Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition

When I started it, I loved it. As time went by, it was getting more and more old, until it became frustratingly repetitive, both in terms of gameplay, but even worse, in terms of story and character development. Instead of making it shorter then, the developers still made it too long, padded with meaningless wondering around large maps with extremely repetitive combat (granted, it can be skipped, but even the act of skipping it is repetitive and boring). The pattern of the story is: pursue a goal, achieve it, in a twist learn that it was a ploy by the enemy, cry a bit over someone's resulting death and finally start pursuing the next goal. This pattern repeats from start to finish so many times that I lost count. There's a seed of a great and charming indie game here, but the execution seemed more and more uninspired and even rushed towards the end.

Finally brushed the dust off this one and gave it a try-- it was a pleasant little throwback JRPG with a few minor innovations that streamlined the experience. I particularly enjoyed the way exploration and crafting worked together. The story was basically fine, but like the combat it was light, predictable, and very safe. A nice change of pace from other types of games I've been playing lately but I suspect it will leave hardcore genre fans feeling a bit under-engaged. Still, that's a perfectly respectable place for a small indie production.

Exactly the type of game I wanted to make using RPG Maker 95 way back when.