, non-random enemy encounters and silly descriptions when you examine some objects. Visuals are definitely not this game's strong suit. They get the job done without being outright ugly, but the best compliment I can give them is that there are some creatively comedic enemy designs.Having not played the previous two games nor read much of the Penny Arcade comics I'm coming at this game without a preexisting attachment to the characters. While I did enjoy their distinct and quirky personalities, they only grew on me a little over time. There are some decent attempts at character development, however the priority is clearly on humor over substance. As for the comedy, for me it was consistently amusing without ever being a truly laugh-out-loud level of funny. It's worth noting that I did not feel like I was missing anything from not having played parts 1 and 2. My total playtime clocked in at 15 hours for all the content this game has to offer. It is a modestly successful entry in the relatively sparse field of games that place a heavy emphasis on comedy. I am comfortable recommending this game to any old school RPG fans out there or Penny Arcade aficionados.Click here to check out my review of Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4.. a fun game thats like an old school rpg but with a more funny nature.it also has great characters and the story is cool so far and i look forward to playing through the rest of the game.. Wow, what has happened to you Rainslick? You were interesting once. With your funny and well drawn cutscenes, unique gameplay that was different and more casual for those not interested in Final Fantasy-esque turn based combat. You were fun, funny, charming. Well obviously that's not what this is.I don't know what happened, but long story short, Penny Arcade didn't want to go Rainslick anymore for some odd reason, so the guys that made Cthulhu Saves the World, were called upon to make the 3rd and 4th games of this series.There is nothing good about this game to me. First off, Pixel graphics. While it CAN work depending on the game and how it's used (See Papers Please), here it's just used as always used, for a Final Fantasy knockoff. The combat is not exciting, nothing moves except for characters and enemies to get into place.BUT the worst sin this game made, was one that made me give up on everything about the rest of this series.Ok, so you're in a bank looking for a portrait, when you're exploring vaults and you think you're gonna find jokes. One of the "jokes" is so horrible that it forces you to play it until completion.A FULL ON FINAL FANTASY 1 PARODY!!!And then into Star Trek. And the game forces you to stop and play all of this for no reason, when I could have gone into the right vault and left. It's only there for grinding that's pointless.Go play Rainslick episode one and two, and try not to cry at the end of two, because then you'll think about how it got botched and replaced with this garbage.. If you like old school RPGs this is for you. Well it may not be, considering the menu system is horrible. Their artist did a great job, the programmer did not. That said its like it came out of an RPG maker with a failed menu system."This gets a veto.". Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 is a comedic RPG with some parody elements and convenient features. I can't tell you too much about the story, as I don't want to spoil the game. Also, I can't fill you in on the backstory because... I haven't played the first two games. The reason I started on this game, and the fourth, is because they were in a pack and I had played the previous two games the new developers had done before getting asked to do these, which were Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World. That's where my perspective is coming from, so keep it in mind. Basically, you're a company that investigates supernatural happenings, and supernatural things happen. So... you investigate them. That's really all I can tell you without getting into potential spoiler territory.You can explore specific locations on a world map with well defined places to go. Inside these places, you can search for treasure, battles, and main plot points for going there. While there is some interesting story and dialogue, the battles are the meat and potatoes of the game. The battles are nice because they are not random. Instead, they are represented by monsters clearly visible on the map. You battle in a turn based fashion, however there's a meter on the top of the screen. This determines the order the combatants will attack. It will be initially set by speed stats and certain passives, but it can also be changed by using slows, stuns, and interruptions. A combatant can also move up their position on the command line by defending, although this will not allow them to attack on that turn. So why bother? Well, to reduce major damage from a major attack, or possibly to help utilize another interesting mechanic. In this game, you don't have a pool of MP to work with. Instead, you start battles with zero MP and gain 1 MP per turn. So if you want to build it up, you can use items, use certain abilities to boost it, or simply do something that does not require MP. This forces you to manage your health and position on the timeline much more carefully, rather than having magic users spam abilities right from the get go. So what gives you your abilities? Well, each character starts with their own class. The classes dictate what abilities, passive or active, these characters have. This will affect how you use them. Beyond this, as the game goes on you will receive badges, each with their own additional classes. You get to add one, and eventually two, to each party memeber. This gives them a total of three classes, and many possibilities on how you can build them. However, badges can only be on one person at a time, so you can't use the same class on every character at once. All of the badges and characters level up as you win battles, although the ones you actively use will level up faster. Also, you can further customize your characters with equipment as well.This game is full of conveniences, such as the aforementioned blanket leveling and visible battles. Whenever you finish a battle, all characters are revived and restored. If you lose a battle, you get to try it again. You can save or change badges at any point. Convenient traveling through an easy world map, with shops in fixed positions and a training area to grind if needed. The game does a lot to try and ease the burdens of RPGs while still being an RPG. However, I found a few things a bit disappointing. One is that there are too many classes leveling up constantly. It seems that after every battle, at least one if not multiple classes gain levels and often new abilities, which is a lot to look at and manage. You'll be constantly checking your new abilities to see what they do and who they will be good for, depending on how you're trying to build characters. Plus, the fighting system is somewhat complex for newcomers, which detracts from the game's convenience factor a bit. Also, while the game tries to teach you one thing at a time to gradually get you familiar with the gameplay (which I like), it feels like once you finally understand how to fight and manage your badges and equipment and strategize, the game is basically done. It also ends on a cliffhanger story-wise. So, this whole game essentially feels like it is a buildup for the sequel, both in story and basic gameplay ideas. Although the sequel (which I will review once I finish) is rather different in some aspects. I guess I just felt like the game was getting me ready for the real adventure to start, and then it abruptly ended. Overall, it's still a good game. Fun for people new to RPGs and looking for good value games. The characters and story have enough charm to carry some of the weight. Plus all the conveniences, well paced learning curve, and constant upgrades to manage, make for an entertaining experience throughout. I guess it's good that the game left me wanting more rather than being sick of it, and the extra mode recommended after you finish the main game gives it some more for you to play and satisfy your cravings. However, I'd say that if you're looking at this game, which is only 5 dollars alone, you might as well just pay the 8 bucks and get the two pack because you'll be well prepared to take on the fourth game after this. I got them both on sale for a dollar which was well worth the price. Judging this game on its own, I'd give Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 a solid 6 out of 10 for being an engaging RPG experience without the common headaches that befall so many other RPGs.. Clever retro-RPG, where every fight plays out like a puzzle rather than a grind due to instant HP restoration between battles, no random encounters, and a fun three-classes-per-character system which lets you design your character using classes as tactical "building blocks" (for example, the Gentleman class is a mixture of physical attacks and healing magic, but do you give it to your brutish tank character to maximize the skill attacks, your "all-rounder" or rogue so they'll be able to cast frequent heals, or your mage so he can benefit from the "non-special attacks are based on Magic instead of Strength" passive?). The writing is also obviously amusing.
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