Eyeball
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2010
- Messages
- 2,541
The world of indie RPG games is generally a mixed bag. Unknown gems like Mount & Blade, Evil Islands and Restricted Area have to rub shoulders with utter pieces of shit like Metalheart, and nowhere is this more true than within the RPGmaker community.
RPGmaker is an easy to use software that allows you to craft your own JRPGs in the style of Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy. Understandably, a large number of wapanese Final Fantasy Faggots flood the game dev community, churning out Final Fantasy 7, Naruto and Pokemon ripoffs. These games make up about 95% of RPGmaker projects and all look and play like shit. The remaining 5% is what redeems the entire community, and Exit Fate is perhaps the best of that 5%.
Exit Fate is set on your average everyday Fantasy World At War, where the latest war between the ancient enemy nations of Kirgard and The Zelmony State Union is just about to start. You play the role of Daniel Vinyard, a Kirgard army colonel and pacifist, Daniel opposes the war and only fights out of obligation to his friends. This makes him unpopular in the army, and he is soon set up as a traitor, having to flee for his life from his former allies. Daniel now has to embark on an epic quest to clear his name, discover who set him up and restore peace between the two pointlessly warring nations.
Exit Fate is very much inspired by Suikoden. You start out initially with only a small party, but can during the game recruit up to 75! additional characters spread out across the huge gameworld, six of which can be in your active team at once. This allows for an almost infinite number of different parties you can potentially create. Many of the characers are funny and most are well-written beyond a free indie RPG, including a feminazi mercenary, a cockney zombie, a hilariously gothick female enchanter, a snobbish talking cat, an alcoholic ninja master, a lawyer, a gangster, a mad scientist, a McDojo artist, a Bruce Lee clone etc. Characters also like or dislike other characters, making it possible to form buddy teams that give each other stat bonuses or putting archenemies together for stat penalties.
Battles are also inspired by Suikoden, with the 6 party system making terms like "formation", "tanks" and "support characters" actually meaningful. What sets the combat engine apart from most RPGs is the magic system. Individual spells are bought or found and can then be cast by all characters and each character starts out with only a few MP but gains some every turn, amount depending on their magic ability. This adds to some nice strategic thinking - should I cast a cheap spell now or wait a few turns for my MP to build up so I can cast a bigger spell? Should I spend MP healing my tank or hope he survives another round and cast fireball instead?
Fights are therefore nice and tactical and generally not too hard, which I like.
The best part about the battle system is that there's very little grinding involved. Both money and XP is reasonably plentiful, so unless you want to powergame beyond what is really needed, you don't really HAVE to grind. And best of all, if you bring a low-level character along with your high-level group, he levels to about 5 levels below you in one battle due to a nifty XP scaling system. My lvl 1 recruit thus leveled to 25 in one, easy battle, making new characters actually useful and minimising grind.
As it's a JRPG, our old friend Random Encounters make an appearance, only in Exit Fate you don't actually have to fight a single one of them. Every time you hit a random encounter, you get the opportunity to pay 1/4th of the money that encounter would yield and get away without fighting. A great idea that should be implemented in more RPGs as random encounters really break the flow of JRPGs.
As the story takes place during a war, there are also some Final Fantasy Tactics-y large battles. They're very well done, considering the engine, but ultimately not my cup of tea. Might be yours.
All important characters have a handdrawn full-size portrait and well-written personalities, adding tons of depth to the story.
And the story is fucking LONG. I finished this after playing for a couple weeks, it took me a total of 35 hours to finish. It's also pretty good - while starting out simple, there are more twists in the plot than in a pile of garden hoses, it's well written and features a lot of hidden content. You gotta be really obsessed to find all 75 hidden characters.
Only major complaint: All music has been blatantly ripped from other console RPGs like Suikoden, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears and so on. While the Chrono Trigger victory theme is nice to listen to after beating a difficult boss, you get REALLY fucking tired of hearing Frog's theme every time you return to your home base for a cutscene. Could have been more creative here.
Overall, Exit Fate is the cream of the crop of FREE indie RPGs and can easily match most commercial console RPG titles as far as gameplay and story
are concerned. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes late nineties JRPGs, beautiful hand-drawn portrats and don't want too harsh a challenge.
