Beloved Rapture

Moving your character around the map is frustrating. There are so many obstructions to walking around, that it becomes more challenging than the combat. The fishing part of the game is not fun unless you think rapidly hammering the up arrow on your keyboard is fun. I mean, why not just hold the up arrow until the line tension goes up and then let off before the line snaps. Use finesse instead of brute force. Everything else seems good, but I only played for two hours.

Constant crashing, and doesnt autosave enough, causing me many lost hours, and ive just had it.

I really wanted to like this game, but here are my problems: - The writing is atrocious. The characters are really hard to like because of that. Well, unless you just really like Millennial writing ... then this game is a masterpiece. The romance in the game pretty much came out of nowhere and added nothing to the story. It felt forced just so the creators could say "this game has LGBT themes!" The cutscenes are also just way over written. All of the characters pretty much sound the same. The dialogue is stilted. The vocabulary is too modern, not all evocative of a fantasy setting. Even though the plot is simple, it's hard to follow sometimes because it gets so contrived and hammy. - There's no real character customization. Yeah, you get to choose where stat points go, but the combat is so simple, you pretty much just end up stuffing all the points into defenses. There's very little equipment to choose from, so there's not much build variety there either. You can upgrade weapons (which are locked to specific characters) in a linear fashion, but it would have been cooler if you chose different upgrades for the weapons, thus choosing different builds for each character. There's also this lore idea that the weapons bond with the wielder based on the enemies they find, and that would have been a really cool mechanic: kill more of these enemies, get this upgrade. Instead, it's just used to explain the milestone progression: "You got to this point in the game and killed this boss, so everyone gets a new spell." - The difficulty curve is pretty bad. The beginning of the game was really challenging. Then I got some upgrades and it got easier and easier and easier, and I like a game that has some ebb and flow. I want it to regularly challenge me, but I also want to feel the growth of my characters. I think part of this problem has to do with my next issue. - Combat gets really boring. It was pretty fun at first, but it ultimately devolved into "Hit them until they're dead." I feel like only one of my four characters is of any real use, then there's a healer and two knuckleheads. You can pretty much ignore buffs and ailments, especially if you just equip everyone with regen rings. The Relica system (this game's version of limit breaks) seemed really promising, but it's just an optional power attack. I was hoping that as I unlocked more, I'd get different tools for different situations, and one character has that for sure, another character has two choices, and then there's two guys who just choose how much mana they want to spend/how hard they want to hit. - Exploration is mediocre. Because there's not a lot of neat equipment for different builds, there's not much to look for except the components you need for upgrades. The maps are really large and aren't really a joy to navigate. They look pretty great for the most part, even if they're a bit cluttered at times. Later in the game, though, you start noticing a lot of mistakes, and on top of the problems I was having, these really started to sour the experience for me. - I really can't stand the character profiles. This is more of a personal thing, but I prefer when profiles are just simple pictures used to help differentiate who's speaking. I don't like it when they convey emotion; I feel like the script and blocking should convey the story. Also, I just really don't like the art. It's ugly. THINGS I DID LIKE: The music was pretty good. Most of the sprites are decent. The tiles are honestly really well made. The fishing minigame grew on me, and I liked how it was a better way to make gold than fighting enemies, honestly. The combat animations are pretty great. I like most of the monster designs. I like the bestiary. The game had some good ideas and felt promising, but I'm ultimately dissatisfied, and if I could trade it in at this point, I would. I might suffer through the rest of it just to finish it, but ... I don't know. I think I'll just go play something else. ALL THAT SAID: I've been really harsh, and I feel bad about that. I don't want to discourage the creators; making a game is really hard, and I'm proud of them for giving it their best shot and putting something out there. I hope they keep working on things. I hope they learn from this and grow as artists and become great. My goal here is to be honest so that good can come from that. No hate. Just love.

I had this game recommended to me multiple times as a gay person and a fan of classic JRPGs. The writing in this game is not good.

Was given this game from the dev and totally forgot to leave a review for it. I don't have a lot to say on my experience with the game right now but I wanted to make sure to keep at it as I don't fully understand this type of game. I'm very new to it and will try to keep at it. I like the music, art style and exploration elements so far.

