Einlanzer

For the first few hours, this seemed like very typical RPG fare - what you expect and not much more. However, as you progress, it develops considerable depth, with compelling narrative and plot developments. There are many hours of good gameplay in here, and for a great price. The good: - The game guides you through how to play in a way that is helpful if you're new to it but avoids being patronising if you already know what you're doing. If you've never played one of these games before, here is a good place to start. - The combat system is highly developed, with lots of options. It will appeal to players who love using tactics rather than button-mashing. - You can choose your character sub-classes to customise each member of your party. For the most part, there isn't much worry that choosing the wrong one will make it harder to win, so it's up to you. (Having said that, another reviewer mentioned that Abel only gets the Haste II spell if you choose Time Mage, and I don't know how I'd have won without that!) - There is the additional feature of the Colosseum, where you can fight your way up the monster ranks and also try battles with a party of 2 instead of 4. - There are some enjoyable puzzles included. - The game is always fairly clear on what you need to do or where you need to go next. While it can be helpful to use a walkthrough to avoid missing optional parts, you'll never get stuck. It's also difficult to get lost in dungeons (apart from a couple which are deliberate mazes, where you're given an advance warning that making a map would be a good idea!) - The lore of the game is described to a good depth: interesting without becoming tedious. - No bugs that I found. - Auto-dash feature is brilliant. The okay: - I did like the characters but wasn't hugely attached to them. It took me a while to warm to some of them. They tend to be moulded around archetypes rather than breaking the trend. It's impossible to be totally original these days, but maybe giving them personalities other than the obvious for their character class would help them stand out a bit more as individuals. I wasn't sold on the romance that developed early on, because it wasn't obvious why the two would like each other. The one that developed at the end was very underplayed and barely concluded, which was a shame. - It's hard to gauge whether the difficulty level is correct unless you've played all three. I picked easy because I prefer bobbing along with the story without hassle from those pesky monsters, and most of the time it was boringly easy, but the constant random encounters would have been infuriating if I hadn't been able to see them off so quickly. - There are moral choices along the way, but few really impact the way the game plays out. Personally I find that a bit of a relief; I don't like the pressure of knowing that what I choose will affect the rest of the story. I was trying to go for the always-honourable achievement, but somehow missed it, probably because I often accidentally selected an option while trying to skim to the end of the text. Maybe this could be avoided with more warning that a choice is coming up, or with a drop-down where pressing Enter doesn't actually select one of the options. - There is a lot of material here and you get many hours of play time, but I did feel the game dragged a little bit when it was approaching its end. Even the characters were getting fed up! It might have been better to cut it off earlier and leave us wanting more. - Be warned that the endings are very long and you can't save for some 40 mins! If you think you're getting near the end, don't start a new battle 5 minutes before bedtime. - There were many items to collect, almost too many to use. The amount of loot and constant re-equipping felt overwhelming at times. The bad: - If I remember correctly, shift opens the options menu rather than allowing you to dash. Is it tab to dash? I can't remember, but it was different from most games. This was annoying... until I discovered the auto-dash feature, and then it no longer mattered. - The constant random encounters were irritating and could be difficult to escape from at times. If I hadn't been playing on easy, it would have been a real slog getting through them. - The Hidden Cave Buried Fort dungeon drove me demented. I wanted to solve the puzzle, but couldn't see all the features of it at once, and walking back and forth triggered endless random encounters. Had to give up in the end. Overall I recommend this game. Thank you, developer, for creating it. A final note: if you liked Einlanzer, you'll like Forever Home, which is very similar.

This review is negative because of the punishingly brutal difficulty. I played on Normal difficulty and I have never before seen an RPG with such difficult combat. Random enemies are strong enough to 1-shot my tankiest character with some bad luck. Tons of enemies have multi-target status effect that poison, paralyze, confuse, sleep, blind, silence, etc. It isn't possible to equip items for immunity to everything. I fought a boss when my characters had 1200 average HP. The boss would hit all for 500, sometimes twice per round. The only thing my healer ever gets done is casting group heal every single round of combat and even that isn't enough to keep people alive. A random battle with 3 sewer rats will have 2-3 characters poisoned and stunned on the first round of battle before I even get to attack! A random grizzly bear attacked my healer for 1182 damage out of her 1200 health. An atrociously bad boss gets 2 turns every round, can slow, confuse, sleep, and blind the whole party. Enemies of all kinds do totally excessive levels of damage and have built-in status effects on their basic attacks. Nearly every enemy in the entire game can attack 2-4x per round and inflict 2 status effects with their basic attack. After every single battle I have to dive into the menu and cast a dozen healing spells. This is so tedious. It also commits a cardinal sin among JRPGs: Asking me to solve a puzzle while interrupting my concentration with random battles. Puzzles should never ever be interrupted by random battles! Never in my life have I seen a game with such brain bleeding difficulty. It isn't fun or satisfying at all. I am of the mindset that standard random enemies should basically never cause me a game over, but it happens all the time here. Some enemies regenerate 25% hp per turn and can drain my HP in addition to that. It is truly unbelievable. I can tell a lot of passion went into creating this, and for what its worth the story is interesting. I just can't handle the difficulty, it is positively exhausting. Standard random enemies can do 50% of my healer's health in 1 hit, and keep in mind that nearly all enemies attack multiple times per round. Grinding for EXP isn’t practical either, because it takes 10-14 battles against extremely deadly enemies to gain 1 level. Its so exhausting. It is extremely rare for me to give up on a game before finishing it, but I can't handle this one. I think I got about halfway through.

