Venaitura

Thank you for creating this great old school rpg. I loved playing it and hope you make more like it. If anyone is a fan of dragon warrior/ff1 type games this is one to pick up. Great music great story the only problem i had is i i wish there was a way to organize items better but i know it uses the rpgmaker 2000 engine so idk if it was possible. Thanks again for a great game :)

I think this game deserves more reviews and I'm happy to recommend Venaitura to anyone who enjoys old school RPGs. Pros - The game has a great soundtrack. Very reminiscent of several classic NES games. A few tracks reminded me of Dragon Warrior(Quest) and one really gave me Shadowgate vibes. Good stuff overall. - The game has solid combat mechanics that do well to keep you from button mashing your way through fights. Actually having to think your way through some of the battles was engaging and fun. - Various classes help to give the feel of crafting your heroes, and adds replay value. - This is a little more vague, but it feels like an old-school RPG, except there's more of everything. In some respects, this is both a pro and a con but there's a lot more to like than dislike. Cons - As I mentioned, this game has more of everything that you saw in old-school RPGs. One of those aspects is level design. Some dungeons are absolutely massive. That's fine in and of itself, but when you combine that with a fairly high random encounter rate, some of those massive dungeons quickly become a slog. For future games, I feel like two QoL changes could be made to greatly improve this experience. A map, first of all, would be huge, because I can't tell you how many times I got lost because I was trying to memorize the dungeon I was in and kept getting pulled into fights and forgetting which direction I was going. Two, a way to manipulate to encounter rate would be great. Something like 'sweet water' from the Lufia games, or 'repel' from Pokemon, so that you can explore, or solve puzzles without distraction. - The only other con also comes from that 'more of everything' concept. The towns and NPCs in this game are way more fleshed out than they ever were in old-school RPGs. Most towns in those NES games had a handful of NPCs walking around, and it kind of gave you the impression that these were ghost towns. This game has towns with dozens of NPCs running around. It's pretty incredible actually and they even have unique dialogue! The problem with it though, is that it's sometimes hard to distinguish regular NPCs from the ones that move the story forward. A couple of towns had me talking to so many people before I finally found the person I needed to see. This could easily be fixed by giving important NPCs some distinguishing feature, so it's easier to progress the story. Neutral - The story was ok, I neither loved it nor hated it. I guess it kinda flirted with that grim dark fantasy line a bit, but ultimately just felt depressing for most of the game. Normally, I'm supporting the actions of my own characters in a game like this, but most of the story made me feel like I wasn't really accomplishing anything noble. It felt like everything had gone to hell and I was just along for the ride. Now, I know I spent a lot of time on cons for a game I like, but they're honestly small cons and I wanted to provide suggestions for the dev in their future endeavors, which I am excited to try. If you enjoy old-school RPGs at all, this is a great choice.

An amazing old-school RPG that feels like the games you know and love but provides a story that features twists and turns unique to the experience. I have never played any of the early Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy NES games, but from what I know about them this is an excellent addendum to those experiences and the work shows. As a fan of RPG Maker's early days, I love to see games like this succeed and after finally completing the game, I can't recommend it enough.

