Random Hero and his girl
Laxius Power/Laxius Force is a series of RPGs created by French programmer Indinera Falls, using the RPG Maker series of tools. The story follows young ace Random Pendragon, who has dreams of becoming a knight; his lover, Sarah Brandolino; their friends, Luciana Vincenti (or Luci) and Coryool Tallemuyr; and Team Pets Herasia (a white cat) and Guanidia (supposedly a winged chameleon). During their adventures, they would discover they are no ordinary mortals, but rare inheritants of the elusive "Laxius Power", and that the fate of the world falls squarely on their shoulders.
Gameplay is similar to the Dragon Quest series. While the graphics are not exactly dazzling, the games boast huge gameworlds with lots of secrets; they are quite possibly the largest games ever produced with RPG Maker. The first three titles (the "Laxius Power" games) are free, while the subsequent ones are available as shareware.
Seven titles have been released:
- Laxius Power I: Random Story: Random travels from his hometown, Rillia, to the city of SankT Leona to take part in a knight tournament, and gets far more than he bargained for. Luckily, he dragged his friends along, as he needs all the help he can get.
- Laxius Power II: Destinies: The city of SankT Leona rewards our hero with a chance to study with the best teachers. They go separate ways to pursue their destiny.
- Laxius Power III: The Final Terror: Random and his friends are summoned to Metrolia, the biggest city in the world, for a celebration. Unknown to them, a dreadful presence is wending into the city, and our heroes are to face an evil greater than anything they can imagine.
- Laxius Force I: Heroes Never Die: The traumatic experience at Metrolia has driven Random and Sarah to a reclusive existence. But their peaceful, secluded life is interrupted by news from the city of Adretana: an evil organisation simply known as "The Order" has lain siege to the city and threatens to take over the world.
- Three Stars of Destiny: A rather clumsy Retcon that recounts how Random, Sarah and Luci got together in the first place.
- Laxius Force II: The Queen of Adretana: Luci too receives the call, and meets the others at Adretana. They are to infiltrate the Order's fortress at Arvendel.
- Laxius Force III: Conclusion of the second trilogy. Random is finally going to meet the Grand Commendanter. What will be the outcome? Will the Laxius Force or the Order win the war?
Author Indinera Falls no longer maintains a personal website, but the freeware power games can be downloaded here
. The shareware Force games are available for purchase here.
The Laxius Power/Laxius Force series contains examples of:
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: The RPG Maker limit: 4 in the active party.
- Art Evolution: The early games, with art solely provided by Indinera Falls, are fairly crude. It gets better when the game goes commercial and Indinera Falls is able to hire more artists.
- Bag of Sharing: Taken to ridiculous extreme because of the limitation of RPG Maker: you can share items with party members who have been split off from the main team and are adventuring in another part of the world.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: In the early episodes, it's too evident that Indinera didn't have a very good grasp of English back then - sometimes the results are hilarious, other times we get just semi-unintelligible dialogues.
- Boss Rush: In The Hall of Madness, the Disc-One Final Dungeon in Laxius Power III, you'll have to fight many bosses you've defeated in the past two games.
- Broken Bridge: A literal example is found in Laxius Power I
- Can't Drop the Hero: Very often you'd like to drop Random or Luci to level up other members. You can't.
- Control Room Puzzle: Often requires team-splitting to complete. Some downright vicious ones must be solved in order to unlock secret areas.
- Covers Always Lie: 3 Stars of Desiny's Steam cover art depicts Sarah with a sword and green hair. In the game, she has teal hair and uses a bow.
- Culture Clash: At the beginning of the saga, we see that some people in Rillia unjustly look down on Sarah as a "slut" due to the lack of a nudity taboo in her culture. Unfortunately such portrayal is not always consistent: sometimes Sarah (on top of being whiny) acts in ways that make you think they weren't totally wrong after all...
- Death Is Dramatic: Although you can't really die in combat, Plotline Deaths will claim a few of your party members, and they die in a most
tear jerking way possible. - Developer's Foresight: For being two optional characters you can skip, Leanda and Wendala have a lot of specific dialogue and content if you get them - try to go back to old places and examine/talk everywhere to see their comments. Also, the limit of 999,999 G in your inventory, typical of the standard RPG Maker interface? Don't worry, you can recruit a friendly NPC who converts large sums of money into gems, so to store them and convert back to gold when necessary. Such care is doubly appreciated if you consider the sheer size of the games.
- Diabolus ex Machina: At the end of Laxius Power 3 the Big Bad has been defeated, Metrolia is safe and everyone has a party, however, the next day, a demon arrives and destroys Metrolia; and said demon is afterwards defeated but still leaves the game with a real Downer Ending.
- Doomed Hometown: In Laxius Force I, Sarah returns to her hometown Mt Zulle to find her parents murdered, and everyone lives in fear.
- Dream Land: Alexandra can enter the Dream Land by reading certain books.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Used with Louis (and to a lesser extent, Marion) near the end of Laxius Force I, shortly after the death of another character, which while saddening, was at least given proper attention. The party gather near the gates of Adretena when suddenly, a gun man shows up out of nowhere and guns down both of these characters. It is particularly jarring in Louis's case since he just dies instantly and is never mentioned again. At least Marion got in some last words, and Random mentions he is sorry for her death, but no one seems to give a damn that Louis died. Granted, he was a bit of a Jerkass, but still.
