Millennium 5 - The Battle of the Millennium

I don't know why people liked the story of a whiny, immature 15 yo who even tried to burn down the house of a guy she was trying to recruit. The story goes that she saw some squirrels helping each other so she decides to help the whole world by beating the mean old guys who rule her world in a tournament. I did like most of the games in the series' gameplay so I'll give it a positive.

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not good

I've played through all the games preceding this one. It's an overall interesting story, although I don't find Marine particularly likable.

Millennium 1, 2, and 3 were all fine. Places to explore and things to do. No place felt particularly burdensome.
Millennium 4 felt way too short with little to do in comparison.

Millennium 5 feels like it had very little content thus far, and I'm now running the same gauntlet 4 times over, which is...incredibly boring to do over and over again with no alternative location to go for a brief break. It's especially frustrating since I suspect that I pretty much have this and then the final battle and that's it.

The gauntlet burnt me out and so I'm setting the game aside for the time being. Will update my review if I ever come back around to it.

I took my time with these but the series is finally finished,
you may like them if you're into JRPGs.

First of all:

Millennium 5 was made to wrap up the Series with the long awaited battle for the Showdown which happens, but also lets you do a lot of optional content, showing you that there are still things to be done. When you play this last, you get a feeling that it might not end today. It might not end with the showdown, because I have done so much and I still have so much that needs doing. But you also think: well, nothing actually ends, right?

There are three endings and only one of them actually pays off for everything Marine has done.

This is a strategic, political showdown that is not about punching your way through it with overleveled characters.
This is a strategic showdown that needs the right people to win, the right people to lose and the right tension to let things change the ending picture.

You cannot punch your way through this game. It is not about being super high leveled that you will bring them down in one shot (unless it is the speed battle lol). You need to understand the full spectrum to end this game the way Marine wants it and for that, you have to pay attention. You have to read the dialogues, you have to read the quest signs and the big cues left behind for you to find.

If you are not the player who dives deep into the storyline, this game is not for you.

Easily one of the best RPGMAKER games I've played. The story finally climaxes in an awesome fashion and the plot digs deeper than most titles would. The only downside, and probably what bothers people, is the pit of infinity. It's one, one, weak point in 5 games of amazing quality.

Buy the game, enjoy the game.

The fantastic conclusion to a fantastic series. The bittersweet ending is well executed and we get to see our large party of characters interact a lot more.

This review is for the entire Millennium saga, for the plot spans all five games in continuation. I won't spoil anything from the story itself if I can help it.

Look... I LOVED these games. I genuinely did. I enjoyed every installment tremendously, and always looked forward to playing and seeing more. I know they aren't perfect, but as I don't mind the usual limitations of RPGMaker games, playing Millennium had been a wonderful experience. I found the soundtrack enchanting and delightful. There was a lot to do and loads of secrets to find, and I found it cool how I could import the previous game's save into the next installment.

The writing and the plot could be rough around the edges and naive at times, yet I found it engaging. That's because... I just LOVED EVERYONE who was introduced. There's like almost two dozen "main" characters and they all have their own moments I remember fondly. I loved their personalities, their chemistry and banter, their different strengths, their character development. This made the setting of Millennium so cool!

I was SUPER invested, as everything was woven together across multiple games, and just hyped me up so much toward the grand finale of the saga.

...And, that's also why I cannot bring myself to recommend the series, despite everything. The disappointing problem with Millennium is not what happens in the story. It's what doesn't happen. This is where the writing fails. At the very end, after all that hype and buildup... Millennium decided to give me basically nothing.

I loved everyone. But I never found out what happened to them after the finale. The only exception was a laughably short and extremely vague text description of what happened to Marine, that prompted more questions than answers. There were no real final cutscenes or dialogue between the characters about any of the aftermath. My emotional investment for this story was met with no sense of closure. My invested feelings had nowhere to go, and it got me actually crushed.

In my understanding, it was the dev's conscious choice to leave things up to the player's imagination. But that makes me mourn the finality of it all even more. It just wasn't handled well after five games, after all the hype, after everything everyone went through. Thing is, from everything I've read from different forums and discussions, the maker of Millennium DOES have an idea of what happens to everyone canonically. There was even talk of a possible novella or something to wrap things up. Didn't happen though, unsurprisingly.

Honestly, having a novella would've sounded nice, but mostly because of my hunger for ANYTHING more. My disappointment isn't about not getting some extensive ever-after stories for everyone. I wouldn't ask for that much. I was just desperate for some actual ending cutscenes with the characters interacting with each other in game, one last time. How do they feel now, what do they want from the future, what do they want to do next maybe? Small nudges to help lead the imagination to make interpretations matter more.

I feel like there probably would've been several ways to leave things open-ended yet satisfying at the same time. An ending to an epic saga of five flippin' games requires and deserves extra passionate care. What we ended up with is nothing getting neatly wrapped up at all, with so many questions left unanswered that it's exhausting to think about. All that hype, leading up to a lot of homework that never feels the same as the real thing.

If you think you will be okay with this notion, though... the fact that you will ultimately never have closure about your favorite characters, and abruptly will never see them or hear from them again... Well, the games can be fairly regularly on sale for like -90% so be on the lookout for that, get all the games for a total of like 5€, and go for it. I had fun while it lasted... but I guess my love was too strong.

Nice game, but only a lot of unnecessary chatter.

Enjoyable retro RPG with a great storyline. Good finish to an excellent series!

