Overall, this was a really cute and fun game. The central love story was sweet, although there were some opportunities for drama and complexity that I felt like got skirted over. The other characters were also compelling, and there was one twist that genuinely got me!

Combat was more complex than I was expecting, in a good way - I'm used to RPGs giving you obvious best choices for weapon and gear, but almost every piece of equipment in this game had trade-offs, which made strategizing way more fun.

I had my issues with a few aspects of gameplay and a couple one-off jokes that I felt weakened the story and characters, but overall this was a great time. I had to fight the urge to play it again by reminding myself this dev has plenty of other games I haven't tried yet.

This game was absolutely lovely! It was very atmospheric - the tilesets are pretty and the maps are put together in really appealing ways, and the music is gorgeous. Sound effects heighten the experience by adding detail to the world - water drips only play as you approach the droplets, for examples, or unearthly groaning plays in maps as spirits appear.

The story is simple and straightforward, but very compelling, especially as you unlock memories. They add a depth to Orea and Ceress's relationship, fleshing it out as you go through the game, even though only you only control Ceress as you do.

I personally really enjoyed the gameplay. The puzzles were easy enough, with most of them feeling more like an excuse to just explore the world of the game, but frankly it was such a stunning one I was very satisfied to do so. Heads up for a chase scene.

Definitely recommend this game for anyone looking for a bite-sized RPG experience that nonetheless packs a sweet, emotional punch!

Stargazer is charming, warm, and funny, with a great spin on the RPG Maker XP battle system and unique maps. I took six years to play it and I'm so glad I finally got around to it. The story revolved around a surprisingly well done central romance, where the majority of the game is driven by the leads' shared bonding, not the grand quest the player can see rumbling in the background. It's unique from the previous games I've played and how they prioritize stories, and added depth to the leads and their dynamic.

The rest of the cast is a ball to be around, too. Grayson is probably my favorite character of the bunch - a fiercely committed, stern ex-soldier with an environmentalist streak who really just likes being part of a team. Other highlights include Scarbeck, an enthusiastic and confident detective who drives some very fun sidequests, and Kala, a late game party member who rides a giant Firewing bird named Mila.

The gameplay was fantastic, taking exactly what I love about RPG Maker XP and giving it personal flare. The battle system replaces attacks and skills with actions unique to each party member, requiring a bit more strategy than the default take on the RPG Maker battle system without requiring the player memorize a bunch of element match-ups and feeling far more fluid to me and helping characterize party members. And in Stargazer, it allows for a world where magic has largely disappeared, while still giving the bulk of the party interesting skillsets. The maps were similarly great. They emphasized elevation in a way that both made for a really fun exploration experience, and mimicked the game's focus on summits really well. Despite these tilesets being really common in the RPG Maker XP community, I feel like this is a fresh take on them that I've never seen before. There are times when you get to interact with the map in unique ways, slowly learning new ways to explore an area, which are some of the most fun I've ever had playing a video game.

Do yourself a favor and play Stargazer!

The Aveyond series has been my favorite game series for well over a decade now, something which means I owe the first title the special honor of "probably the singular most important video game to me, ever". Most die-hard fans of this series got into it within the first few years of Aveyond 1's release, and while a lot of people chalk that up to nostalgia, I'd credit something far more special than that: Aveyond 1 was truly something unique back in 2006. It was frequently positively highlighted for being an indie RPG by a female developer, something that obviously shown through its storyline and characters. It was also one of the first Western commercial RPG Maker games. There was a time where many, if not most, of the RPG Maker lists and interviews you'd find highlighted Aveyond. I'm grateful for the fact that neither of those elements are particularly remarkable anymore, and all the cool games we get to play as a result. But it feels worth mentioning!

In 2022, Aveyond holds up fairly well, though perhaps not quite as well as I would like it to. This is in many ways the series' weakest installment without nostalgia or the context of its release, but it remains a worthy opener. Despite that, I'm giving it 5 stars because anything else would simply be inaccurate given the depth of love I have for this game.

