You are Clifford, a scrubby hick with a penchant for amorality, sarcasm, and thumping stuff before thinking. Along with his comrades, Clifford travels a twisted path towards his great fate: to be the one destined to "try" and fight Gwar, the demonic villain whose name is only coincidentally after the 80's metal band. Along this path your journeys take many unstereotypical routes - such as a Battle of the Bands, DNA cloning, ghost pirate sea ballads, and an infectious disease that sounds more like a cereal. The journey also contains particularly stereotypical routes - such as the Generic Tower, discussions over whether towers are more evil than caves, and the Island of Too Many Towers.
The Sword and the Fish is a freeware comedic-RPG created by Joel Minty and his brother, Tyler Minty, using RPG Maker 2000. Released Summer of 2006, the game was a huge hit. Featuring a large cast of sidekicks, over 1,500 maps, loads of items and optional quests galore, this game is long. Nonetheless, its quirky plot and the interesting cast of characters (and awesome music) will keep you dying to know what happens next. Download it here: [1]
You can also access the game's facebook page here: [2]
This RPG includes examples of:
- Can't Drop the Hero: Clifford is with you from beginning to end.
- Cute Bruiser: Princess Anna Headbutt. Try to guess what her fighting technique consists of.
- Deadpan Snarker: Most of the characters have their moments, but Clifford is the king.
- Disappeared Dad: We never see or hear anything about Clifford's father.
- Disc-One Final Dungeon: Okay, so, you've broken through the barrier and are about to confront the madman behind everything. The dungeon is difficult and the music is properly epic. By the time the dungeon is over with, a new character has joined your party, seven powerful demons have been released and you're off to a new chapter...the longest one yet!
- Dishing Out Dirt: Sasha's tech skills.
- Dual Wielding: Zaknafien and Risco Rah
- Dungeon Bypass: When you head to the ruins of Roma to save Clifford's mother, you're expected to take the secret entrance into the castle for a standard dungeon romp...or you can just go through the front door, kill the boss and leave.
- Easily Forgiven: The Curves are awfully chummy towards Clifford when he reunites with each one despite the fact it was entirely his fault they broke up in the first place.
- Elemental Powers: Each character's tech skill consists of magic that is geared towards a specific elemental property, as well as skills that are related to his or her weapon of choice.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Demons, wild animals, drugged out groupies, diseased orphans, rabid old men, and much much more.
- Evil All Along: Moop, which was actually a pretty surprising twist.
- Fake Longevity: Mostly absent, though in the original release random encounters were much longer than they should have been.
- Flanderization: Zaknafien seems to get dumber as the game goes on.
- Genki Girl: Gwen and Princess Headbutt.
- Get on the Boat
- Global Airship: Obtained towards the end.
- The Heart: Sasha
- Housewife: Clifford's mom, more or less.
- I Just Want to Be Badass: Zaknafien sets out to do this by joining a pack of vampires.
- Improbable Weapon User:
- Sasha - Bass
- Edge - Guitar
- Anna - Her head
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Apocalypso and his goons.
- In-Universe Nickname: She's called Princess Headbutt for a reason!
- Kill It with Ice: Quinn and Anna
- Kill It with Water: Presto Mundo's tech skills.
- Light 'em Up: What Clifford's tech skills mostly consist of.
- The Medic: Clifford alternates between this and Lightening Bruiser.
- Millionaire Playboy: Forgor. His mansion has more people living in it than some of the game's villages.
- Money Spider: This is a traditional RPG. It's to be expected.
- Now, Where Was I Going Again?: Especially during the final chapter, in which the game becomes totally nonlinear.
- One of the Boys: Sasha, and this extends beyond her role in the band.
- Party in My Pocket
- Perma-Shave: None of the male characters have facial hair (well, Quinn 'may', but you can't tell)
- Recurring Character: Presto Mundo starts as this before becoming a regular member of the team.
- The Rival: Apocalypso (at least he tries to be)
- Running Gag: The mirror demon, Clifford only being able to play "Bad Cops" on pianos, and Clifford constantly being referred to as "that freaky haired lout".
- Shock and Awe: Quadlink's and Edge's tech skills.
- Spoiler Opening: The title screen shows off every major villain in the game.
- Tomboy: Sasha
- Updated Re-release: One was released a year or so after the original version. It fixed balances issues including (but limited to) lowering the encounter rate and decreasing some of the normal encounters' health points.
- Useless Useful Spell: Subverted with Presto Mundo's "Me Love Me Life" tech skill. It recovers 40 health and magic points to the whole party. Unfortunately, by the time Priesto joins, enemies will be dishing out 3x that amount of damage every single turn and recovering 40 magic points (give or take) is barely enough to cover one round. So what exactly is it good for, you ask? As long as Presto has enough magic points to cast the spell while on the field map, you'll pretty much NEVER have to buy another healing item ever again. This is especially useful in that healing items (and money) are not as plentiful as you'd probably like, especially at that stage of the game, so to have the opportunity to enter every battle fully-recovered gives you a HUGE advantage. Not that it makes the rest of the game a piece of cake mind you, but it does make certain dungeons much less stressful (
The Inca Ruins, for an example). - The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Gwar's Castle
