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chuckroBaba Is You - Block-pushing puzzles with the delightful meta twist that the definitions of all the objects are among the things you can push and rearrange. BABA doesn’t have to be YOU; KIKI IS YOU IS WIN might complete the stage, or DOOR IS YOU HAS DOOR can make you invincible. (It makes sense when you play it, I swear!) The later stages get brain-bendingly hard (there are whole swaths of them I never made it to), but this is a very clever game and I enjoyed it. (I think my only quibble is that I wish it had a hint system—there were a number of levels where a one-line point in the right direction would have made them much less frustrating.)
Finding Light (PC, Steam) - An RPGMaker-produced love song to the Game Boy Final Fantasy Legend games. Done in black-and-white spritework very reminiscent of those games, the story involves a tower to the heavens, rising waters that destroy towns, and a final battle against God. (It’s a sequel to the developer’s other games, but the dialogue gave the gist of those and the characters’ relationships without needing to have played them.) Your party starts with a nymph and a fox-monster (that you can feed meat to change forms), and eventually adds four human characters who can be moderately customized into fighters or mages. Stat progression is mostly level-based, but spells and skills are either bought in stores and equipped or granted by other equipment. An important random tip: The switches that lower the lava in Tiamat’s cave affect all the underworld caverns. That said, I still wasn’t able to find the legendary blacksmith, and he gates a legendary sword and also at least one bonus dungeon (and therefore several of the achievements). It took me about six hours, which felt like a good length for a decent RPGMaker game with some nostalgia value.
Hero of the Kingdom III - I bought this having played the first two games; this series melds a point-and-click adventure and a storybook rpg into a game that’s mostly about finding all of the hidden objects and managing your resources to complete all of the quests. Which means it’s very simple, but in turn strangely entrancing. This iteration of the game respawns the basic hidden food items (eggs, mushrooms) after a set time, so you can’t actually run out of resources. For that matter, it also allows you to access stores from the world map screen and camp anywhere, which makes it easy to just buy or make the thing you need rather than having to trudge back to get it. That said, the plot is a bit weaker and leaves a bunch of hanging threads (whatever happened to your uncle?) and I preferred the second game’s conceit that you were recruiting soldiers to help fight rather than needing to chug eight potions to defeat a strong enemy. (Grinding out potion-making got rather annoying.)
Magebuster: Amorous Augury - A visual novel, and yes, it’s an H-game. But it gets a lot of credit for having a clever dueling magic system that depends on both rock-paper-scissors elements and also a timing system. You can get through the entire game in about half an hour, which is important when the point of the game is to try to uncover all the endings by changing a few dialogue choices over the course of it. (Really, far too many visual novels are six hours long but have only a few dialogue choices, forcing you to burn through the same story over and over to uncover the multiple endings.)
Artifact Adventure Gaiden - An action-rpg with a Game Boy graphical design that reminds me a bit of a simplified Tales of Phantasia. A Catastrophe is due in three years, and the king has charged you with setting up defenses against it. With the help of several recruitable companions (who grant passive benefits and change the sidequests somewhat, but don’t fight), you need to go out into the world, complete quests and gather treasure until time is up; then you’ll see how each quest turned out before you go fight the final battle. Battles are side-view, you do damage (and heal yourself) by ramming enemies from the front, and take damage from other hits. I give them a lot of credit that this feels like a Game Boy game (albeit a very kind one—battles aren’t forced or random, and losing just pushes you back where you were at 1 HP), and once I got the hang of it, I enjoyed it. (Tip: Go to the Mage’s Cloister before you do basically anything else and grab the Greedsword. It’s a fantastic weapon until very late in the game and gives bonus gold for buying better armor.)
Skyborn - A perfectly respectable RPGMaker classic rpg, set in a world where the magical, winged Skyborn defeated humanity in a war and now ruthlessly oppress both humans and half-breeds. Claret is an airship engineer who finds herself caught up in a plot to overthrow the oppressors by a Scarlet Pimpernel-type rebel leader. Equipment can be bought or crafted (from mined materials) and then further augmented with special items. This game’s biggest issue is that it’s really short (maybe five hours without the Colosseum/bonus dungeon) and gets weighed down by all the systems because of that. A five-hour game doesn’t need a mining, crafting and augmenting system or three class changes. For that matter, the ending feels rushed, like there should be more game to pad out the plot.
