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About RPG Maker games

How do you feel about RPG Maker JRPGs?

  • Playing them feels like a chore

    Votes: 9 29.0%
  • I can play them with ease when they are good

    Votes: 22 71.0%

  • Total voters
    31

n0wh3r3

Educated
Joined
May 7, 2023
Messages
287
Hello everyone! I wanna test the field for a little project of mine. Please submit yours answers :)
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
11,079
Location
Nottingham
Like most things, it's just about how good they are. I'm fine playing them, although I do feel drawn out of the experience if there's any of the bog standard assets there, as that just reminds me "this is RPG Maker!"
 

Moaning_Clock

SmokeSomeFrogs
Developer
Joined
Feb 7, 2021
Messages
708
I played a few but if they have the typical aesthetic, I generally avoid them. Never completed a long one, only shorter ones.
 

n0wh3r3

Educated
Joined
May 7, 2023
Messages
287
Like most things, it's just about how good they are. I'm fine playing them, although I do feel drawn out of the experience if there's any of the bog standard assets there, as that just reminds me "this is RPG Maker!"
What makes a game good in your opinion?
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
11,079
Location
Nottingham
Like most things, it's just about how good they are. I'm fine playing them, although I do feel drawn out of the experience if there's any of the bog standard assets there, as that just reminds me "this is RPG Maker!"
What makes a game good in your opinion?
So many things. If you're thinking of making one, find a style of game which you want to make and play through several of those style of games multiple times in multiple different ways, trying to push those games from all angles.

Then when you know what you want to achieve with your game, plan it out, get it made, get some feedback and adjust what you feel is fair but don't lose your vision either. Then play the game through yourself several times, making any final adjustments, and get it hyped and released.
 

n0wh3r3

Educated
Joined
May 7, 2023
Messages
287
Like most things, it's just about how good they are. I'm fine playing them, although I do feel drawn out of the experience if there's any of the bog standard assets there, as that just reminds me "this is RPG Maker!"
What makes a game good in your opinion?
So many things. If you're thinking of making one, find a style of game which you want to make and play through several of those style of games multiple times in multiple different ways, trying to push those games from all angles.

Then when you know what you want to achieve with your game, plan it out, get it made, get some feedback and adjust what you feel is fair but don't lose your vision either. Then play the game through yourself several times, making any final adjustments, and get it hyped and released.
Thanks for your advice but I would have rather know your personal view on what makes a game good. For the rest, I am going through "The Art of Game Design" by Jesse Schnell, that seems among the few good books on the subject.
 

Tyranicon

A Memory of Eternity
Developer
Joined
Oct 7, 2019
Messages
8,055
All the ones I know of either have porn or are visual novels with extra steps. The only exception is Fear & Hunger.

If you have good art and semi-good writing, you too can become rich and famous using this notorious engine.

Oh I forgot Omori, which is strange, since it's probably the best-selling game made on RPGM.
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
11,079
Location
Nottingham
Like most things, it's just about how good they are. I'm fine playing them, although I do feel drawn out of the experience if there's any of the bog standard assets there, as that just reminds me "this is RPG Maker!"
What makes a game good in your opinion?
So many things. If you're thinking of making one, find a style of game which you want to make and play through several of those style of games multiple times in multiple different ways, trying to push those games from all angles.

Then when you know what you want to achieve with your game, plan it out, get it made, get some feedback and adjust what you feel is fair but don't lose your vision either. Then play the game through yourself several times, making any final adjustments, and get it hyped and released.
Thanks for your advice but I would have rather know your personal view on what makes a game good. For the rest, I am going through "The Art of Game Design" by Jesse Schnell, that seems among the few good books on the subject.
Well for me personally, I'd say I prioritize:
  1. Gameplay/interactivity - I like games that constantly engage me, and demand of me, as opposed to just playing themselves.
  2. Pacing - I like tightly structured games which respect my time. Filler and bloat do my fucking nut in.
  3. Replayability - If a game isn't built for multiple plays, I'm of the opinion it's not that good a game.
  4. Challenge - I'm no masochist, but I also want a fun challenge to get my teeth into, and don't enjoy being treated like a casual drone.
  5. Story - I'm definitely far less of a storyfag than most, but it's still an important aspect of the game, and what I value about a good story is originality and intrigue.
 
Joined
Jan 23, 2024
Messages
569
Location
The Freezer
Source ports like EasyRPG and MKXP-Z make it easier to play games using older versions of the engine on modern systems (and for EasyRPG, on other consoles). As for how good games are, I can't vouch for many due to not playing them. Maybe later down the line I can help. However, I do second Fear and Hunger, and OMORI. I'll put the Black Souls duology in as well. If you like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, look at The 7th Stand User.
 

Dark Souls II

Educated
Shitposter
Joined
Jul 13, 2024
Messages
590
Two of my favorite RPGs of all time (Black Souls and Black Souls II) are made in RPG Maker. Itemization, exploration, story, writing, characters, C&C, they have it all. The Black Souls franchise is the only TRUE spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment by the way.

