Victim of Xen

I came to Victim of Xen genuinely curious: a solo RPG Maker project built around a gender-transformation premise, released on Steam in 2014, sitting at a mixed 57% approval after nearly 50 reviews. That curiosity did not survive the first dungeon intact. The setup is the most interesting thing the game has going for it. Protagonist Will resists a conscription order from a royal witch named Xen and gets magically transformed into a woman for his trouble. The search to reverse the spell eventually spirals into a broader conflict involving an evil empire and a set of ancient crystal shards you need to collect across multiple continents. On paper, that structure hits several classic JRPG beats, and the later sections of the game do open up: you eventually gain access to an airship and a sailboat to traverse the world map, which is the moment the game comes closest to evoking that old Dragon Quest sense of open-ended exploration. The problem is that the writing never does anything interesting with the central premise. The gender-swap angle stays almost entirely cosmetic, and Will as a character begins flat and ends flat, with no meaningful arc connecting those two points. Combat is where things collapse for RPG fans expecting any tactical depth. The turn-based battle system runs on default RPG Maker logic: you attack, enemies attack, the only noteworthy special skill is essentially a double-hit. Party members share movesets, so there is zero build variety to speak of, no class system, no skill trees. Economy balance is similarly broken in odd directions: a repeatable side-job can fill your wallet in minutes, letting you buy the best weapons in the game from a nearby shop and trivialise every remaining encounter, including the final bosses. Conversely, early random battles can hit harder than the gold-to-healing ratio allows you to recover from, making the first hour more punishing than anything that follows. The maps lean heavily on stock RPG Maker tilesets, dungeons feel claustrophobic and sparse, and the dialogue carries enough typos to suggest it was never proofread. Some of the jokes land, which is almost more frustrating, because the humor occasionally suggests a writer who understood what the game could have been. For RPG veterans this is an afternoon curiosity at absolute best, and only if you have nostalgia for mid-2000s fan RPGs made in the same engine. Newcomers to the genre should start anywhere else. The achievements are completable well before the credits, and the trading cards exist, which appears to be the actual reason many people own it at all. If you hit the open-world section with the airship and find yourself enjoying the exploration, consider that a surprise bonus rather than a promise the early hours make. Monika, Scout Team