What if instead of a tragic and misguided romance, Romeo and Juliet had a monstrous twist? As it happens, Romeo's drunk the poison from the iconic tale, but he's chosen a demon's castle to do so, y'know, as one does, and Juliet is willing to strike a deal to save him. In Elven Games' hack-and-slash title and Juliet is Zombie and Juliet, Juliet agrees to take down a rival demon lord in exchange for Romeo's life (and three years of servitude after), so it's up to you to guide her and help her stab her way to true love... after a bunch of grinding and upgrades, of course. Use [WASD] or the [arrow] keys to move and jump, click to attack, and use the [spacebar] to unleash your special ability when available, while keeping an eye on Juliet's health. You need to break down the doors between each area to advance, but the monsters guarding the place won't take that lying down. When/if she dies, you'll get booted back to Balthazar's castle, where you can buy better equipment, or learn and enhance spells. The souls you collect from enemies can be used to buy better equipment, while the blue flames represent experience towards leveling up so you can get farther in your next assault. As you might imagine, Zombie and Juliet is a very tongue-in-cheek little game, and it's itty-bitty characters and monsters look great, while the premise is a lot of fun. The downside is that the movement just feels a little clunky, especially when trying to attack flying enemies, and the whole thing is extremely heavy on the grind... do we really need to start all the way from the beginning each time? But, well, if you're willing to endure demonic servitude for your true love, presumably those are no obstacles, and Zombie and Juliet is still a fun and quirky twist on the source material with some stabby flair.
The grind in strong in this one.
Yeah, I'm thinking I was missing something obvious, because I couldn't even get through the first door, even after grinding to get better weapons and abilities.
I like the general idea and the art, but the grind really is bad because you feel like you get nowhere after a certain point. After getting a few achievements I was able to get a powerful weapon and break through all the doors, and then hit a brick wall of grind. The crow things still take me out in two hits, skills are maxed for my weapon, and I really don't feel like grinding out another 13 slow levels to be able to kill the boss.
I had no problems with the grind myself, but that's due in great part probably to doing three things:
1. I went with swords, which have the highest damage and a knockback spell (and after only a few levels, a skill that makes every hit knock back enemies).
2. I maxed Survivalist and Regeneration pretty quickly to make myself hard to kill (and later Shukuchi, Nimble Footsteps, and Iron Body to finish up).
3. I made sure to boost myself with the right accessories - the best max HP ring gives 1500 more health, the best regen ring adds 25 more base regen and the best regen bracelet adds 40% more regen for a whopping 300-400 health restored per tick if you've maxed Regeneration.
It took maybe a dozen runs or two to reach level 39 because I was able to make single runs last for a while and kill high level giants for whopping amounts of experience and souls. Unfortunately the weapon damage skills are a slight red herring - increasing your damage [i]is[/i] helpful but making your runs last longer so you can buy the highest level weapons and accessories to get the most percentage bang for your buck is more important in the end.
I also liked the art, story, music--the game is very well made and I enjoyed the humor--but I agree it was a bit grindy. About the crow thing...
I noticed the more you hit a door, the more kinds of monsters come out to stop you, so in the beginning, I only hit it once or twice. This brought out a few walkers, and I was able to grind away at my leisure (without having to deal with flying creatures) to get enough souls and experience for a decent weapon and some useful skills.
Because you can't reset the skill trees, I had to restart a couple times before coming up with this strategy:
Since there are only 40 levels, you can only get 40 skill points. I looked for ways to quickly increase the number of souls collected and the amount of experience earned, as well as which weapon/spell would be most helpful in the final battle.
Ignis
1. I started with some free souls by simply visiting the sponsor and developer's social media pages (click plus sign on bottom right soul meter), which also gives an achievement along with some additional souls.
2. Used that to buy a Steel Needle dagger because it's quick and the Fire Tornado spell seemed powerful.
3. After a few long runs, using the crow trick mentioned above, I spent my skill points on the Ignis tree to max out Soul Thirst (which first requires level 3 Shukuchi), because I assumed it earns you more money...er, souls.
4. Bought the best dagger, HP ring, and regen ring, but unlike yahoo.com user above, I stuck with the evasion and defense bracelets.
5. Now prepared to go past the first door, I went in for more grinding, and like yahoo.com user, wailed on those lucrative giants.