good but not for me

I basically grew up with the RM2k and RM2k3 engine, starting making my own little games, learning event scripting to an extraordinary extend from the age of 8 for around 15 years, finding a way around the limitations of these engines. Now I am in my thirtees and if not the RPG Maker than what else made me develop an affinity for programming in my young ages? After school I started studying computer science, but studiyng in general was not appealing to me. Nontheless, I learned some useful stuff, I could also use with the RPG Maker. But after starting a student job, canceling my study, then switching to an apprenticeship in software developing, I am now a fullstack web-developer and unfortunately, I neither have the motivation, nor the proper time to pursue my game making passion much more. But this passion is still burning inside me. After all those years, seeing a well-made commercial RM2k3 game with the assets (presumably mostly) being custom is very refreshing, when almost every game uses newer engines like XP, Ace or MV. Somehow, the newer engines all have that sterile and generic mobile-games anime look to their standard assets while the RPG Maker 2003 feels like the last RM engine that has a soul. Probably that is why I never got along with anything newer. And this game kinda makes me wanna jump back into making my own games. I still have my story concepts, my game mechanic concepts which would be a shame if I did not manage to put them into action >.> Anyway, I really think this is a gem among all the RPG Maker games I have ever played. There are many great community games from the German community I grew up with, one of which is Velsarbor, which is made by a developer who also worked on CrossCode with his small team and now is working on a title named "Alabaster Dawn". And funny enough, CrossCode also started as an RPG Maker game! There are many great talents that have grown thanks to the RPG Maker 2k(3). And speaking of which, this game is proof of someone very capable, because it shows what the RPG Maker 2003 is capable of, despite its age and limitations. That alone makes it recommendable for every RPG Maker fan out there. This game also uses the Maniac's Patch, which is a community patch that extends event scripting functionality and even introduces a simple scripting language. That's why I am very unsure about what has been made purely in event scripting and what has been done with scripting. But nontheless, I know how much darn effort there is behind such a game. I know how the delevoper might have exactly done certain things. That's how I simply know how much time, effort, passion and also that very probably much frustration has went into this game. Although the RPG Maker enables you to create something playable very quickly, a game like this still needs a lot of effort and patience to make. Speaking about the game itself despite the engine of choice: It has a beautiful soundtrack, is visually appealing, the UI is great, the visuals are great, the map-design is great. There are even field-mechanics which I never saw in other RPG Maker games, like fishing or swinning and diving to get some coins or items from chests. Also, a running mechanic which triggers a more than 3-frame animation (which also can only be achieved with event scripting and that is one of the downfalls of the engine, I'll explain a bit later). This game also has some nice puzzles (mostly pushing rocks onto switches or crates to create some platforms to reach other parts of the maps) and despite them not being the most complex puzzles I have seen in video games, they are not really trivial to make with the RPG Maker 2003 and they still give some depth to the exploration. The battle system, whether it is made with event scripting or if it is a modified standard battle system, is very fun. Sure, this game does not really reinvent the wheel or does things one of the many games on the market have not done yet, but it is not supposed to exceed any other commercially game out there or rather has not really innovative technical ideas, which you would wanna use something way different than the RPG Maker for anyway! But remarking the fact again that it has been made with the RPG Maker 2003 it indeed is a very solid and impressive game and comparing it to other RM games it kinda is something protruding. That's why it is refreshing. The story ain't the most innovative either, but this game just wants to be reminicsent of old SNES JRPGs and to my extend it achieved it well. The only really negative thing about the story I want to point out is that the conversations between characters include very colloquial swear words, which I do not think is very fitting for a fantasy game that has a middle-age setting. And that's where it becomes a bit tricky with this games: It has some minor bugs, which are a bit annoying, like when you have running instead of walking toggled, the character turns around first, which takes a few frames and makes the movement feel less fluent. Also, on some maps, as it seems map-related somehow, the movement is quite "rubber-bandy". This game also has the habit of soft-locking in battle, which only can be resolved by restarting and it also occasionally fully crashes on me during map transitions. I cannot tell though, if it is due to me using Linux or if it is due to some instability introduced by Maniac's Patch. To put it in a nutshell, it is a very nice game, I can recommend it especially to those, who learned to love the RPG Maker (2k(3) at that). Sure, it is a bit quirky and it ain't perfect, but considering the limitations of the engine, I can forgive the quirkiness of the game (as many RPG Maker games have some quirkyness to them anyway, especially all those old games I used to play back in the days.)

I followed Beloved Rapture for many many years back in the old rpgamker forum days and I waited with anticipation for its full release. It did not disappoint. Beloved Rapture is a traditional jrpg style rpg set in a fantasy world brimming with tragedy, war, and world building. It feels familiar but also satisfying in its execution. I enjoyed the cast, the battle system, and the intense narrative being told. Although linear in some aspects, BR surprises you with open areas to explore, find secrets, and do side quests. Some of the most fun I had with this game was simply traversing the map and seeing what I can find when I was let loose. The few issues I ran into playing this were some bugs when switching from Active mode to Wait mode in the battle settings, which created some issues with battles I couldn't complete. This has seemed to been fixed by the developer already so I highly recommend giving this a shot if you enjoy JRPG style rpgs.

Decent gameplay, but the stuttering kinda ruins it for me.

I enjoyed my time with this one! The story at times can feel rushed in the back half, as others pointed out, but there are real moments of heart and vulnerability amongst the characters. I also applaud Beloved Rapture for tackling its themes with a sense of raw emotion and sincerity. The plot balances plenty of high-stakes action and revenge segments with some much appreciated small interactions between the team in between story beats. (I hope there's more in the director's cut! Level design here stands out as well, complementing the game's gorgeous visual direction and rewarding exploration. There were a few treasures I wasn't sure how to get, and there's not "checklist" available, so completionists might struggle a bit. By late game there are quite a few healing items; I found myself selling off items just to make menuing more efficient. I also didn't see much of a use for money by this point. I wonder if there's a money sink I just missed. (It would be cool to dump tons of money into those runes I missed!) There's a lot to enjoy here and I recommend taking your time with this one. Battles with lots of participants can be tedious at times but it's nice to feel powerful by the endgame. In poking around guides I learned when the story branches off in the latter half there was an entire dungeon I missed. That, plus the planned DLC, means I'll definitely come back to explore more of the storyline. I played this on the deck; steam reports less but it looks like my in-game save file has 27 hours.