After The End: The Harvest

UPDATED REVIEW: In a time of loot box gambling and unfulfilled promises many devs have been screwing over customers so it's nice to see an early access dev actually keep true to their promises and finish their game. This game has a couple of small issues, but what it does achieve is so fun and refreshing that it is worth peoples attention. I originally played through and finished the game during its 0.08 alpha. It was prety different but i loved it! You can read my original review under this one. Game has really changed since launching on early access 2+ years ago. The story, gameplay, graphics and everything has been either completely updated or expanded. Intro restructructed and everything. These devs wern't kidding when they said that the whole game had been completly overhauled. All for the better I have to say. Great work guys! The game features a very generous sized 2D open world universe which contains galaxies full of planets and moons that can be entered and explored at will. There is also sections of deep space which sit between the galaxies filled with more areas. Space itself contains no loading screens and entering a planet is pretty seamless. Gameplay consists of on foot Zelda like combat were weapons have different attack ranges. You can have also duel wield some really crazy weapon combos. There is traditional weapons like swords and modern weapons like guns and flamethrowers. Magic too. Spaceship combat is in real time and ships can be equipped with all kinds of gear and accesories. The spaceship can be called at anytime while exploring a planet so no need to worry about it getting lost.On foot monsters also run away when your flying past on your ship which is a really cool touch. Make sure you have fuel because flying without it, could leave you crash landing into an alien ocean. You can also have a monster pet which helps you fight! Planets can be fully explored on foot and also have their own villages, quests and dungeons. Most quests are also pretty open ended so you can tackle them in various ways. Npc's around the game can also be killed which can then trigger local guards to attack and hunt you down. The games systems seem simple initially but are suprisingly deep for a cheap game. Combine and craft items, equip runes to alter stats, battle pets, manage your karma. It's like a little universe in your hands for $5! Story has been changed since early access, but the 1.0 version story really went into a direction i wasn't expecting. Getting your ship in the tutorial sections took a little longer then in the earlier version but I think it was partly my fault as I couldn't help but explore rather then follow the story. Lots of backstory stuff in general to explore too. The introduction of the game makes you think the story will be your traditional you are the ones stuff but it is so much more then that. This is a great game which deserves more praise for a first time effort from a dev. I really hope you get to enjoy this awesome game! This is a really unique game which i'd recommend to classic 2D rpg adventure fans and people who enjoy the Witcher series, Legend Of Zelda series, Elder Scrolls and Fallout. ORIGANAL: Dont be put off by the introduction. This game is huge and does take a little bit of time getting used to the style. I was expecting that I could immediately find a ship and fly into space. This wasnt the case. You can rush through the beginning portions and get the ship in about 5-10 minutes. This game is definantely an open world sandbox but also at its core has some nice RPG style progression which helps structure the overall arching story. You start off as your players daughter learning the controls around a peaceful little town. After a few events which slightly change based on what you did in the tutorial. The town becomes anything but peaceful. The introduction does a decent job at setting up the various tones which exsist through the different explorable games worlds. After this introduction and tutorial you are finally let loose on the huge explorable worlds that make up the game. This is where the game truely begins to shine. At first I had spent my time trying to avoid the main quest line which involved tracking down and defeating giant monsters called Titans and instead just visiting the different planets and moons. During my travels I experienced many different things. I got robbed by raiders in the middle of space, went to jail for killing villagers, slaughtered countless villagers , explored space, defeated giant space worms who also drop a fairly strong summon btw. crafted support turrets and even bought a house. Controls are a bit different then your usual action game but I think thats because it isn't really an action game but more a hybrid between action and traditional rpg. There is a review that mentioned Fallout and I guess this game does feel like a 2d version of that. For the price, I dont know what more you could want. Some issues that I did experience is that there was a couple of typos and a few things that are walkable that I dont think are meant to be. As well as a couple of quests that I just could not figure out mainly the one involving the reptilian captial. All in all they were small issues and didn't really impact the game at all but I hope they get fixed.

