Insurgence RPG is an RPGMakerMV game created by an Indonesian game developer. A lot of Indonesians might like the game a lot, but it’s still good for people around the world, too. First of all, I’ve played the pre-release version of the game for 15 hours (7 hours logged in, 6 hours on Offline Mode, 2 hours slacking off). Also, I have not played many RPGMaker games myself, but I will state what I know based on my limited experience.
[h1]Short Review:[/h1]
[b]Pros:[/b]
+ Intriguing story about political intrigue… nuff said.
+ Considerably balanced difficulty
+ Interesting attribute weakness/strength system
+ Decent graphics
+ CG Arts are a good addition
+ AWESOME music
+ Some Indonesian cultural references
+ Fair amount of content with dirt cheap price
+ Good devs response
[b]Cons:[/b]
- A lot of grammatical errors
- Some scenes were rushed
- Some sprites are standard RPGMaker ones
[b]Neutral:[/b]
= Your typical RPGMaker game
= Standard battle system
= UI design is good, but the icon layout did not feel intuitive at first
= Full controller support, but with minimal guidance for keyboard users
[h1]In-depth review[/h1]
[b]Story[/b]
The game tells a story about political intrigue. Basically, there was an evil plot devised by someone in a certain kingdom, and it’s up to the main character (who is the princess) to stop them. To start, the princess was tasked to hunt the leader of a rebellious faction. And then the adventure began… That may look like your standard JRPG story, but it is actually deeper than that. I will say no further though, to prevent any kind of spoilers.
The plot is nice and well thought out, though the only and the most lacking of all would be the writing. Some grammatical errors also persist on the release version. This might be due to the lack of a good editor fluent in English on the developer side. However, the mistakes are mostly minor, so I think it will not leave a major impact to the story.
In the pre-release version, there were some rushed scenes which will leave you, as the player, speechless. I have not checked whether this is still true in the release version though, but I will leave this here nonetheless.
[b]Gameplay[/b]
Like many RPGMaker games out there, you will play a turn-based RPG (but with more tactical options). The action order is shown though, so you can plan more thoroughly than many other RPGMaker games.
There are also 3 types of attack, Normal Attack which recovers 10 TP, Magic Attack which requires MP to cast but does not recover TP, and Special Attack which uses TP. There are also 2 types of healing items. One can be used inside combat, and the other is non-combat exclusive.
Lastly, the game has a hidden attribute weakness/strength system which is kinda different from other RPG games. For instance, you may think that Fire is weak to Water, but in this game this is not the case. Fire is both strong and weak to ice but neutral to Water. So if you cast a fire spell on an ice enemy, it will deal a strong damage, and if you cast an ice spell on a fire enemy it will also deal a strong damage. However you will deal normal damage to water, and minimal damage to fire enemies. In short, Fire >><< Ice, Fire ==== Water, Fire …. Fire (hopefully this is understandable lol).
Those 3 types of attacks, 2 types of items, and attribute weakness/strength system need to be utilized wisely to move on, since TP is limited to 100 for each character and they do not have much MP to cast spells anytime. However, if you are a veteran to turn-based RPGs I’m sure you’ll know all about those intuitively.
On the matter of difficulty, if you have played similar turn-based RPG before, Normal difficulty is the good place to start. You can even go to Hard mode instead if you prefer more challenge. On the pre-release version even the Hard mode was so easy that I’ve beaten the final boss in less than a minute, but thankfully the developer addressed the issue and rebalanced the game.
But if you just wanna enjoy the story, normal or lower is recommended.
[b]Graphics[/b]
Well, some tilesets and NPC sprites are the ones you can see in every RPGMaker game, but let’s forget about that, and talk about the original ones.
For the character design, I think it’s decent. They use anime-style character graphics, so for those turned off by anime, this game might not be for you. However, they are unlike those overly exaggerated anime characters using, like, absurd huge weapons, cute colorful costumes, cringe dialogues, etc. They all seemed… normal to me, which is a good thing.
The UI graphics is also good enough. Pretty simple, but still good. It reminds me of Tales of Berseria UI graphics, though…. The only downside was that the way icons are laid out on the menu felt so confusing at first. Another thing I like was that there’s
There are also some CG Arts to collect throughout the game. Some of them are good, while some others are not so.
There is also another matter about the graphics, but I will say it on the following section.
[b]Sound & Music[/b]
I think the strongest aspect of the game is the soundtrack that I’ve never even once get bored of them. The battle themes are so immersive, especially the boss themes. They might not be at Nihon Falcom’s or Nier’s soundtrack level, but at least they are immersive and very enjoyable. The only thing that I don’t like was the music that played on sad scenes, it felt so out of place to me.
I also like the opening and ending themes, in which the singer was fleurishana. If you’re not an Indonesian, you may not heard of her though. Too bad the opening movie was low in frame rate and (perhaps) in not so good resolution though.
[b]Controls[/b]
I have played the game both using a Logitech F710 Wireless Controller and a Keyboard, and I have not found any issues. There are different kinds of issue, though: Even if you are using a Keyboard, the interface is still showing Xbox controller input buttons. Also, there are some functions which are not explicitly stated IIRC. That is, using LB/RB, PgUp/PgDn or Q/E for cycling through characters on a menu, pressing → button for skipping a turn in battle, and ← button for an extra option (Retreat).
[b]Others[/b]
The game is created by an Indonesian developer, so expect a lot of Indonesian cultural references being laid out here and there. Just like those Japanese games which add a lot of Japanese cultural references. The references are mostly about Indonesian foods, others are Indonesian jokes. If you are familiar with them, you will like those immediately, but if you don’t, you will not get them though.
[b]Overall[/b]
When I was playing the pre-release version, I guessed that the price would be around $10. But to my surprise, it is actually half of that. The game has a good amount of content, despite being an RPGMaker game, so I think the game deserves more than $5. The game has a good story, gameplay, and music, after all. But I guess it’s a win-win both for the devs and the players, so eh, why not. For the price of a burger which you will consume in less than 10 minutes, you will get 10 hours amount of gameplay! It’s a steal, if I may say so myself.
The game indeed has a lot of flaws, and many of them are not stated in my review. But judging by the game, it seems the dev will be developing another, or maybe some more games. I’m sure the future games will be much better, so I’m looking forward to it. The devs also seems to be highly responsive of feedbacks and bug reports so that’s a huge positive in my book.
With all those, I’ll give an overall score of [b]6[/b] out of [b]10[/b] for this game.
