Critically limited in the tools available to anyone remotely serious about making an enjoyable gaming experience, this is not for anyone who has any experience in past RPG Maker titles, or those who wish to do much more than make a map, make a character, then have them wander around aimlessly.
At surface level it seems interesting - the map design is made easy by the touch controls, butCritically limited in the tools available to anyone remotely serious about making an enjoyable gaming experience, this is not for anyone who has any experience in past RPG Maker titles, or those who wish to do much more than make a map, make a character, then have them wander around aimlessly.
At surface level it seems interesting - the map design is made easy by the touch controls, but that's just about where it's merits end.
Here's a small list of the major mechanic limitations I've encountered in 2 days of play:
-heavy limits to specific creation areas in the database: 16 classes, 16 party characters (total possible throughout game), 64 items, 64 weapons, 64 defensive equipment, 99 monsters, 99 battle groups, 99 MAPS (hope you don't want a massive game world!)
-zero interface dialogue alterations. Every battle for every user will end with
"has
X experience
X gold
" in a large empty box
-almost no unique event options; want conditional branches? In this software, you can't have them. There is no room for "if switch = ON make X happen, else Y", it just isn't an option. This is but one of the critical tools in story creation that are missing from this.
-party stats are locked to their profession; you set the value they are at level 1, and every level it will increase by that amount. You can't make items that increase this, or alter them in events, this is the system you have to use.
-equipment only alters one stat for each piece; no heavy equipment possible that increases strength at a cost to speed! No special equipment that increases several stats, it's again take it or leave it.
Honestly, I could continue for a long time listing features I would consider very basic for a game maker, nevermind an RPG maker; it is obvious on a portable system they wouldn't include a script editor, and that was something I was prepared for - but there are countless fundamental basics you cannot do in this game. You can make text, you can move events, you can manipulate them with switches and variables (as long as you don't want too much of an impact to occur in the event manipulating the values), and that's about it.
There's also the content issue in terms of games assets. In terms of the RTP they provide, it is quite expansive - to a degree. The basic set has maybe 100 or so character sprite / body image combos, each with 4 colour / appearance alterations; this is large enough to have diversity in games, but not large enough if you're wanting your game to be along the lines of a Suikoden clone or the like - and this isn't possible anyway, with a max of 16 per game. Tile-wise there's 10+ pages of ground and object sprites, plenty to make world maps, varied towns, moving water in ports etc - and they're all easily implemented. The trouble is without user content or a mass of additional DLC in the future these will be a problem. In the 2 days I've played around with it, I made a large world map, I think 10 or so villages-cities, several accompanying dungeons, and a few random houses - and I've used most of the tiles by now. You will need to be incredibly creative in you map design to make these last a game's length, never mind making your game appear different to everyone else's! This may improve with time, but given the Day 1 DLC being 4 or so packs priced around £3-5 each, it doesn't seem likely.
Lastly, the editor music. Oh my days. You can listen to the one track ad infinitum while editing, or you can turn your sound off. You can't seem to select an existing song you're matching to the map you're designing even, to help keep the mindset needed for the situation.
Sorry for the wordy review spewing out of me here, but I felt strongly enough about the limitations that I made a meta critic account simply to get this out there - most of the reviews seemed average - glowing, with little being said about the downsides of the software - and they are critical to anyone not making a game in an extremely casual way. RPG Maker FES does have a market - people extremely new to game design, who are very casual in their approach to telling a story; if you have an RPG in mind, and a story you would like to tell in a similar style, don't bother; there is no way to even come close to matching what you will have in your head with this. If you just want to tell small and silly stories that you can have your other friends with a DS to play, go for it - their system of upload and download of games is certainly robust. If it weren't for the pitiable lack of functionality otherwise, it's worth in my eyes would skyrocket.… Expand
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