After having a blast with Scarmonde last fall, I picked up Ephiam's other releases on Steam. I finally got around to playing Venaitura and had a pretty darn good time with it. Much like Scarmonde and Final Fantasy 1, Venaitura is a traditional JRPG, with a focus on combat and a customizable team. It opens up with you picking a team of 4 from a variety of classes. I went with a Barbarian, a Savior, a Minstrel, and a Hunter, but I could see myself replaying sometime down the road to see how a Companion (magical dog) or Slime Knight would play out. Venaitura otherwise has a largely similar game structure to Final Fantasy 1, as well. Talk to people in towns to get hints about what to do, explore dungeons, unlock new modes of travel, and eventually get to the big baddy. Venaitura has a lot more lore, dialogue, and plot going on than either FF1 or Scarmonde. I largely enjoy the bleak tale told in Venaitura, though, sometimes the dialogue can get a bit overly verbose. Getting to a large new town could feel daunting with how much the villagers could have to say. On the other hand, villagers frequently updated their dialogue as you completed nearby quests, which was a nice bit of reactivity. There is a boatload of optional content and exploration to be had in Venaitura, and it always leads to interesting loot, a boss fight, or some lore. Exploration was a ton of fun here, and was a huge positive for the game. In terms of balance, the game was quite hard at the beginning, but got easier, with a few difficulty spikes. Fairly common for this sort of game. One interesting aspect was that the "post game" content became available at the same time as the last last major zone of the main storyline, though I didn't recognize it as such at first. Naturally, I ignored the story and explored everywhere else first. This led to a huge difficulty spike initially, but also a ton of powerful, new equipment, levels, and permanent stat boosting items. By the time I'd done virtually all of the optional content, I was able to auto-attack my way through the rest of the storyline, leading to a somewhat anti-climactic ending. I don't think it's entirely a bad thing, though, since I caught on to the fact that these dungeons were way harder than the next step of the story content and were giving rewards I'd expect in the post-game fairly quickly. I intentionally continued down that path for the thrill of "sequence breaking" and see how early I could tackle the very difficult bosses these zones offered. I don't have too many comments about general game design, since the majority of it was solid and as expected. That said, I didn't like the oldschool Pokemon-esque choice to make Intelligence double as magic attack and defense. It meant that my magic focused characters were generally my most survivable. Further, two of a barbarians equippable weapon types (greatswords and axes) generally came with an intelligence penalty, which I found to be too detrimental to be worth using. Thus, my barbarians generally used his remaining weapon category -- gloves -- and spent his time punching people. Of course, that's mostly a nitpick. While the class system is quite rigid, without customization past the initial selection, the itemization is very good. Depending on loadout, I could have my Savior drop massive damage with holy spells, or competently wield swords to deal with other enemies, for example. Most weapon types have a group of enemies they do bonus damage to, for example daggers are excellent against humans. Further, many weapons can inflict status ailments and have extra enemy types they are super effective against. It was a nice bit of strategy to move weapons around so that I'd have characters suited to each of the groups I'd commonly see in a given dungeon. One other little touch I really appreciated was the "Monster Zero" item, found right at the beginning of the game. It simply turns off random encounters until a new screen is loaded. The dungeons in Venaitura can be rather long and winding, so being able to turn off random encounters when backtracking for treasure kept things from getting bogged down. Overall, this is a solid traditional class-based JRPG. I think Scarmonde was a definite step forward in terms of design and customizability for Ephiam, but Venaitura is absolutely worth playing on its own merits.

Amazing game with a ton of variety, a super cool retro artstyle, and a great story to experience!

When the game started I was a little bit worried, it felt almost too much like it's inspirational sources. Find the evil doers, get the relics, defeat the big bad evil guy. But then you play it and the way the story unfolds slowly but surely is fantastic. It goes so much deeper than you'd think from the start. And that alone makes it probably my favourite RPG of the year, with quite the potential for GOTY status (for 2021). The 12 classes feel different enough that I could see multiple playthroughs just to try them out being a thing in the future. Combat is good, never feels unfair, but also doesn't feel like a cakewalk for the most part. All in all, go play it if you haven't already.

This game had a great start, but it slowly broke down the longer I played. The premise is great, the graphics are charming, and I love the freedom of choice when it comes to assembling your party. That said, I picked a wiseman thinking some variety would make me stronger. It didn't, wisemen suck. Also, while the menu and world sprites are good, the portraits are all in different artstyles and are clearly traced. No good. The music and auto-battler kinda suck. It'll waste your most powerful, draining attacks on weak, dying enemies instead of just using basic attack. Every time. Status effects seem to last for 10 turns even though fights are usually over in 2-3. Also, the entire world map is tall grass. I feel like it should've only been the tree tiles. The story devolved into King Arthur despite being more original in the beginning, and Merlin is a woman for some reason. Like, still named Merlin though. Her evil boyfriend is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ weirdo who kicks dogs. He can TALK about kicking dogs and she doesn't care, but once she sees a magical RECORDING of him doing it, suddenly she cares. Eventually the story got so disconnected that I couldn't follow it anymore. I had to look up a walkthrough twice, and the second time I just gave up because even with a guide, I had no idea where to go next. There's nothing but an empty cave and a town I've already explored, nothing left to do. The first time though, I killed Merlin's boyfriend and needed to return to her. She's randomly in a completely different location now, one we never knew about, and the game just EXPECTS you to know she's in the forest now. The ♥♥♥♥? You're killin' me, Smalls. I hate doing this, but you left me no choice.

I've put just 2 hours in but so far I'd rate this as "criminally overlooked". Wonderful monster art, meticulously balanced leveling curve and battle progression, extremely useful status effects, and juuuust enough risk to make it clear that I'm going in the wrong direction. The music is cute and the vibe is perfect. I'm shocked this game has so few reviews. Feels closer to Dragon Quest so far than any modern game I've played in a while, but with many nice features to make it more palatable to the modern player. Specifically I'd note that random battles can be turned off (though they automatically turn back on once you change maps), and you can save pretty much anywhere other than a dungeon. The developer has also posted a full walkthrough and other guides for the game just in case you get stuck. My one criticism is that the text boxes often go on a little bit too long, but that's about it so far. I'll update once I've played more.

This game is excellent so far. The classes vary so much but at the same time all appear very balanced, so the classes that you choose are fully up to your play style. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys turn based combat as this game does focus primarily on the combat. The dialogue is also very humorous between different characters, and all the NPCs have their own characteristics to them!