At the moment, (version 0.07) this is a game that shows a lot of promise, but definitely is covered in "construction" signs. You are The Wanderer, which seems an odd title, as you clearly weren't a wanderer before the start of the game, unless you just wandered around town. Maybe all the other people in town are wanderers too? Anyway, you're a character sprite you choose from a list of character sprites with no backstory because the plot's not really written yet. A Beautiful Woman chased by The Bad Guys crashes near your house, so you naturally do the heroic thing, and steal her ship for yourself so you can go joyriding and see the universe, meet strange and fascinating new people, then murder them and loot their corpses for their stuff! Ostensibly, you are doing this to find The Beautiful Woman's soul because she's apparently now your Love. (So what if you're a girl, you apparently swing that way!) You have to rescue her soul because The Bad Guys... umm... think it would taste great with jam? Or maybe just put it in a lava lamp or something? Anyway, you have to go to The Centre to find it and beat the game. This amounts to fighting several giant Bad Guys, and one slightly bigger giant Bad Guy who shows he means business because he's a different color than the others and deals marginally more damage. Along the way, you'll meet several alien races, most of which are hostile because The Harvest swept up all the good races, and took them to a Higher Plane of Existence. Basically, it's the Rapture, but with dinosaurs and little gray men instead of the Antichrist. The new version brought with it a "sci fi" pack of portraits, so the little gray men no longer use standard RPGMaker elf portraits, and now means the weapon dealers have a face that looks like a discarded cicada shell, and the catgirls look like goth girls with witch hats. The dev assures us that none of the art is final, but it's somewhat amusing in its current state, anyway. The game really only has about 3 required missions, and the rest are basically you just visiting random places, being asked to pick a side in some battle between two opposing races, and murdering whichever side strikes your fancy or didn't give a bid. In some senses, it's a bit like Skyrim in that regard, although also like Skyrim, it tends to wind up with me walking into some alien base, killing everything, then accidentally hitting a self-destruct button, and then being told "Congratulations, I just completed a quest I didn't actually accept!" Gee, I hope I didn't miss any important lead-up to that. I wonder who I just killed? Enemies range from wolves and lizardpeople and skeletons you kill by the dozen with a couple strong attacks to giants that take shooting for a full minute while dodging their fireballs and chugging potions like crazy while trying not to think about whether the junk made by those red imp guys are really without any side effects when you take 40 times the reccomended dosage. The fireballs are slow enough to make them easy to dodge if you stand further than 4 tiles away, but many weapon attacks tend to force you to stay still for a second or so, and so it's best to dodge, then shoot. A lack of ability to aim your character without stepping a tile towards your enemy is also an annoyance, as there's a rather small finite number of tiles on the screen to start with, and the player character is such a cool customer, (s)he never bothers to go at more than a walking pace. So what if you're being followed by a flaming boulder rolled by a living volcano, you didn't pick the character who wears leather pants and shades at night to break your cool! Weapons range from projectiles with various blast patterns to melee weapons you sell to buy more ammo for the projectile weapons. The low number of frames of animation mean an enemy is already hitting you by the time the axe appears, so melee combat is essentially impossible to dodge and comes down to spamming the attack button to kill it before it kills you. Save your potions, abuse your ranged weapons. Currently, a few imbalanced weapons make the game fairly easy, as stun weapons can paralyze even a titan that by all rights should squish you like a bug. Magic and projectiles in general need reworking, as they tend to be either easily evaded or, in the case of some spells, are impossible to evade and hit 20 times in a row with enough damage to kill you if you aren't spamming the potion button like crazy. It takes some clear references from Secret of Mana and Legend of Zelda. Some of the monsters are clearly in the art style of Secret of Mana. You have a "grappleshot" to cling to posts, bombs to open caves blocked by rocks, etc. You can even find outright expies where "Dink" is asked to fight "Cannondork" to save "Princess Xena"... While it undoubtably has helped speed development, as there are a lot of scripts available for RPG Maker "off the shelf" at this point, the biggest limitation of this game seems to be its engine. It would play better without the RPG Maker engine, whether it's because the RPG Maker engine is so badly optimized that even these graphics lag the game, or because it forces the game to stick to a grid-based system, when free-form movement would better suit the game. Early access games should generally be rated on how they are, rather than what you hope they might someday be. What it IS is still clearly under development at a pre-alpha level. (There are some towns that just don't have doors because the shop interiors haven't been made yet...) That said, for the dirt-cheap price they're asking for it at this early state, it's more than enough entertainment to justify itself. I give this game 8 stunlocked final bosses I kill with a weapon I got in the first village out of 10.

