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Author Topic: What are the good RPG maker games  (Read 3636 times)

Madmachine

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What are the good RPG maker games
« on: June 22, 2016, 09:38:02 pm »

I know that there have been a lot of really shitty RPGs made with RPG maker, but I also know that its community does produce the occasional hidden gem. I'd like to know where I can find them. However, I have some qualifiers.

  • It has to be an actual RPG. This means that things like Yume Nikki and Corpse Party, which although great games in their own right, aren't really what I'm looking for.
  • It has to have good gameplay. I am of the camp that a game that has a good story but tedious gameplay might as well just be a movie. This means that things like OFF, much of which can basically be beaten with button mashing the "attack" command, aren't what I'm looking for either. I'm looking for quality on par with the best (gameplay-wise) of classic Square RPGs.
    • As a corollary to this, useful and well-balanced status effect spells, positive or negative, are generally good. Battles should be more than just damage races.
  • Character customization is welcome but not required.

Feel free to recommend games that don't fit those criteria, but if you do, please describe why they don't and why they're still worth playing.
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birdy51

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Re: What are the good RPG maker games
« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2016, 09:59:03 pm »

Exit Fate.

It's a pretty damn good RPG that serves as a love-letter to Suikoden while still holding on strongly to it's own merits. It's main perks would be it's excessively wide cast, a rather well thought out combat system, and one really fucking haunting side quest towards the very end of the game.

I won't spoil that, since it was equally the most frightening and awesome concept I've ever seen in a game.
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Pentagram

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Re: What are the good RPG maker games
« Reply #2 on: June 23, 2016, 05:45:04 am »

Exit Fate.

It's a pretty damn good RPG that serves as a love-letter to Suikoden while still holding on strongly to it's own merits. It's main perks would be it's excessively wide cast, a rather well thought out combat system, and one really fucking haunting side quest towards the very end of the game.

I won't spoil that, since it was equally the most frightening and awesome concept I've ever seen in a game.

Yeah, i think Exit Fate is a really good rpg
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Metalax

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Re: What are the good RPG maker games
« Reply #3 on: June 23, 2016, 01:02:50 pm »

Bit of an older one now but Last Scenario also by the same creator as Exit Fate is still one of the best RPG Maker games I've ever played.
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Farce

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Re: What are the good RPG maker games
« Reply #4 on: June 23, 2016, 08:02:34 pm »

I've actually been really hankering for a good RPG or somesuch too.  I just wanna mix equipment around and all that rot, you know?  Consequently I've kinda been looking through RPG Maker games, mostly the ones on Steam I guess.

There's a bundle of like 6 or 7 games on Steam that was like a dollar recently, it had with stuff like Labyronia or whatever.  I wouldn't recommend getting it; I tried a 'Sins of the Demon RPG' that apparently did not actually have an equipment screen, so I kinda dropped it after it failed to grab my attention.  It seemed to have an ATB system, but the bar fills up in like under a second, so it was way too frenetic for me.  I also tried a 'Labyronia RPG'.  It had really amateurish writing, so I basically quit after like five minutes of apparently-your-character making weird exposition to himself in his hut.  After that, I kinda just gave up on the rest of the games.

Besides those, though, I've actually nabbed a fair few off of Steam that actually weren't that bad.  Lots of them were pretty generic and stuff, but overall, they felt relatively competent and held my attention for awhile.

OH! RPG! is pretty neat.  It basically divides the game up into little episodes, and your items and equipment don't really carry between them.  There aren't really any inns or free heals, so emphasizes managing your resources will completing sidequests and whatnot is the name of the game.  There's an equipment upgrade system that makes you decide between hoarding upgrades until you find some cool new gear or using it to make what you have now suck less and stuff, and the game also basically scores you based on how well you do.  The first character you get is kinda whatever, but IMO, the Old Lady, the Nun and the Clown are fucking boss as shit.

LISA: The Painful and The Joyful are good, but they've probably been discussed somewhere.

Deadly Sin 2 was pretty formulaic, but I enjoyed it well enough.  It has a skill point system where you decide what abilities you want to go for, rather than the usual 'level up, get new skills' thing, and I think it had gear upgrades too.  By the end, my main character could hit REALLY hard with his sword, the wizard could blast stuff with wizard shit or try to inflict status effects with their weapon.  My Fast Guy did decent damage on top of really crippling statuses, and the tank was our hella beefy healbot.  It was pretty fun, all in all.

The Last Dream is pretty similar, except your heroes are basically personalityless, like Final Fantasy 1, but you can build them however you see fit.  It has a main plot, but is structured in an open worldy style a bit, which is kinda interesting.  There are different paths you can progress down, also - for instance, the quest in the early game is to basically get to the capital, and you can get there via a long walk through a couple different areas and do a little quest to prove your worth, or you can take a shortcut through a hardasfuck forest and totally skip the quest, because getting through that forest basically proved your worth already.
 

There's another one I think is actually really good, but I'm really hesitant to mention it because it's kinda, uh, adult-oriented.  The characters are interesting, it digs pretty deep into its own lore, and in my opinion actually manages to be both serious and silly very successfully (at some point you basically start trying to broker the resources to fund an army and whatnot, not in hard currency, but promissory notes... or 'ProN', for short.)  The gameplay is actually pretty standard stuff, but I think the writing is the biggest draw.

Hanzoku

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Re: What are the good RPG maker games
« Reply #5 on: June 24, 2016, 01:18:25 am »

On the last one... I've been thinking to mention it, because it is one of the best RPG maker games I've played in a long while.

That said, it is VERY definitely NC-17, and the adult stuff is integral to the plot. If you're still interested, you can poke me and I can point you to where to get the game.
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Madmachine

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Re: What are the good RPG maker games
« Reply #6 on: June 24, 2016, 01:22:09 pm »

You could just give us a name, you know...

If the name itself is 2hot4bay12 then you can rot13 it or write it backwards or something.
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Jiharo

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Re: What are the good RPG maker games
« Reply #7 on: June 24, 2016, 05:27:38 pm »

That reminds me of Hero and Daughter. Lighthearted and somewhat grindy dungeon crawler, but with lots of cool gimmicks and mechanics that remove the frustration. There's main character who can't level up normally and has to get by with stat-increasing items, huge pool of party members with unique skillsets, towns to upgrade, partially randomized dungeons to explore, world to save multiple times, furniture to buy(okay, this is a little pointless) and lots of other extra stuff. Combat is actually interesting and tense, especially if you go to dungeon with party levelled slightly lower than recommended.
The game went commercial but free version is still available.

Main caveat is risque-ish art for character portraits, although nothing straight out adult like above.
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Glloyd

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Re: What are the good RPG maker games
« Reply #8 on: June 24, 2016, 07:47:25 pm »

Pretty sure To The Moon was an RPG Maker game. That's an amazing little experience if you haven't already played it. Not really an RPG, but it is a really well written story with some puzzle elements (that are optional IIRC if you just want to experience the story). If you haven't checked it out, do so, it's definitely my favourite RPG Maker game by far. May not be up your alley though, because by the sounds of it you're looking for gameplay and not story.

Sartain

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Re: What are the good RPG maker games
« Reply #9 on: June 25, 2016, 05:57:05 pm »

Someone already (non)mentioned The Last Sovereign, which by all accounts is a pretty good (adult ) game. The author(s) also made another game called Ouroboros which is also pretty great. None of the two have any sort of graphics for the adult stuff so it's pretty easy to skip, and while TLS has a pretty hefty pornographic focus, Ouroboros isn't really about the sex at all.
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