Overall: I enjoyed all of these games, though they all have limitations based on their genre. Basically, if the description seems appealing, then yes, it'll be worth your time.
Finding Light (PC, Steam) - An RPGMaker-produced love song to the Game Boy Final Fantasy Legend games. Done in black-and-white spritework very reminiscent of those games, the story involves a tower to the heavens, rising waters that destroy towns, and a final battle against God. (It’s a sequel to the developer’s other games, but the dialogue gave the gist of those and the characters’ relationships without needing to have played them.) Your party starts with a nymph and a fox-monster (that you can feed meat to change forms), and eventually adds four human characters who can be moderately customized into fighters or mages. Stat progression is mostly level-based, but spells and skills are either bought in stores and equipped or granted by other equipment. An important random tip: The switches that lower the lava in Tiamat’s cave affect all the underworld caverns. That said, I still wasn’t able to find the legendary blacksmith, and he gates a legendary sword and also at least one bonus dungeon (and therefore several of the achievements). It took me about six hours, which felt like a good length for a decent RPGMaker game with some nostalgia value.
Hero of the Kingdom III - I bought this having played the first two games; this series melds a point-and-click adventure and a storybook rpg into a game that’s mostly about finding all of the hidden objects and managing your resources to complete all of the quests. Which means it’s very simple, but in turn strangely entrancing. This iteration of the game respawns the basic hidden food items (eggs, mushrooms) after a set time, so you can’t actually run out of resources. For that matter, it also allows you to access stores from the world map screen and camp anywhere, which makes it easy to just buy or make the thing you need rather than having to trudge back to get it. That said, the plot is a bit weaker and leaves a bunch of hanging threads (whatever happened to your uncle?) and I preferred the second game’s conceit that you were recruiting soldiers to help fight rather than needing to chug eight potions to defeat a strong enemy. (Grinding out potion-making got rather annoying.)
Magebuster: Amorous Augury - A visual novel, and yes, it’s an H-game. But it gets a lot of credit for having a clever dueling magic system that depends on both rock-paper-scissors elements and also a timing system. You can get through the entire game in about half an hour, which is important when the point of the game is to try to uncover all the endings by changing a few dialogue choices over the course of it. (Really, far too many visual novels are six hours long but have only a few dialogue choices, forcing you to burn through the same story over and over to uncover the multiple endings.)
Artifact Adventure Gaiden - An action-rpg with a Game Boy graphical design that reminds me a bit of a simplified Tales of Phantasia. A Catastrophe is due in three years, and the king has charged you with setting up defenses against it. With the help of several recruitable companions (who grant passive benefits and change the sidequests somewhat, but don’t fight), you need to go out into the world, complete quests and gather treasure until time is up; then you’ll see how each quest turned out before you go fight the final battle. Battles are side-view, you do damage (and heal yourself) by ramming enemies from the front, and take damage from other hits. I give them a lot of credit that this feels like a Game Boy game (albeit a very kind one—battles aren’t forced or random, and losing just pushes you back where you were at 1 HP), and once I got the hang of it, I enjoyed it. (Tip: Go to the Mage’s Cloister before you do basically anything else and grab the Greedsword. It’s a fantastic weapon until very late in the game and gives bonus gold for buying better armor.)
Skyborn - A perfectly respectable RPGMaker classic rpg, set in a world where the magical, winged Skyborn defeated humanity in a war and now ruthlessly oppress both humans and half-breeds. Claret is an airship engineer who finds herself caught up in a plot to overthrow the oppressors by a Scarlet Pimpernel-type rebel leader. Equipment can be bought or crafted (from mined materials) and then further augmented with special items. This game’s biggest issue is that it’s really short (maybe five hours without the Colosseum/bonus dungeon) and gets weighed down by all the systems because of that. A five-hour game doesn’t need a mining, crafting and augmenting system or three class changes. For that matter, the ending feels rushed, like there should be more game to pad out the plot.
Overall: I enjoyed all of these games, though they all have limitations based on their genre. Basically, if the description seems appealing, then yes, it'll be worth your time.