This game has lots of RNG that makes it very frustrating to play. Almost every action in this game requires RNG. - Basic attacks have a % chance to miss, same as any weapon or magic skills. - Defensive skill like taunt or haste also have a % based effect. So your success is never guaranteed. - Even running away from battle with weaker enemies has % rate. There are so many times that I couldn't run away from enemies that do a few points of damage to my party. Like really? - In the meantime your enemies have higher chance of success rates than yours, most enemies act multiple time per round with their attacks inflict multiple status effects at time, and the tools required to cure those status effect are limited. And yes, there is no way to stack the odds in your favour, probability wise, this game RNG is even worse than the RNG-based games like Slay the Spire because as least in those games you have the ability to re-roll or improve your odds. This game has none. It's funny because the game creator calls this an inspiration from CT & FF but really it doesn't have that much similarities, aside from a few name reference here and there. His second game Divided Reign is even worse than this game. It seems like he hasn't learned anything even years later. I hope his third game get stuck in Beta mode for life.

12 hours into game, the game stopped allowing controller input at all !!!

Just move on, please.

👍

My rating: 8/10 stars Very nice, long game. Worth the money, and the Guide in the Community Hub was a very good resource to get through the game. I love these types of old-fashioned games, and have no problem with it being done in RPG maker. I actually like the comfort of knowing what to expect when I read the developers used this tool. For me, the underlying technology is not the issue. In these types of games, originality must come from the story and how it evolves, and I think this game does that in a wonderful way. You can beat the game without having to grind endlessly. I don't mind fighting enemies, just as long as those fights are tied to the story/journey. You go through a place and kill everything in your path to get to the other side and continue your quest. That's more than enough for me. I don't like it when I have to go back again and again to the same place so I can level up for the next place, that is totally pointless and boring. One pass through should be more than enough to be able to continue. THE GOOD: - The story is your typical "save the world" story, and that's fine by me. We have enough evil in the real world as it is, so, for me, personally, getting to save the world and fighting evil in a game hits the right spot (I may have a bit of a saviour complex, though, so take that in consideration :-D ). You have your good guys, your bad guys and your grey characters, so it's not all one-dimensional. Your make choices as you play the game that influence the story, and two possible endings. That said, the story in itself differs in several ways with the typical good vs. evil fight. I don't want to spoil it, so, I'll leave it at that. - The world is large, without being overwhelming. Plenty of places to explore. Not completely open to exploration from the beginning, but you get there eventually in a nice progression driven by the story. - Character development is good, although some of the interactions are a bit saccharine for me, but they are not that many, so I can deal with it. - There are a lot of equipment choices for all your characters, each with their own trade-offs (more ATK for less AGI, and such), so you get to experiment and decide how you want to use each character. - You get enough gold and rewards (from exploration, fights and side-quests) to progress without being majorly rich. That is, sometimes you will have to make a choice as to what to sell/buy so that you can benefit your characters. - NPCs and in-game objects give you good, useful information THE NOT SO GOOD: - There is a journal, but it is very limited. It only contains the information related to the main quest and you can't keep track of side quests in-game. You are also not allowed to see the previous tasks you have accomplished. You can only see the next objective you need to accomplish. That said, the information on the specific objective is very good. It's not like other games where it's just the title of the objective. There are specific things mentioned that will help you understand what you need to do or where you need to go next to progress. So, in that sense, it is a helpful tool - You get a world map, which you can consult at your pleasure, but it's missing some information and every time you bring it up, you have to flip through five screens: The full world and the four quadrants (NW, SW, NE, SE), which can be annoying if you just want to get your bearings. Including quadrant maps as separate objects and making all maps more detailed would have been better - Several errors in spelling and grammar. I do wish developers were more careful about this - In some tight spaces (inside houses, pubs and specially in some of the Abyss' areas), NPCs move in such a way that your party ends up being stuck between NPCs and/or furniture and corners. Then you have to sit there waiting for them to move out of your way so can exit the shop, or just move through the dungeon. This was a bit frustrating at times, as I just wanted to keep going and I didn't like having to wait for an NPC to move their ass. All in all, if you like old-fashioned RPGs, a long adventure and a big world, this game is a good choice!

Hello everyone. It has been quite a while but then again it's been a while since we finished a Steam game. I am the James with the GAmes, here with my cohost Berserker Bahamut. We have spent 27 livestreams to complete this epic. One of the best hidden gems of RPGMaker out there. Though my co host once again seems to have a frog in his throat. Meanwhile I'm the one who's actually sick this time. Getting over a summer flu with a small bit of bronchitis we believe. A tale of three worlds helped melded by three beings outside the scope of those in the worlds. Siblings yet not. Quarreled and fought. Two wars have since passed. For four of them their ends were then cast. A group that bore a sword of legends name. Though the group had no idea upon which that legend bore in its frame. My partner here was spoken some opinions. Appreciating the effort put into the world. It's history. It's character development even if they started simple. They grew on us. There was not a single unlikeable person in the cast from the perspective of a player. There were a few fights that caused some consternation but with James to help me keep a level head he helped me get through them. I'm not used to things of this nature, often caught in power fantasies of the likes of doom. But sometimes it is nice to immerse yourself into a world....

The game gave me a good sense of adventure and I find it rare these days. The characters are likeable, the story is somewhat generic but that isn't what matters. I liked the game because of it being so generic that I was surprised at the little things, how I suddenly started to care so much for the characters and their fate. If you like going on an adventure, leveling characters, building them, gearing them and have a story driven game with good characters this game is for you. And considering the price it should be worth a try for everyone.

Great old school turned based game. Thanks so much to the company for making this! There aren't many like it anymore. I got emotionally attached to the characters and it had a good story. Highly recommend.