This is a ton of fun but you are going to have problems out the gate. I am using a Xbox 360 controller and it took me a good while to remap the buttons so here is what I've done. It will be confusing at first but once you fire it up it will make sense. Press F1 to open the Game Properties and go to whatever tab you need. XBOX CONTROLLER: Button 1 = A Button 2 = B Button 3 = X Button 4 = Y Button 5 = LB Button 6 = RB Button 7 = Select Button 8 = Start Button 9 = Left Stick Click Button 10 = Right Stick Click The Game: A = Strafe B = Back C = Action/Conferm X = Off Hand Y = Menu Z = Land/Fly Ship L = Light/Torch/Lantern R = Main Hand What I Have: Buttion 1: C Buttion 2: B Buttion 3: R Buttion 4: X Buttion 5: A Buttion 6: Z Buttion 7: L Buttion 8: Y Buttion 9: L Buttion 10: L This is your standard RPG setup for me but you can easily chance it. FOR KEYBOARD: Self Explanatory. Use the list above so you know what is what. Use this to rebind the game's buttions. Problems Thus Far: No buttion to skip or make chat go faster. When on the overworld map there is this weird bug where if you try to attack with the off hand item your map opens up and pauses the game and the attack. This happens everytime you use the off hand making it just about useless. I even tried to rebind the command to a diffrent buttion on the controller but it does not help it and it really hurts the gameplay but there is a fix: Whatever you This game is good so far with some good story so do not let the controlls deter you from enjoying it but the overworld bug is going to be a massive pain.

Originally written for early access version 0.9u3 - 29May2017 [i]~~~~Edited for version 1.4 20Jun2018~~~~[/i] After nearly 90 hours and having seen the game to its completion, I'm finally comfortable editing in a final review. [b]Pros:[/b] --- The game's description and screenshots are very accurate for what you're getting here: an expansive open-universe RPG with the look and feel of an old action-adventure SNES game. --- Among the biggest selling points for After the End continues to be developer interaction. Throughout the early access period and post-release, The Sworn has consistently been available to field questions and bug reports in the forums. [i]I very much value this![/i] --- [b]Plenty[/b] to explore, a great variety of weapons, the ability to capture most of the monsters you fight to use as a companion or to battle 'pokémon-style', and the promise of new and better loot should keep the player engaged as the story unfolds. [b]Cons:[/b] --- Having said this, the game does still require some work. I highlight the developer interaction as an early point because it's important to remember that anything reported has generally been fixed... - However, despite being past version 1.0, the game is still in great need of quality control and testing. Numerous instances of maps not functioning correctly, softlocks, frequent misspellings, sprite clipping, obtuse quest information and more. - Moreover, the amount of recycled dialogue/shops and pointless rooms often made exploring feel unrewarding. --- Lastly (and others have mentioned this), the game will periodically go dark, affecting ~80% of your vision, regardless of your location. Even with the flashlight/lantern, often times I would just stop playing and wait for the light to return. - At no point does time of day even matter... nothing like 'find this monster during the day only', or 'complete this quest at night'. I don't know what else to say; the passage of time to include this darkness is an unnecessary mechanic. [i]Now, it's important to note that this is the undertaking of a single person who's been quite eager to make improvements, but to this day, I still believe there are plenty to be made. It's a fine game, but fans of the classic ARPGs are warned that your patience may be tested.[/i] [b]------------------------[/b] In the end, yes, I am critical of this title, but my overall experience was still a positive one. I'm more than willing to give a thumbs up to a title that was an enjoyable throwback with a developer who's been dedicated to actively making a better game.