Aqua
6. After a very run (racking up 9 skill points!), bought the best staff, movement speed ring, and defense ring.
7. Proceeded to fill out the entire Aqua tree, focusing first on maxing out Quick Learn (which requires level 3 Regeneration) in order to gain experience more quickly.
8. With trusty Wu Kong Staff in hand, went back to grinding, being careful not to breach that third and final door.
Terra
9. Spent my latest spoils of victory--well, technically defeat, since that's how you end up back in the castle--on the best sword and Terra tree, mainly because I'm a bit of a completionist and wanted all the achievements, but also as yahoo.com user points out, Iron Body (which requires level 3 Survival Training) makes you harder to kill.
10. Used Ragnarok sword to get as many achievements as possible before the final showdown.
Final Preparation
11. Here's where filling out the Aqua skill tree pays off: using the Tidal Wave spell, along with the Wu Kong Staff as a ranged weapon, you can continuously attack the demon lord far away from his clutches.
12. In addition to switching weapons for the final battle, I swapped out the defense bracelet with the Hecate Bracelet for maximum staff damage.
Loved the ending dialog!
The staff is the strongest weapon to choose IMHO. It's ranged, has a high damage area, and is linked with a spell that causes damage over the entire room rather than an area around the hero. With a staff that has a damage area of 40 or 50, those stupid annoying bats aren't much of a challenge. Also, after leveling up piercing shot in the skill tree, you effectively multiply it's damage.
A simple (stupid) strategy to level up during midgame (level 20 or so with a good wand and piercing shot) is to camp on the left side of the board. Enemies won't spawn to your left so you can basically chill there and kill whatever lumbers your way running out a little to collect souls every once and a while. You can do all this with one hand too (z to attack) so you can enjoy a tasty beverage while you level up.
The achievements are buggy and/or ill-defined.
I had a run where it seemed to mix up the counters for "A Decent Swordsman" and "A Pseudo-Ninja". What's more, it would not even start the counter for the ninja until I'd achieved the swordsman. However, it would not actually *award* the achievements until I switched to the matching weapon -- and apparently, despite being in the dagger category, a stiletto is not a dagger.
I don't remember the exact sequence of events anymore, but I know that at one point, it was showing 0/900 for the ninja and 279/300 for the swordsman, even though I did not so much as own a sword yet, let alone have it equipped. So I went ahead and purchased a sword, at which point the 279 number moved over to the ninja achievement, but the sword number failed to increment. I switched weapons to a dagger, and the swordsman achievement started incrementing. I switched back to a sword, and the swordsman achievement was finally awarded, and the dagger number started increasing. I got the number to something like 1077/900 (and let me tell you, that's hard to do with a sword, what with the 1 second delays and all), still no ninja achievement. I switched to a dagger, namely the stiletto: nothing. In anger, I switched to a kitchen knife, and *finally* the ninja achievement was awarded.
"Attack is the Best Defense": the description is wrong. You have to buy 7 swords (i.e. all of the available swords); neither daggers nor staffs count.
"Jack of All Trades": again, the description is wrong. I'm not sure what magic combination of skills you have to learn, but it's way more than 13.
Played through the game and want to pass on some notes:
Reka is half right about the Attack is the Best Defense achievement. It can be any category of weapon, but it does require buying 7 weapons in that single category, not 7 total across all 3.
About all the grind: It is a daunting horrible task to grind... unless you pick up rank 3 of Soul bonus from the fire tree. Once you have an actual income (seriously this bonus is bigger than it looks) buying anything and everything becomes remarkably simple. You beat any door of your choice to near-broken (but not broken) then run around killing the large volume of monsters that spawn for a few minutes. At level 3 of this, a single run can easily net enough soul to buy any max-level weapon.
Similarly, the experience grind can be a mighty one without capping experience gain, because the default drops from enemies without these two bonuses is nothing if not pitiful.
On survivability - Defense is very, very nearly worthless. Much better off spending your time and energy gaining HP, as you can get much more of this for much less than Defense, and the issue tends not to be with many small hits so much as single, day-ruining strikes. Further, it's relatively reasonable to get incredibly powerful levels of health regeneration, further and better supplementing your ability to not die than Defense ever will.
Between these and using the Wu Kong staff from a very early point (soul bonus), I had the boss beat at (after leveling on the boss itself) level 30 and had to grind out the last 10 levels for the in game achievement.
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