Felvidek is great. The combat is fun, chugging down wine and eating sour cream in a fight is the ultimate slavic murder hobo experience.

Fear & Hunger is a great game. The first one, the sequel looks like tranny shit, I don't think I'll ever try it out.

Not RPGs but great RPG Maker games:

The Coffin and Andy and Leyley is one of my favorite games of the past few years. Cool story, great writing.

Yume Nikki is a certified schizo classic.

I have some more RPG Maker stuff on my backlog, like Demons Roots, Anastasia and the Lewd Curse, Mad Father, Ib, etc. There are also some RPG Maker games I think are interesting but were never translated to English, like GU-L.

Black Souls duology
These 2 together are ~30-40 hours of gameplay if you want to see all the content, but if after that you still want more, Red Hood's Woods is also worth a try. It's a very short little game, maybe 3-5 hours, but I still had fun with it. I'm very excited for Dead Red Hood, the next game in the series, now in development, that is supposed to be more stealth-oriented with an assassination system. After that, many years from now, we're supposed to get Black Souls III - the game that will complete the RPG genre.
 

Modron

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
11,162
There has never been a good RPG maker game.
Said it before but you can make good games out of any engine, Xenonauts used Diner Dash, Lisa used rpgmaker, Heads Will Roll used renpy, et cetera. You're right in the sense that ease of use leads to mountains of trash that make finding the exceptions that much harder but they are out there.
 

Ravielsk

Magister
Joined
Feb 20, 2021
Messages
1,775
I feel uniquely qualified to chime in here. I have actually paid for RPG maker and have spent hundreds of hours in it trying to put together a game. Nothing really playable ever really came from it but it was very "educational".

The problem with RPG maker is that as basic and fast as it is its also stupidly limited. Even things you would think could or should be trivial(like a journal system) are actually needlessly cumbersome without getting into javascript(or ruby if you want to go oldschool) and your own custom plugins. Unsurprisingly this means that once you are at the level where you can comfortably do this you have no more reason to stick with RPG maker.

The end result is that most RPG maker games are all essentially the same game as there is no straight forward way of differentiating your own work from everything else out there. Thus the best games on the engine all have in common the tendency to hide that they are RPGmaker games.

So really if you intent doing anything serious with the engine you should ask yourself how much time and energy can you put towards making custom assets and mechanics because without that even if the game is good it will be lost in the sea of low effort sludge.
 

Elttharion

Learned
Joined
Jan 10, 2023
Messages
3,127
This is a great JRPG but you can definitely see the engine struggling with the game and were the dev had to cut corners to prevent it breaking completely.

 

S.torch

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 4, 2019
Messages
1,146
The strong point of RPG Maker games are aesthetics and story. But you can also get some solid gameplay like Fear & Hunger too.
 

KafkaBot

Scholar
Joined
May 4, 2016
Messages
398
This is a great JRPG but you can definitely see the engine struggling with the game and were the dev had to cut corners to prevent it breaking completely.


Demon's Roots is a delightfully ambitious game, yes - feels more fully realized than many games made with teams several sizes larger.

I only wish they'd re-release King Exit soon; it's also great and Demon's Roots is a prequel to it. Sadly, it was originally released with an awful machine translation, so the Steam version was delisted. The developer claims to be working on a proper translation, but there's no way of knowing when (and if) it will come out.

That said, if you can't read japanese and want to play it now, there is a translation patch made with ChatGPT out there. It's far from perfect, but definitely better than the abomination that the publisher originally tried to peddle to clueless consumers.
 

KafkaBot

Scholar
Joined
May 4, 2016
Messages
398
That said, if you can't read japanese and want to play it now, there is a translation patch made with ChatGPT out there

Linkie pl0x
Not sure I can share those links here, so I tried to send you a PM; sadly, it seems your account doesn't allow those. Mind unlocking it for a while just so I can send it?
 

NorwegianWolf

Scholar
Joined
Sep 4, 2016
Messages
110
There has never been a good RPG maker game.
To The Moon?
Rakuen?
Ara Fell?

They are decent.

The problem with most RPGmaker games is that having a tool doesn't automatically make author an awesome storyteller, and doesn't excuse author from creating interesting mechanics. Most RPGmaker games have shitty story, with average characters, no character growth, unbalanced mechanics. Add to this a favorite ingredient, forced edgy unfunny humor, and you get a bland unmemorable boring game.
 

KafkaBot

Scholar
Joined
May 4, 2016
Messages
398
There are tons of good RPG Maker games, I'd say. Sure, it's easy to use, so it attracts amateurs and most titles made in that engine are fetid piles of shit, but that doesn't mean it can't also be used by passionate, talented developers.

And when we get right down to it, aren't most games awful, no matter the engine?
 

Yuber

Educated
Joined
Aug 17, 2023
Messages
219
I liked this one

 

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