[h1][b]A Note[/b][/h1] To be clear on this point, I did receive this game for free, however, it was from one of those sites where you enter in to game giveaways. In other words, I didn't get After The End: The Harvest from the developer. [h1][b]General Gameplay[/b][/h1] After The End: The Harvest is a sprawling open-world game with graphics on par with SNES and the Sega CD consoles. It is heavily story-oriented, though, for those who care more about running around & doing what you want the way you want, then you'll be pleasantly surprised with how the game doesn't try to grab you by the arm, yanking you from one story-objective to the next. Do you want to play as a good, altruistic character? You can. Do you want to let loose with your inner Darth Vader? You can. Would you rather walk that grey line between the two while giving the middle finger to Jedi- & Sith-types both? You can. There are a plethora of quests (almost all optional), pet hunting (a la Pokemon), many forms of weapons, spells, & gear. This includes things like space craft, grappling hooks, swords, laser guns, ship upgrades & gear for your pets. Yes, like Pokemon, you can equip a pet to follow & fight with you on your travels through the galaxy. Also, like the rpgs of the past, there isn't an encumbrance or slot limit for what you're carrying. Both your character & your pets level up while completing quests, slaying monsters,... and by killing the occasional space cop or innocent if you're of the mind. Also, did I mention that this game has crafting? No? Well, then let me elaborate on this mechanic a bit: This isn't a game where you harvest plants & minerals. Instead, you loot. (There's a lot to loot.) All crafting takes place by combining two items together. For instance, if you need a lockpick, then you craft (if I remember correctly) wood & a steel rod (I've a bad memory, sorry if this is incorrect) & now that pesky door isn't a problem anymore. You have this spell, yet it isn't quite what you want. You can combine it with another spell/component & now you have a hybrid spell. There are a large number of planets & moons that you can visit via your legally- or illegally-acquired space vessel (which, btw, aren't carbon copies of each other). There are space battles, pet battles with certain NPCs & so much more that I've yet to even stumble across. [h1][b]Personal Opinions & A Couple Facts[/b][/h1] I've played this game through most of beta & have seen where the game started, watched it continue to evolve, & where it has ended up. I have to be honest here & say that, in many ways, this game has qualities reminicent of the Bethesda Fallout games & The Elder Scrolls games. Obviously, After The End: The Harvest isn't a 3D game, yet it has some similar game & gameplay elements rooted in its playstyle, options, & spirit. This game is very reasonably priced considering what you get & the replayability it offers. Also, the developer has written new systems for the RPGMaker game engine since it couldn't do certain things that the dev wanted for his game (e.g., space battles for one). The developer, going by the handle TheSworn, is extremely active on the forums, answering general questions, giving tips, responding to bug reports & quickly pushing out fixes. Oftentimes, these come in the form of small hotfixes (typically an hour or two after the bug was reported) or they are bundled with a larger, scheduled patch if it is very near release. In short, I greatly recommend this game for those who appreciate a good story, tens of hours of gameplay (more if you do side quests or your own thing, such as catching all the pets, etc.), & if you like story quests that don't have only one outcome, but many based on how you have played the game so far & how you've previously interacted with the quest-giver or specific NPCs along the way. [h1][b]A Note About My Playtime[/b][/h1] I know that, at the time of this review, Steam lists my play time at 29.2 hours, however, oftentimes I'm playing After The End: The Harvest (among other titles) offline due to living in the sticks (literally, I'm in the middle of the woods) & the nearby town that I get my internet through is small & doesn't invest much in the phone/DSL lines, thus, my connection & connectivity are rather poor.

This game came as a bit of a surprise to me. Basically imagine playing the original "Legend of Zelda", combining it with "Solar Winds" (or perhaps the old Asteroid mining game from sony Station dot com back in the day) with a touch of the old Final Fantasy RPG games, a pinch of Pokemon, a splash of Secret of Mana, Ys Original, and Shining Force and what you have is After the End: The Harvest. Although this uses one of the RPG maker tools as its platform, I would guess about as much development has gone into this game as a typical 1st person AAA title. It has been hacked beyond recognition to something that would fit right in to early console era games, and which in many ways is much better. (If this game had been around in the 90's on a NES/SNES I would definately have gotten it) Normal combat plays a lot like Zelda, with a melee weapon and an off hand weapon or spell which can sometimes be used to open up new areas. On top of that you can get a space ship, customise its hull, systems and weapons, and on top of that again you have a pokemon style vibe where you can catch and train up "pets" to either help fight in the over world, or to challenge other pet owners much like pokemon. Where the Solar Winds/Station Dot Com vibe comes in, is once you get the space ship you have a big 2d space playing field full of ships, stations, planets to explore and asteroids to destroy to make money. It even throws in some semi random "rescue" missions for some extra cash too. Pretty much everywhere you land has something interesting and often has side missions to complete too. The amount of dialog in this game is crazy too. All in all I definately recommend this game, once you get used to the controls.. (main attack, offhand attack, player menu, call/exit ship, interact, movement) it really gives you an old school console vibe. The best part is, its taken the things I liked from Zelda (player reflexes based combat) down graded the usual brain dead final fantasy/rpg maker turn based combat for use only when battling your pets with trainers (that works here well) and tossed in the universe exploration of solar winds and sony station dot com's old 2d asteroid miner game, and added an open world sandbox feel to a top down 2d game. Overall I can see a lot more effort went into this game than your typical RPG making tool games, and it really can be a lot of fun if you want an old style casual RPG to relive your childhood with; or introduce to your kids. Even if you normally never get an RPG maker game, I suggest you still try this game. Great work.

