Barter Empire

There is the good and the bad about Barter Empire. The Good: -The Story seems to be pretty decent especially for a RPG maker game at this price. -There is a whole lot of things that you can do. -Enemies level with you - Good and Bad - this keeps all battles on a fairly level playing field as far as challange goes, but it also means that bosses or dragons are about the same as lower tier creatures. The Bad: -The organization of items and inventory is really very bad. If you need to use several items at the bottom of a list you have to open the item menu each time and scroll down to the bottom. The mouse also interferes with scrolling. -Game ballance is very poor. Early on, before you get a full party the battles can be challanging. Once you have a full party then as long as you use a potion when your health gets low then every battle is pretty much the same. -Battle mechanics seem to be poorly designed and ballanced. There are several skills that I have never used as the battles do not last long enough for me to build up enough vengence. -Enemies level with you - Both good and Bad - See above. -OP damage on both sides. This makes battles go quickly but almost all battles can be won just by using the basic fight command as long as your party is healed up before it starts. -Too easy to break the difficulty of the game. There are many items in the game that become quickly availible early on that mean your game is very easy. [spoiler] The gambler at the first pub typically looses about 2/3 of the time so as long as you are not betting everything you should easily be able to get all the cash you need for the game as a whole within less than an hour.[/spoiler] -The minigames such as owning a farm have been made to require to much micromanagement. The shop has not put out any cash for me after the initial 103 gold. -The crafting mini-game is basically the same for all the different crafting types as well as being very repetitive. -several bugs found, Items not named. Getting stuck when an NPC's pathing stops in your only path out. -Fishing and hunting seems to be totally random without any real use for them. Overall if you are looking for a cheap game to entertain you for several hours when you are bored then this one is fairly ok. If you are looking for something well constructed and ballanced then avoid this one. The story seems to be fairly ok, but the bad overall gameplay makes it difficult to really find value. I am certain that I am forgetting several points that I should also be placing in the Bad catagory, but I really do not have any intention of going back through and figuring them out. Side Note: On the issue of the Tiny screen press F1 to open up the menu, then highlight 'launch in full screen' and then press space bar to select it. Restart your game and you have full screen mode. Alternatively you can play this windowed in 800 X 600 resolution and it looks quite good without the full screen stretching.

DO NOT BUY THIS Short - I can't recommend this game to anyone who values grammar or has any taste in art when it comes to character portrait design. Long Barter Empire is a pretty grand idea for a game company I've never heard of. Crafting, Farming, Economy, Adventuring, Marriage, Adoption, Open-World, etc. are a few of the things this game tries to tackle and in my opinion doesn't do very well. Let's begin with Crafting. Crafting is partially wonderful, partially. In order to craft new items you must level your crafting ability. That is something you see in a lot of games and is not an issue. The problem is that some levels take a ridiculous amount of items to get enough experience to level, and you must craft every item individually. No mass-production here, if you need to craft 40 of X to level, you have to sit there for 5 - 10 minutes playing the crafting minigame to craft each one. Mainly this is monotonous and gets old really fast. Farming is SUPER EASY. If you imagined any form of difficulty with it then go back to Harvest Moon. In this, you plant a seed and just wait. No watering for multiple days cultivating your plant, just wait. Approx. 2 minutes after planting your seed it is harvestable. I swear I got a free farming game app for my smartphone instead of an $8 game. Graphically (Not talking about the RPGMaker stuff) the game is garbage. The NPC potraits (while some a little creepy) are leaps and bounds above the player potraits. Player portraits remind me of someone taking a picture of their friend with a smartphone and then using a free app to cartoonify (is that a word?) them. The portaits in no way match the art-style of NPC portraits so it just looks poorly made. One or the other would have been fine (NPC Style is better IMO), consistency in art is way better than whatever they were trying. Landscapes use the typical RPGMaker textures, which is not bad at all.... UNTIL.... You find an area that tries to mix two VERY different ecosystems together. The game maker does not even attempt to create some sort of beffer between areas or redraw the texture to fit better. They simply put the textures side by side, creating a very obvious line down the center of the map (It looks horrible) Please do not buy this... Unless you are punishing yourself for something...

I'd like to say beforehand that I do think the game has potential, yet Barter Empire has several major flaws that impact game enjoyment quite negatively. Firstly, the story starts off rather generically: you are a girl dropped off by blue people, recued by an old man and his dog and awake to find you've lost your memories. He sends you off to a nearby town to meet up with Maxie and the pooch comes along to help. Lets skip the rest of the story for now. Along the way you'll run into several characters with a ! mark over their heads, these generally have something to say that is relevant to main- or subquests, or to one of the various 'foraging and crafting' spots. The latter essentially boils down to getting a tool, going to a spot and then pressing a button that will let a little script run its course to determine if you get goodies or not. There are many scripts in the game and some of them might be considered the good points of it. Sadly there is a lot more in terms of bad points: character portraits vary between (bizarre) GCH made portraits and handdrawn ones in a different style that 9/10 times do not match the sprite they nominally represent. Generic RM graphics are mixed with some selfcrafted ones on small maps, titanic enemy sprites are effortlessly slain by tiny character sprites and so on. Worse though are the graphic mistakes concerning event sprites, if you activate a chest, button, sparkle or whatever there's a chance it will morph into a different part of the spriteset from which it came. Music is a bit bland, and drowned out almost by the looping sound-effects. And dialogue... For crying out loud, what dialogue is in the game is not just corny enough to provide popcorn for three movie theaters for a year, but contains so many typo's and grammar mistakes its painful to watch. In conclusion, do not buy this game unless its discounted heavily. It has some potential, but the current build (from 2013!) is so unpolished as to be a concept rather than a pre-alpha release and should not have been released on Steam as such.