Download it here: http://site.scfworks.com/?page_id=3
RPGmaker is an easy to use software that allows you to craft your own JRPGs in the style of Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy. Understandably, a large number of wapanese Final Fantasy Faggots flood the game dev community, churning out Final Fantasy 7, Naruto and Pokemon ripoffs. These games make up about 95% of RPGmaker projects and all look and play like shit. The remaining 5% is what redeems the entire community, and Exit Fate is perhaps the best of that 5%.
Exit Fate is set on your average everyday Fantasy World At War, where the latest war between the ancient enemy nations of Kirgard and The Zelmony State Union is just about to start. You play the role of Daniel Vinyard, a Kirgard army colonel and pacifist, Daniel opposes the war and only fights out of obligation to his friends. This makes him unpopular in the army, and he is soon set up as a traitor, having to flee for his life from his former allies. Daniel now has to embark on an epic quest to clear his name, discover who set him up and restore peace between the two pointlessly warring nations.
Exit Fate is very much inspired by Suikoden. You start out initially with only a small party, but can during the game recruit up to 75! additional characters spread out across the huge gameworld, six of which can be in your active team at once. This allows for an almost infinite number of different parties you can potentially create. Many of the characers are funny and most are well-written beyond a free indie RPG, including a feminazi mercenary, a cockney zombie, a hilariously gothick female enchanter, a snobbish talking cat, an alcoholic ninja master, a lawyer, a gangster, a mad scientist, a McDojo artist, a Bruce Lee clone etc. Characters also like or dislike other characters, making it possible to form buddy teams that give each other stat bonuses or putting archenemies together for stat penalties.
Battles are also inspired by Suikoden, with the 6 party system making terms like "formation", "tanks" and "support characters" actually meaningful. What sets the combat engine apart from most RPGs is the magic system. Individual spells are bought or found and can then be cast by all characters and each character starts out with only a few MP but gains some every turn, amount depending on their magic ability. This adds to some nice strategic thinking - should I cast a cheap spell now or wait a few turns for my MP to build up so I can cast a bigger spell? Should I spend MP healing my tank or hope he survives another round and cast fireball instead?
Fights are therefore nice and tactical and generally not too hard, which I like.
The best part about the battle system is that there's very little grinding involved. Both money and XP is reasonably plentiful, so unless you want to powergame beyond what is really needed, you don't really HAVE to grind. And best of all, if you bring a low-level character along with your high-level group, he levels to about 5 levels below you in one battle due to a nifty XP scaling system. My lvl 1 recruit thus leveled to 25 in one, easy battle, making new characters actually useful and minimising grind.
As it's a JRPG, our old friend Random Encounters make an appearance, only in Exit Fate you don't actually have to fight a single one of them. Every time you hit a random encounter, you get the opportunity to pay 1/4th of the money that encounter would yield and get away without fighting. A great idea that should be implemented in more RPGs as random encounters really break the flow of JRPGs.
As the story takes place during a war, there are also some Final Fantasy Tactics-y large battles. They're very well done, considering the engine, but ultimately not my cup of tea. Might be yours.
All important characters have a handdrawn full-size portrait and well-written personalities, adding tons of depth to the story.
And the story is fucking LONG. I finished this after playing for a couple weeks, it took me a total of 35 hours to finish. It's also pretty good - while starting out simple, there are more twists in the plot than in a pile of garden hoses, it's well written and features a lot of hidden content. You gotta be really obsessed to find all 75 hidden characters.
Only major complaint: All music has been blatantly ripped from other console RPGs like Suikoden, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears and so on. While the Chrono Trigger victory theme is nice to listen to after beating a difficult boss, you get REALLY fucking tired of hearing Frog's theme every time you return to your home base for a cutscene. Could have been more creative here.
Overall, Exit Fate is the cream of the crop of FREE indie RPGs and can easily match most commercial console RPG titles as far as gameplay and story
are concerned. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes late nineties JRPGs, beautiful hand-drawn portrats and don't want too harsh a challenge.
Download it here: http://site.scfworks.com/?page_id=3