Publisher: Rose Portal Games
Developer: Rose Portal Games
System requirements: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista, 700 MHz CPU, 256 MB RAM, DirectX 6.0, 160 MB hard-drive space
Genre: Adventure
Release date: Available now

When Whisper of a Rose: Gold came across my virtual desk, I was not especially thrilled. The protagonist, Melrose, is described by RosePortal Games as “The…heroine of the story. Her everyday life is sad: no one understands her. One day she decides to make a drastic change, and she ends up in the realm of dreams and fantasy.” It sounded like an immature fantasy offering, with twinkly godmothers, fairies, and a bubbly, cute heroine, but I begrudgingly installed the game and set to work. Imagine my surprise upon finding a girl who’s struggling with abusive parents, a dream world that has become a nightmarish reflection of her terrible life, and gameplay with both puzzles and plenty of combat. Whisper of a Rose: Gold is a CRPG that covers its depth of story with a fairy-tale façade.

Rose, much like Aveyond: The Lost Orb, is a nostalgic throwback to the old 8-bit games some of us used to play on the NES. The characters walk around a 2D strategic map with a one-object-per-tile rule, while combat is conducted on a tactical screen with no real movement. Fights are divided into turns, with the usual assortment of fantasy armaments: spells, weapons and summoned creatures. The interface, for both combat and non-combat actions, is largely menu-driven. Those familiar with old-school 8-bit games will be right at home here, but this one is easy enough for newcomers to learn without too much effort.

Rose‘s 2D graphics will clearly look dated to most gamers, but I have to give RosePortal Games credit for not being lazy with their engine. Two-dimensional doesn’t have to be ugly; Rose has a substantial amount of artistic detail. While individual tiles are not very interesting in and of themselves, the designers have taken great care in making the scenery in Melrose’s real-world life reflect her bleak existence. In particular, her homelife makes it abundantly clear why she would be so intent on escaping to her dreams. As for the dreamworld, it not only looks strange and has Twilight Zone qualities in some places, but it also does a good job of reflecting the heroine’s psyche. While it’s easy to dismiss the graphics as just being “meh,” someone was paying close attention to the game’s narrative while creating the virtual landscape, and I commend them for it.

And there’s a surprising amount of narrative and landscape to cover. The game advertises that it has more than 40 hours of gameplay, and I can confirm that it’s telling the truth. There is plenty to do here, and there are lots of reasons to go back and play through again because one character class is not unlocked until you beat the game the first time. The tactical aspects are just different enough with each class to make a replay a fresh experience. And thanks to branching skill trees, you could conceivably play through three times with the same class and have different outcomes each time. While there are plenty of mysteries to explore in Rose, you don’t generally have to bash your head against a wall trying to figure them out, as the game mechanics are easy enough to grasp most of the time.

Rose has had a long development cycle, and unfortunately that cycle has ended in a very buggy release. As RosePortal Games is a new developer, these kinds of growing pains are to be expected; to their credit, they patched the game quickly and temporarily took it off the market until they resolved some issues. In its current form, Rose still has a few bugs, but the show-stoppers are no longer a problem. Aside from bugs, I did feel that, given the game’s engaging storyline, some improvement in Melrose’s dialogue would have been helpful. Melrose sometimes seems to be a young woman of college age, while at other times she appears to be more of a high-school girl. It makes me wonder if some substantial changes were made in the original story and some old dialogue ended up staying in the game. As a final point to keep in mind, I recommend playing Rose only when you’re in the proper mood. It has plenty of combat, but it’s the kind of game you only appreciate when you feel like becoming involved in this kind of a story. The themes presented deal extensively with escaping from the drudgery of the real world, so if you’re in the mood for shallow escapism, pick another game to play; you simply won’t get as much out of it.

Aside from these minor complaints, I found Whisper of a Rose: Gold to be well worth the $19.99. If you’re looking for a story-oriented CRPG and you can appreciate the game’s old-school format, pick up the demo and give it a try.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation: