For 99% commercial games of this ilk, the massive red flags that Forever Home frequently set off would be indicative of an incomplete and/or incompetent project. But while releasing a game with this many barren, "incorrect," and—worst of all!—stock/premade maps (often comprising nothing but unaltered stock engine assets) IS a poor design decision, you simply have to sort this project into the magical 1% that gets away with it. You'd have to really have it out for a game to not be able to look past questionable mapping choices when it's otherwise working overtime to deliver textbook JRPG treats to the player.
And "textbook" really is the operative word here. Not in the way it tends to be used when it comes to RM projects, because Forever Home isn't just a successful paint-by-numbers attempt at a JRPG. Despite certain maps suggesting otherwise, you’ll quickly get wise to the fact that this is very much not your ol’ learning-the-ropes boilerplate beginner's project that sorta hits some of the easiest-to-replicate 16-bit RPG beats while being some combination of poorly paced, poorly balanced, poorly written, poorly directed, poorly thought-out, and poorly presented. No, Forever Home isn’t just a textbook example of a decent indie JRPG—it’s the whole darn textbook!
Seriously. If I ever were to stumble out of bed and somehow find myself donning an RPG Maker professor's robe, Forever Home would likely be the text from which I'd base my first series of lectures. Because—again, seriously—this is it! Forever Home is a straight-up traditional JRPG epic that's managed the impossible task of not just winning the hearts of hundreds of non-RM-users... but accomplishing said task without striking the people familiar with RM's inner workings as an opportunistic cash-grab that might bamboozle some people not in the know, but is clearly a low-quality project strung together by hopes and dreams (of ill-gotten gains). To strike that balance while relying chiefly on straight-outta-the-box assets, dozens of baby’s-first-RM-project maps, tried-and-true animations and systems, AND the type of melodramatic-yet-upbeat anime vibe that you constantly see falling flat on account of poor direction/text-pacing? This achievement might just make Forever Home a vidya game unicorn*.
All of the above might read like I'm damning FH with faint praise. That actually isn’t my intention—I don’t just respect the project as a unicorn, I legitimately like it as a game, too! The amazing thing about Forever Home—and, well, this is also going to read like a back-handed compliment at best, but bear with me—is that it's the quintessential 'basic' RPG Maker project sculpted into its idealized form. Unlike most 'typical' JRPG titles made in this engine, Forever Home doesn't bring any obvious non-default hooks to the table—the enemy battlers aren't bespoke and dynamic, the tilesets aren't unique, the maps aren't meticulously put together by a professional architect moonlighting as a game-maker, and it doesn’t have any unique JavaScript plugins waiting around to suddenly turn the game into a 3D fighter (or any other such functionality-altering wizardry). Even the face portraits largely appear to using one of the engine's most commonly used DLC packs, either as-is or with slight edits.
(EDIT: However, I was wrong about the music! Major kudos to Pixel Blade Gaming for composing an entire OST for their proect. I'll keep my "[OST] which is well curated and brilliantly controlled to denote mood changes in the middle of scene" comment up, and retract my aggressively incorrect assumption that the OST comprised (very well-picked) royalty-free tunes. Although I do firmly believe that there's enough quality royalty-free music out there for anyone to make a passable non-exclusive soundtrack for their JRPG project.)
In other words, creating a project of this level of quality and scope is essentially attainable by any RPG Maker user with a vision and the perseverance to keep chipping away, focusing primarily on the basics.
Yet Forever Home truly does stand out as a unicorn in this sense.
That's not a slam on RPG Maker users, either—rather, I’m saying Forever Home belongs in a museum. Or, at the very least, that it could genuinely function as THE go-to textbook for any aspiring RPG Maker unsure of how to nail the basics and make their scenes pop without spending a fortune on gimmicks to add some glitz and glamor to their project. It also proves just how much personality can be injected into (and how much quality can be added) to one such low-budget project with just a few minor visual or aural adjustments or embellishments here and there. Most notably, the cast of characters truly comes alive—and gets away with their anime quips—not just because Forever Home has reasonably well-edited writing and consistently smartly-timed text advancement, but also in large part thanks to the character sprites breaking free from passive 4-directional livin’ by casting the occasional sideways glance, slumping over from pain or dejection, etc. If you can breathe life into your characters like this, and make it this obvious that your project is a labor of love, it doesn’t really matter whether they’re doing their act in a royal theatre or up on rinkydink copy-paste'd sample stage.
Too long; didn’t write: Fun game with cool systems!
*: It probably DOES alleviate some pressure that the game is selling for the very generous price of Practically Free. Still, even with a high amount of default assets, you'd have to be a real curmudgeon to come after a game this solid if it were being sold at a slightly higher price point.