i dont like it

After the End: The Harvest is an RPG developed in RPG Maker, presenting itself as a blend between Pokémon and Palworld. At first glance, the game seems promising, with an expansive universe and a mix of real-time and occasional turn-based combat. However, it doesn’t take long before the experience begins to unravel, revealing a multitude of flaws that severely impact the overall enjoyment. One of the most significant issues with the game is the sheer number of bugs. Expect frequent crashes that disrupt gameplay and make it difficult to maintain any momentum. The game’s world initially appears vast and intriguing, but this quickly proves to be an illusion. Much of the environment is empty and meaningless, with very few locations holding any real significance. The sense of exploration is undermined by the realization that most areas are filler, contributing little to the narrative or gameplay experience. The difficulty level, or rather the lack thereof, is another major problem. The game is incredibly easy, to the point where you can complete it while remaining at level 1. This is largely due to the ease with which you can cheese your way to victory, exploiting flaws in the game design. However, the challenge comes not from the combat itself but from figuring out what to do. Quests provide little to no information on objectives, leading to confusion and frustration. To make matters worse, you can often complete quests before officially receiving them, rendering them unfinishable once you do receive them—a glaring oversight in the game’s design. The real-time combat system is painfully unresponsive, making battles feel sluggish and unsatisfying. The turn-based elements fare no better, especially since you’re limited to having just one monster with you at a time, which strips any strategic depth from these encounters and makes them incredibly dull. The list of issues with After the End: The Harvest is extensive, and it’s hard to find much to praise about this game. In the end, it’s a deeply flawed experience that fails to deliver on its initial promise. There’s little incentive to push through the frustration and bugs, and frankly, it’s not worth the time or effort.

The game really wants to sell you the strategy guide, I guess? The tutorial is slow, and according to the developer lasts until you get off-planet. The game is action oriented, which is nice I suppose, but it's easy to forget to save and running away when you bite off more than you can chew is not straightforward. Inventory is poorly explained, so you'll be confused when your party grows. Buttons are a little confusing, so you may accidentally kill NPCs that you did not want/mean to. THe game touts a crafting system.. but after wasting a half an hour trying to combine random stuff... bleh. The game really needs a wiki.. or buy the strategy guide I guess. I've died enough times this game sucks in my opinion. tired of trying to learn it's systems. It sounds cool, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

This is a good game. I've played enough of it (you can check my stats if you want) to understand its good points and its flaws. - For the good part, it's an open-world RPG, and you can do pretty much anything you like, as long as you have the required equipment or feature enabled (spacesuit, spaceship etc.) - There are more than a hundred monsters to catch and evolve, something I really like, since I'm a pokemon lover. - You can find weapons, armor and items at several planets, trading stations or galactic bars scattered throughout the universe. There are even arenas where you can fight against strong monsters and earn a prize, or pit your pet monster against others, much like a pokemon match. - The karma mechanic is a quite interesting idea, and gives you a sense of responsability as you make decisions. Now for the bad part. This is constructive criticism, ok? I respect and admire the developer for creating such a great game. But it still needs some polishing. - The game lags sometimes, specially when the screen is crowded. Also, it lags a lot in open space. I don't know if it's an RPG-Maker issue, but it would be awesome if the game would run smoothly. Really awesome. - The screen shouldn't shake when you attack with main weapon. Also, it shouldn't happen when your pet hits a monster. It's a bit annoying and confusing. - It would be nice if there was an easy way to know how much XP you and your pet need to reach the next level. - The game sometimes crashes when accessing the map in certain planets. Also, there's a glitch in adventure mode where the game always crashes when trying to access the map. Probably because there's a conflict between the full map acquired when you finish the game and the empty one you start with for your second gameplay. - There should have a better way to keep up with your missions, both main quests or secondary. Maybe a map marker, better and more detailed instructions, or else it could take a huge amount of time just to find the place you need to go. Also, it would be nice if there was a way to abandon failed missions, since they fill unnecessary space in the quest log. - It would be nice if there was a warning when you're out of air in open space. I've died a couple of times because I was distracted and my character did nothing to let me now (except dying). That's all I can remember. If these little things can be fixed, I think this game is going to be great! I hope the developer sees this, and if he does, know that I don't regret buying and playing your game. If I'm taking the time to write this review, it means that I care about it. I'll be waiting for further updates!