JustinWayne

I'll give it this, I have no-one to blame but myself for this one. I played the first one without having read any of the reviews and hated it. I saw this game and didn't even think of it until I kept seeing it as "best RPG on the 3DS" and "like the great dungeon crawlers from yesteryear" and thought that maybe I had been hasty in dismissing this 4th entry. Perhaps the series had gotten better since the tedious, charmless grindfest of the first game. Nope. I will clearly never see what other people apparently like in these awful games. The graphics are quite nice and mapping out the dungeons is a nice novelty at first but the tedium of the grind sets in very quickly. Grinding for experience, grinding gear, endlessly warping between dungeons and towns to offload all the worthless rubbish you accumulate from the hundreds of boring monsters you kill over and over again. The combat sytem isn't even engaging enough to distract you from this, as bog-standard as it is (oh, the strategies being more for those with a love of spreadsheets than a love of tactics *yawn*). It got to the point where i literally automated my guys movement in a circle, had something depressed on the A button and left my 3DS on overnight to level my character quicker so I could get through the game faster. Didn't make the game any less dull though. So the story... I think is there. None of the characters have much of a personality so it is difficult to be sure. There's certainly nothing dynamic about it and zero sense of urgency to anything. Aside from my characters' build there's not very much Role Playing to be done in this Role Playing game either. Calling it a throwback to the dungeoncrawlers I still play on my PC from time to time is a bit of an insult really, because at least those games have a sense of personality. I hate to come across as a moaning Michael but other than the graphics and mapping, I found nothing to enjoy here. If you are the kind of RPer who likes metagaming primarily with stats and skill trees and stuff, you might get a kick out of this. That must be the audience for this. Otherwise, just why?

I am enjoying this tool a lot. While the negative review here cites the lack of ability to create super complicated titles, that's not what it is supposed to do. It certainly allows much more than making " a map, make a character, then have them wander around aimlessly", which does make me wonder whether they played the thing for more than 5 minutes. This isn't me picking on one person though, this seems to be a general sentiment amoung the "hardcore RPGMaker crowd", which is not who this game seems to be geared towards. This game is much more geared towards people who like things like Mario Maker, who would like a similar tool but for a simple 2D RPG to write fun little stories and adventures with. As someone who played the PSOne RPGMaker game (and who thoroughly loved it) I'd say if you liked that, you will definitely like this. The interface is very user-friendly and I found the learning curve far less steep because of this. I didn't care for the more Anime inspired art-style and prefered the designs of the PSOne RPGMaker, but that is likely just personal preference. I also find the DLC packs are really lacking when it comes to content, which is a shame. If you are mostly looking to create fantasy worlds for your RPG, don't bother with any of the paid stuff as it simply isn't worth it. Overall, if you are a fan of the PSOne RPGMaker game or are just looking for a simple playbox to create your own little story without any pretention to actually "develop" in the same way a lot of PC RPGMaker users do, give this game a shot. Otherwise, this game may well not be for you.