- Dumb Muscle: Coryool, who thinks his fists can solve any problem. On the plus side, his simple mind makes him impervious to evil magic.
- Easy-Mode Mockery: In Laxius Power 1, Easy Mode cuts the game so the game ends after the Evil Tower, and restricts crossing the bridges in the second world map.
- Expy: Sarah was probably meant to be one of the character of the same name in Shining Force 2 (who is a green-haired elf as well) but, in fact, she's rather the incarnation of Indinera's fantasies about her.
- Forced Transformation: Brussian is an elven prince turned into a wolf by The Order.
- God in Human Form: Yveen, who is also a playable character. And during the game you have to fight the avatars of various evil gods.
- Heel–Face Turn: Zoo the demon will eventually fight for you.
- Immediate Sequel: Laxius Force trilogy, of course.
- Important Haircut: Coryool shaves his head and his beard after he becomes Body Master.
- Jerkass: Wendala graduates from a Deadpan Snarker to a full-blown jerk ass in the Force games.
- Joke Character: Alessandra in Laxius Power III (not to be confused with Princess Alexandra in Laxius Force II): you get her towards the end of the game; she is too weak to squash a fly and has no magic. The only good thing is that she comes with a really hot character portrait.
- Jump Scare: The intro in Laxius Power 2, most infamously when the female scream plays. This intro is followed by the words "Inferno Dom. Aquapanga", and is unknown what exactly this intro is supposed to mean.
- Killer Robot: Titanic in Laxius Force III, who is sent by the Grand Commendanter to kill Random.
- Marathon Level: In Laxius Force III, when the party is trying to locate the Airport, they have to pass a trial where they have bring 15 heroes to the end of the trial. You are likely to have to loop this 5 times to pass the trial. What makes this worse is that the enemies respawn.
- Meaningful Name: The Hero is called "Random" because, according to the
Word of God, he was originally meant to be an everyday guy, who just happens to be in the right place at the right time. This is (unfortunately?) subverted in Laxius Power III and beyond (and especially in Three Stars of Destiny) where it is quite clear that Random is anything but an ordinary dude.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: In any large dungeon, there is usually a lone monster (most often a vampire) who offers to help you.
- Mysterious Past: Wendala. Who is she really? Why is she an undead yet looks so human? How many masters did she have? Also Coryool between the Power and the Force sagas: he seems to have been involved with the dark side in some way...
- Old Save Bonus: If you don't import old saves from previous titles, be prepared to do a bit of Level Grinding. What's worse, in the Force series of games, you'll miss out on quests.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Nash, who calls himself a Druk and regards regular dragons as weaklings.
- Playing with Fire: Luci's spells are almost entirely fire-based.
- Point of No Return:
- Tough, When you fly off from the Airport to Astral-Litz, there is no turning back. No more sidequests can be completed, and your questbook is disabled.
- In 3 Stars of Destiny, make sure before the split-up mission in Hall of Madness, you need to do all of the sidequests, because after you finish the split-up mission, there is no turning back.
- Psycho Serum: The Dark Blood of the Order grants those who drink it superhuman powers, at the expense of their sanity.
- Public Domain Character: Van Helsing in Laxius Power III.
- Really Gets Around: Wendala has been a "slave" to... wait for it... humans, zombies, vampires, dragons, minotaurs, and a slime.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: In Laxius Force II, King Julian, Princess Alexandra, and eventually, the Queen of Adretana.
- Save-Game Limits: The Laxius Force games have an interesting take on the trope. You can save anywhere, as often as you want, but if you did too many saves, the end-game credit will call you a coward.
- Take Your Time: When self-destruction goes off for Astral-Litz, it's been said there was only a few hours before Astral-Litz blows up, but you actually have infinite time.
- Taking You with Me: Some enemies in Laxius Power can "pounce", which causes them to self-destruct but also deal damage to all party members.
- Took a Level in Badass: Luci in Laxius Force II, after her husband King Julian is murdered and she becomes queen.
- Too Kinky to Torture: Wendala. Also, as an undead, what does she have to fear?
- Torture Cellar: A very grisly Bonus Dungeon in Laxius Power III.
- Tragic Villain: Thomas in Laxius Power II. You'll see him again much later, in Laxius Force I, and may redeem him with life or with death. Your call.
- Unwinnable by Design: In Laxius Power 3, when you fall into the huge pit in the slime nest, you'll notice that there's a trapped Metrolian. You can rescue him, but you can't Egress out, so you're stuck until you have the Beacon, which can't be unlocked until later in the game.
- Unwitting Pawn: The heroes have been, for example, lured away from the Palace of Adretana by a rampaging monster, so that the enemy can butcher the Royal Court.
- Water Level: In Laxius Force II: it restricts the party from using hand-wielded weapons and armor except a magical bikini.
- Weird Trade Union: There are all sorts of Guilds in the gameworld, including an Undead Guild.
