This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
It isn't that Steel & Steam: Episode 1 is bad. In fact, it isn't. It also isn't that the game is bug-filled. Off-hand, I only know of two: the run-time error that may play at the end of the first battle, and coliseum victory funds not being added to the player's gold count. It isn't even that the game lacks support for Xbox360 wired controllers, even though such support is native to the current version of RPGMaker. And it isn't even that this game was made in RPGMaker: games such as Skyborn have proven that excellent narratives can be told using the RPGM engine, and a combination of re-designed default assets and perhaps new, customized assets can help elevate such an experience bigtime. Heck, games with admirable qualities have been made using mostly default assets, too: see Last Dream.
There are two major issues with Steel & Steam. One is that it fails to establish an exciting narrative. You spend much of this 5-6 hour experience (by my count, though I had a few quests left over) wandering loosely until you seem to stumble into a conflict and get proclaimed to be the 'chosen one' right out of nowhere. Additionally, there isn't much to differentiate the game's two main characters: they frequently exchange light-hearted jabs about how they're protecting each other, but you don't learn the true nature of these two. Who are they, really? Where did they meet? Why are they so close? You don't even get a peek into that aspect of their lives, and it's a darned shame.
The other major issue is that there are a lot of little things about the game's world that aren't so hot. In chapter one, there are only two explorable towns (as for one of the others that the game doesn't allow you into yet, no message pops on the screen as to why you can't enter... you're simply not allowed.) When you leave the first town, you see a mountain side that's unfinished visually. It's as if whoever designed it stopped working on it halfway and decided 'ah well, close enough.' Given that this game raised $8,590 on Kickstarter for development, that seems more than slightly inexcusable. The two towns are huge and feature houses that are mostly empty, except for the usual 'KS' plaque with a name and perhaps a saying of a person who donated money through Kickstarter to make the game happen. While that's a nice gesture, from a pure gameplay and design perspective it makes adventuring seem tedious. Which isn't to say that huge towns are a negative, but redundant ones that offer you little in the way of interactivity in too many of the game's locations are (the overworld suffers similarly: the continent that you are allowed to walk across is largely empty.) Furthermore, townspeople never have much interesting to add about the world's history or politics, and while some games over-do this (see Legionwood 2), there simply isn't enough to immerse the player and make him want to get to know the planet better.
I am not suggesting that the designers of this game give up. In fact, if they released an updated version that fixes my previous critiques, and if they reduced the battle encounter rate in most areas (see the mines, for example), I'd say this game's worth closer to a 6 than a 4. As it is, this seems like a game that could've, and should've, been released for free, and without crowdfunding.… Expand