Great game! -Classic RPG-Maker style with a lot of things to do ( Smithing, Alchemy, Fishing... A lot more! ); -Each one of the principal skills have a leveling system, so be prepared to spend some time on cities; -Battle system remember a lot Final Fantasy 5. The monsters are not that cool-looking, but dont look that bad too; -Your enemies level up, just like you. So, dont expect to have an easy time when fighting; -Some Harvest Moon features, like planting, milk cows, gather eggs from chickens, have a family; -Dont finished the game yet, but, so far, the history is good and the characters (there is a lot of them) are Intriguing and funny ( especialy that zombie ). Really worth the price for such a good game with so many things to do!

Pretty good game, however, be prepared for some monster fights that are just.. misery to get through- wolves and ghosts for example. Wolves have this goddawful tendency to spam "Roar" Which will stun party members for 1-2 turns... at around 45-50% rate Ghosts spam sleep and debuffs. Those fights also take forever. Update: Any fight where there is a ccing mob.. Kill the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cc mob before it ♥♥♥♥♥ you over ;_; Cc mobs I am aware of: Old Zombies, Ghosts, and wolves. Edit 2: Wow, the final boss fight was... a little underwhelming, so long as you have a good amount of AOE damage. The hardest (well, most frustrating) fights in the game are definitely the ghosts and other mobs that super cc your party. Edit 3: So anyway, the game is roughly 8 hours of play time if you just skip some of the minigames and other things to do.. and after one beats the final boss there is very little that seems worth doing. While the game is definitely a fun little diversion, I would reccommend against the asking price and only get this game on sale.

These old RPGmaker games are a mixed bag. MGUSA seem to be a bit too ambitious in what they want to do within the confines of a game that only uses what amounts to a dpad and three or two buttons. And the name of the game... BARTER EMPIRE... sounds like a place where you got to work a lot to get anything done and from what I understand with all the stuff you got to do in this game, that's exactly what you'll be doing dealing with the limited interface as you barter your way into the LAIR OF THE EVIL... well at least two evil vampires from what I saw of the intro. I daresay we are all better off skipping this one but I admire the effort... from afar.

Ok i bought it for you guys. Never, never buy this : it opens in a stamp screen and you cannot see anything, the intro is spamming you, yes you can read all the team names ... well you will become mad after the first minutes. If you have not saved, gl, you will have the same opening again. First combat ; nothing, totally bugged, it resolved without me seen anything, clicking as mad on space or backspace, no effect. Succeeded to open it in full screen by clicking right on the window. Ahh noticed you can open the option with the F1 key, hope it can help people having yet bought the game. Playing it is not so bad if you have solved all above. Combats remind me my firsts games in the 1990'. I spent 9 euros to tell you that, thank me and have a better luck. Really, you think this to be sold on steam ?

Fun RPG Maker RPG with lots of crafting, exploration, thieving, land ownership, and stupid jokes. The mobs level up with you so there isnt really a grind, which i like but this may put some people off. Will update as i progress

!!!Awesome Game!!! If you ever played Harvest Moon and liked or loved it, then you will like and love this game too. There is just so much stuff to do in this game... Pros: For its price this game can easily be worth more for what you can do. Not even the $25's, 30's, 45's & 50's dollar price games can be this good sometimes at there prices - What are you waiting on, get the damn game now!!! Cons: Only thing I see wrong with the game is that your reading my review and not playing this freaking good game - get off your high horse and pay up!! Chop Chop!!

Haven't played at length but reading the first review I've seen on this list... it pretty much nails it... Though.. I tried playing with the controller and it didnt seem responsive.. maybe I missed something. Anyway.. for value.. this is a great game... with retro feel :) Neat crafting system with xp attached. umm... anyway... yay? also.. old boots.. 10/10 would fish repeatedly UPDATE: Something to Know. I had what I believe to be a full party. And I continued to recruit people. I could not switch to these party members ... nor could I switch to them at all. Had: Malice, Roxo, Khali, 9ineLive, Jerich.. in my party.. Yet I had another join Stella. I looked everywhere I could in the menus but could not switch to Stella.... Few minutes later.. I have to recruit a crew.. and I finish with that and wind up recruiting 3 more... Saddie, Nexo, and I cant remember the others name. Go sailing, have a fight Win battle.. says Stella levelled up. wait what? yes... Stella levelled up. (Stella was not part of the battle whatsoever. Nor can I select her or any other person I have recruited from the party switch or anything else I have tried.... Nor do they show up anywhere in any menu I go to.) :( This seems like a serious bug and game mechanic issue... I'm not sure the terminology... I just play and try to report if something seems off.. This is wayyy off... something is wrong Cna you guys who developed Barter Empire please look into this... I like your game and still would be willing to restart if need be.. but this isnt good.