Secret of the Rendrasha Blade CH1&2

This review is after 15 hours of gameplay. I will update it as I continue playing the game. If I had to compare this game to another game I would say it would be Last Dream, but with more story. [b]Overall - 8[/b] [b]Gameplay - 9[/b] 1. [b]Choices[/b] - The game gives you a lot of dialogue / situational choices which is an unusal thing for an rpg maker game. I am not sure how many of them have wide consequences, but after having tried a few different options for a few of them there are consequences to what you choose. I totally did not steal that old ladies thread. 2. [b]Crafting[/b] - There are a ton of crafting recipes in the game. I currently have 249 / 7056. You gather a lot of resources out in the world and from mobs so most of my gear is crafted. Despite there being so many recipes it hasn't felt overwhelming and gives you goals to achieve. 3. [b]Gear customization[/b] - Unlike Last Dream you don't choose to lv up stats or abilities, instead the stat / ability customization comes from slotting your gear with diffent types of augmentations / enchanting your gear. Augmentations can be freely moved between gear while enchantments are non recoverable once you use them on gear. Gear has a ton of slots and it feels like it will be quite a while before I fill all of them up. 4. [b]Classes[/b] - There are a lot of classes to choose from. You can also change your class at any point in time which is nice if you find you don't like the one you chose or want a different play style. Each class starts at lv 1 so you will have to level it up a bit if you change. [b]Content - 9[/b] 1. [b]Dungeons[/b] - The caves, haunted mansions, forests, etc. are among some of the best I have seen. They each have multiple mini events, mini bosses, and secrets to find. The events often add to the story and provide some challenging bosses and good loot. 2. [b]Difficulty[/b] - The difficulty level feels just right. You will run into multiple really tough side bosses which provide good goals to work towards beating. Multiple times I thought I was super powerful after beating some side bosses and getting some awesome augments only to find another really tough boss which puts me in my place. However that just makes it more fun to get even stronger. Additionally the time of day can effect the difficulty of monsters in certain areas. Night time will pump up some of the beasts and undead wandering the land, while not effecting monsters in caves for example. 3. [b]Open world-ness[/b] - There are a number of side quests to do and optional bosses / areas to find. Once you get out of the first town area you get quite a bit of freedom to roam around. 4. [b]Exploration[/b] - The game rewards you for exploring. You don't just find potions and basic junk while wandering around. You will often find good recipes, powerful gear augments, and rare crafting materials. Exploration is fun when you know there is always the potential to find something new and interesting. [b]Story - 5[/b] 1. [b]Characters[/b] - You get the first 3 party members in quick succession and this left me feeling like I didn't get a chance to know anything about the personality or backstory of any of them. I hope this improves as I get further into the story. I mostly think of them by their class names rather than their character names which isn't a good sign. 2. [b]Main story[/b] - The main story is just average so far. I know there are some bad guys and I am fighting against them, but I don't really know much about what is going on. It feels like things are moving too fast without enough realistic justification or motivation for my characters to be handling this world saving quest. 3. [b]Conversations[/b] - The conversations where you have options to choose are interesting and give a great feel to some of the initial conversations especially in the first town. However for the rest of the npc conversations where you pick topics to discuss with the npcs I quickly got the sense that each npc's answer to the questions was the same with a little different text. This made me not interested in talking to npcs because I figured they had nothing new to tell me after asking the first npc the questions I had. The game Eridia is the best example I know of where it is fun to talk to npcs. It was the only rpg I have played where I looked forward to every npc conversation because the dialogue was funny and many npcs cause conversations between your own party members which developed their personalities as well.

I love the game. The characters are an homage to Akira Toriyama's character designs (Chrono Trigger, Dragon Ball). I think Chrono Trigger and other classical JRPGs must have influenced this game greatly. I'm still just cracking the surface but I'm glad I gave this game a chance (I found it randomly while browsing the new releases page). There are typos and minor grammatical flaws that will be polished out I'm sure, but the story and writing itself is great so far. It's not a comedy game (it's an epic fantasy), but it has great comedic moments. One thing that surprised me was you get to make decisions not only as the player character, but sometimes it lets you make NPCs' decisions as well. That's cool.

good little indie game, iam enjoying playing it, its the type of game you expec from rpg maker, i do have several issues with the game which are not that big, but i prefer them, 1: there is no mini map which i like, 2: world map does not have city or area names on places and lastly in the quest menu, the main quest line dos not show up, overall i give this game a 7/10

So, let's start with an important information, one that doesn't really better the chances of the game being played, but still something that one should know before buying: as of this moment, the game is not really complete. You can play through chapters 1 and 2 to the end, but that does not end the plot of the game. You'll also notice, if you play, that as you go further towards the end, things get progressively more barebones. In all this, the developer has not abandoned the game, but since he was left alone compared to the previous 3-men team, he has put developement on hold, temporarily in theory, but there is no estimated timeline for further progress at the moment. Despite all this, I currently have over 125 hours on the game, and am still not bored. And it's really cheap. The game is really nice, the jumping and a couple of tools make the exploration more interesting than you'd expect. The fights can range from very easy to very hard depend on the class you play and whether you make good use of its strengths or not. If you play things right, and explore and get some really good items that you wouldn't otherwise find, you'll be able to tackle enemies much earlier than you're supposed to, which is something that I really had fun with, exploring some high level places I found just exploring and finding myself in fights were a single mistake (or even bad rng) could lead to a game over. I got taken by the story pretty much immediately, and it's definitely far more thought out than you'd expect from a low price rpg maker game, though it is also one of the parts suffering more from being incomplete, again this being unnoticeable early and more pronounced as you move towards the end of chapter 2, but it is still good as you reach the last boss and I really wish there was more to play. The classes seem to all be very much worth trying and are all viable, and for the most part you'll have a party capable of accomodating any role to choose, though I think damage dealers have some advantage early on, as your third and forth companions will be a cleric and a tank with little offensive potential. Finally, back to the developer, I was very pleasantly surprised when he answered me in the discussions board and is even at work fixing the bugs and issues I encountered, and this gives me hope for the future of the game. TL,DR: the game is good and worth more than its price in my opinion, so give it a try if the unfinished story is not a deal breaker for you. This deserves to be played (and finished).

Shameless biased promotional review... I like this game because I helped test this game and helped back this on kickstarter, The dude that made it has been working on it for awhile and with very limited resources and it is really good. The story is decent, there are some 4th wall jokes, even hidden secrets and stuff. It's an rpg at it core and it is well worth the 5 bucks to play! The developer gave up on this game after havung personal issues and not making enough money. Dead gamw now!

This game is a work in progress, still a few bugs etc but honestly it's one of the best JRpgs i've played. High difficulty, rewarded for farming/leveling, a strong crafting system, each class is different and every character is a completely different person with a story to discover and abilities that are unique. You also are punished for stepping into places above your weight class but if you can find a way to win you will be ahead of the power curve. The story is interesting and the class system / stat system / enchanting system is really good. Be prepared to grind hard if you plan to take on the harder content but man have I had a blast playing this. I've got about 200 hrs in the game so far and that's because I've replayed it using different classes etc and each time it's a new type of fight/strategy to learn.