The plot is simple, straight-forward fantasy fare, but to me that's a pro and not a con. The cast isn't very well fleshed out, but they have strong, charming bones that easily endear players and just beg you to expand on them in your head. Protagonist Rhen feels like the halfway point between a fully realized character and a player insert protagonist, but the level of choice the player is given for her at the end lets it feel cohesive and pay off. Lars and Dameon, the secondary and tertiary leads, leave a little to be desired in their arcs, but a few key points at least provide reasonably compelling scaffolding for the player to fill in. The rest of the playable cast is filled out by a series of entertaining spins on common fantasy archetypes: a flirty demon summoner with three husbands searching for a fourth, a vampress who longs for the light and the patronizing paladin she sets her sights on, a pirate who rides dragons part time and a bar maid for hire.

Aveyond 1 has some of my favorite mapping in an RPG Maker game to date - the tilesets cohesively combine the typical more pixelated style with art more evocative of paintings. The colors, scale, and parallaxes combine together to make the world feel truly rich and magical. Trees seem massive and looming, chasms jagged and eerie. Multiple caverns inexplicably show the night or sunset sky below as you wander through. The battle scaling is a little ridiculous - play on Easy mode if you don't want to have to grind to level up! - but for me it breezes past "works" into enhancing the game - it makes me feel like I really am training for an epic quest, and gives me more time to roll the characters over in my head and get attached.

If you want a fantasy epic with plenty of plot twists and fully-realized character arcs, Aveyond probably isn't the game for you. But if you want a goofy high fantasy ride across magic retro-inspired landscapes filled with characters who will pique your interest and who you can make your personal playground, I can't recommend it enough. Ultimately, this game is FUN, and that's exactly what it's trying to be. It gets five stars for doing it so damn well, and managing to keep doing so a decade full of replays later.

This game could have implemented a bunch of slightly different mechanics/quality of life adjustments OR, to get it all in one shot, simply let me save whenever I wanted and I would have given it five stars. The biggest thing I can say is that this game was marketed to me as an RPG, but its gameplay is far more in the realm of what I'd call "social puzzles". Considering "trying to calculate the Optimal Thing to Say to prevent bad things from happening" is my least favorite part of having conversations in real life, I found it frustrating and disappointing. The limited number of item slots, battle style requiring both puzzle logic AND fast reflexes, inability to level up and increase your health on a Pacifist or Pacifist-leaning Neutral route and infrequent save points made the gameplay feel irritating and punishing.

As for the story... I don't know, it didn't do it for me the way it worked for other people. I thought it was interesting and intriguing while I was playing. I loved Papyrus and Undyne. But I genuinely haven't thought about the game once since finishing, to the point where I haven't gone back and watched the playthroughs of other routes like I originally intended. I'd have to go back and watch a No Mercy Route, but I tentatively don't even agree with the way it deals with its morality system.

This is a game I enjoyed for its story, not its gameplay, and... I need my games to have both, so three stars from me. If a blend of social puzzles and bullet hell combat sounds fun to you, give Undertale a shot! If it's not, it's worth watching a walkthrough if the story interests you, but I wouldn't bother playing the game.

Another review described this game as the best use of real time combat in an RPG Maker Game they'd seen, and I absolutely agree. I also think it's the best use of the default RPG Maker VX-style graphics I've ever seen - while the blocky, square shapes are often criticized for being unnatural and claustrophobic, in Eternal Senia that feeling enhanced the experience rather than taking me out of it.

This game also made me bawl like a baby each of the three times I played it. I genuinely loved the characters and story.

While not my least favorite game I've ever played, definitely the most disappointing I have after all the hype. Despite being praised by many as ~one of the best RPG Maker titles~ and ~proof the engine can create good games~, it doesn't seem to feature any of the things that make the engine great. I felt like this game wanted to be a movie.

While I wish I could say I would have enjoyed the game much more as a visual novel, I wouldn't have, because I also hated the story. The main characters were grating, and the premise and eventual happily ever after seemed hinged on disregard and disrespect towards an autistic woman. I'm still planning on playing the sequels, though, because it's possible they'll delve deeper into the ethics of what the scientists are doing and retroactively solve many of my problems with To The Moon.