Pros:
+ the writing is often funny and remarkably irreverent
+ stripped down combat leads to smart inversions of RPG tropes
+ soundtrack is colorful and the final fight track slaps hard
+ original Final Fantasy sprites are a cute homage (but don't tell Square...)
+ Three Man fight is the best
+ battle sprites have a distinct style ...

Cons:
- ... but the character portraits are rough
- unwinnable fights cannot be skipped
- sprite layer issues and scrolling is choppy
- a word map would have been nice
- late stage story twists are pretty silly and lack cohesion

Magic Bit of Writing: "I see the makings of an autocracy, and have been branded a dissident."


Verdict:
This is clearly a labor of love by creatr Samanthuel Louise Gillson, who released this for free for anyone to enjoy. The homages to and inversion of 2D RPGs of the past will make fans of the genre rejoice and the attention to detail and just plain love for the genre is felt at every turn and every new suprise, of which there are plenty. However, as great as some of the early writing is, the ending feels like a missed opportunity to actually say something about the genre and its tropes and felt like a missed opportunity. If you can look past that, Franken is certainly worth a quick, 30+ minute playthrough.

I actually forgot that the game was called franken until the end so that was a very effective reveal

I think there should be more gag encounters in the late game. Every enemy before the tower has some kind of joke associated with them but the later encounters don't have that for some reason. Missed opportunity in my opinion.

Good, funny, short game. If you have an hour to spare and own a computer, you should give it a go.

Parodia pequeñita pero muy bien conseguida y muy divertida. No es que sea muy complicada, pero sabe muy bien dónde golpear al respecto de los tropos típicos de los JRPGs desde un punto claramente de amor.

Hay que hacer una mención particularmente especial al trabajo que se ha hecho en la sección final del juego, que me parece increíble para ser una parodia.

En fin, dura una horita como mucho y me parece de los mejores juegos parodia que hay actualmente. Vale la pena echarle un vistazo.

CW: There is a minor "spoiler" about a translation error, but otherwise, there are no spoilers in this review.

I am a lover and hater of RPGs. Some of my favorite games are RPGs. And, some of my least favorite games are RPGs.

Franken, then, is a satire of something I both love and despise, and all of its critiques are ones I agree with. What's the problem with turn-based combat? It's rudimentary. What's the problem with progression? It's confusing. What's the problem with characters? They're plain and so archetypal that they could bend their back to make a semicircle and feel no pain. How does Franken go about critiquing these problems of RPGs, though? By being the most rudimentary, confusing RPG that has the plainest and most archetypal characters.

Franken's name really says it all. The game is frank and curt; no aspect of an RPG is sacred. Its humor is sharp and relies on character development and sudden tonal or situational whiplash; the jokes may not always be pertinent to the critique of a stereotypical RPG, yet I still enjoyed all of them.

However, how much of the game is intentional critique? How much constitute mistakes? I try not to rely on this distinction as the process of creation often incurs happy accidents which benefit the overall message. Franken's art straddles a line between critique and error with such a haphazard attitude that I'm not sure what to think. The game genuinely hurt my eyes to look at as the camera follows the character at the sprite's center, a point which changes during the up/down walking animation, so that it looks as though the world vibrates before your very eyes. Is that a critique? Is that a problem others experience in RPGs? That their eyes hurt looking at them? I, for one, have not encountered that problem even in prototypical RPGs. Playing Final Fantasy 1, I don't remember needing to take breaks when walking around the world map for more than a few minutes. I'm not so sure RPGs are games which hurt my eyes to look at more than Franken does, so how important is that critique? Or, is it even one at all?

I do not mean to say that Franken's art style is visually displeasing. Splendidland has a thorough understanding of NES sprite art, mimicking every aspect of their design, from the classic two-frame cycle to characters' body proportions. The sprite work is genuinely jaw-dropping. From the perspective of someone who has tried (and failed horribly) to make about 5 sprite-based games of my own that mimic NES or SNES artwork, Splendidland's artistic mimicry is so close to the original format that some may not notice the similarities.

I am also mixed on some of the game's dialogue, housing a few typos here and there, with one of them occurring with the beacon boys. The two characters have the same line in Morse code that reads, "over tsere." There is a missing "*" in the line which would change the "s" to an "h." Right now, there are three dots when there should be 4 if my assumption about this being a typo is correct. Enemies' attacks also replicate a common direct translation tactic, wherein the dialogue says "enemy's attack" instead of "enemy attacks." I assumed that this decision was a part of the critique as it is a result of directly translating from Japanese, a language that often defaults to nouns in a sentence more often than English does. The Japanese equivalent would read, 「敵の攻撃」("teki no kougeki" for those who don't know Japanese), directly meaning "enemy's attack." My question is, what is the purpose behind the critique of an RPG's translation? Is it lambasting the underpaid, overworked translators who would translate prototypical RPGs in the 1980s and 1990s? Is it instead lambasting only the dialogue by mimicking its awkwardness? Is it trying to lambast the structure of the Japanese language? I am not certain, and that ambiguity is not comfortable when a language's grammar construction or workers in poor conditions are the potential punchline to a joke.

For being a short yet concise satire, I think some of the minor intricacies of this game deserve more thought. The details matter in a game this brief because the details are what define the game, too. Details in sprite work are gorgeous and praiseworthy for their mimicry. Details in the comedy and placement of characters is praiseworthy. Details in even the musical choices and bestiary are hilarious and so integral to the experience. Please, please play Franken for its details and its intricacies, because they are what makes Franken such an honest critique of genre I hate and a genre I love.

This is not really a video game, but an experience. It was a fun hour, with a few good laughs.

Realistically speaking, I wouldn't grade it as some great game. There's no decisions, or strategy really. The only decisions you make are whether or not to talk to optional characters. XP is a bit of a joke and the game knows it, as leveling up does literally nothing. Every player will progress through the game in pretty much the exact same way.

Highlights of the game were most of the orb bosses, and well, the scorpions. And the ending.

Franken is pretty amateurish and very stupid but... I dunno man, this one really got me. Initial impressions were that it was just going to be a series of 'lol so random!!!'-style jokes one after another, but... well, Franken isn't not that, but there is the bare minimum framework of a more sensible JRPG hiding in the back here, and it's just enough for the jokes to somehow constantly catch me off guard.

As funny as it is though (and I genuinely did find this one very funny, is my brain broken?), Franken really isn't much more than the sum of its humour. There's no real gameplay here per se. the aesthetics are pretty crude, etc etc...; but I think all that's fine? After all, Franken quite openly sets out to be a short shitpost of a game, and it achieves that goal marvellously. This is easily the best shitpost game that I've played, and I promise that's a compliment.

A very special little silly game. Ones of those games you play one time and smile the whole way though. Definitely a one and done type of game though.


Semi Spoilers:
I'd rate it higher but this is more of a short story than a game, you can get like 30 minutes out of this at most, probably less. You also get no real control in battle or anywhere else for that matter. While the game uses that to great comedic effect the lack of any choice anywhere makes it the least replayable game ever, also meaning that if you've watched someone play it there's no reason to ever try it yourself.