I absolutly love Millennium series, espacially the 5th game and I would recommend this game because

- Balance in game: this game can be continue from previous game (Millennium 4) if you have the import file. If you decided to import the game, it doesn't mean you will get everything from previous game, and that what made this game less boring to me because I used to play RPG games with continue series similar to this and it become extremly boring because I maxed everything in series 1, so what the point of playing series 2? spent about 20hours on (normal mode) series 1 but about 5 hours on (normal mode) series 2!! seriously!!! so I prefer the limited import file than import the whole thing from previous game.

- Level up: in every RPG games, trying to max your character lvl is the most boring thing to do but in this series you get a dungeon that full of monsters to lvl up your characters. Eventhough going in and out of that dungeon many times to lvl up is boring but it gives alot of exp so your characters will lvl up faster.

-soundtrack: I really love soundtrack of this game since series 1, I don't know how to write this into word but I remember the first time I played and heard the sound, I was like "WOW" "COOL" and sometimes the character suddenly walking very fast include the soundtrack, it made this part of game feel funny.

- story and game play: I think the 5th game is the most challenging in all series because it devided into many parts which make some quest become limited. So make sure to be well prepared, complete side quest and explore everything in your current place before moving into the next main quest because you might not be able to come back. Also that many parts of game make all of the playable characters become more useful because in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th game, there are too many playable characters but why would I need to switch every single characters in the team when I only need 4 characters in the end of game? I wish the 2nd, 3rd, 4th game are more like the 5th game because I want all the playable become useful, not just a show. I love most of the dialog in this game especially the misplaced speech during the desperate situation because it add more heavy feeling that the current situation become very hopeless that they can't say the right word. The whole story since the 1st game untill the end was very well connected especially the real ending of the game, it make sense... I don't want to spoiler this so I only remind you that most people on Marine side aren't matrial artist and some of them started to fight barehand when there only a week or two left to train, so the real ending make the most sense for the whole story.

-characters and artworks: characters design are beautiful, what I like the most is that all of them don't have any thing very similar, they are unique (face, hair, costume, height, muscle...) so it makes the design become creative. Eventhough the story never tell the background of enemies side, but the dialog is already enough to know who is bad and who is good.

Thank Aldorlea games for taking so much care and consideration on creating this game series. hopefully the next game I choose to play from Aldorlea games is as great as this one.

I have to say this is the best RPG Maker series I have EVER played in my life. Every single part in this Millennium series overall is five out of five stars. It is not too challenging, and has the right mix of play, upgrades, maps, quests and good characters. I admit I never complete all the side quests in the game, but I play the entire game to the end and love every second of it.

This takes a lot for me to really get into games. I love how you can select your level of difficulty (I always select story mode for a more visionary and involved gameplay), you can select arrows that show you overall where to go, because it can be easy to get lost or take too long to find your way in these games (This is a BIG plus for me). Another big thumbs up is the ability to have VISIBLE monster encounters, so whenever possible we can avoid them. I absolutely HATE random surprise encounters, that not only interrupt the flow of the game, but take away your concentration from where you were at.

Also, the music score is one of the best ever, and has some very melodic catchy tunes, and soft moody background expressions in the scores. Very nice and rare to see this in a JRPG/RPG maker game. Many of the games seem to repeat the same flat audio/music, and I am happy to see the Millennium series is more unique.

And finally, I love that you can import the last saved game from part to part so you take your levels and most items with you. I highly recommend this game series!

As of writing this review I completed the entire millennium series (1-5) in roughly 82 hours total. Excuse my recorded time, I play offline.

I played the Millennium series as each came out over the years and this most recent playthrough was just to experience the game again. I have a soft spot for rpg-maker games and Aldorlea always pleases me.

Pros:
+The music is lovely. It truely gives this game atmosphere.
+ beautiful mapping. I have a good imagination and I love the way the devoloper uses the assets and lighting to create the world of Myst
+ SECRETS GALORE! It may be a con for some but I love poking around the maps to find secret rooms and collecting orbs hidden in the maps.
+ Import saves from previous games to keep your armor/items
+ Classic turn-based battles with a few little twists, nothing crazy (some gear can cause more hits, bonus fairy who pops up to heal or boost you, you can even call on her from your skills menu)
+ Diverse characters in your party who have strengths and weaknesses that you must make adjustments to your play style depending on who you choose to be in your party at that time
+ Battle rush option for when you are backtracking through previous visited locations and you are certain you can kill them quickly
+ Difficulty settings and the option to activate visible enemies
+ Option to activate arrows pointing you in the right direction (this is helpful because some maps are hard to navigate and the presence of the arrows are also a good indicator for where to avoid when you want to branch off on other paths)

Cons:
+ The writing is a bit juvenile at times. I was able to overlook this, some may find it a bit too saccharine
+ Some bosses are sponges despite your party being overpowered, battles can be long. I actually did this playthrough on easy mode so that I could focus on exploration and I still had a hard time at certain parts. I remember when I originally played these games on normal mode I had a hard time.
+ The final Showdown can mentally break you >_< Let me explain:

I have fond memories of this game. It's what drove me to replay. I do have to say that when I put 82 hours into a game and make a real attempt to find everything, complete every quest and level up as much as possible it can be really disheartening to reach the final showdown only to be absolutely creamed. Be warned that this whole series is leading up to a final battle between your 12 martial artists and the 12 martial artists who represent a goverment your main character wishes to overthrow for the btterment of the kingdom. All your work, all your exploration and all your leveling up may not make too much of a difference when that time comes! I'm not saying it's impossible, it can just be frustrating. You have plenty of chances in the end of the game to replay parts of the showdown. All I'm saying is that you should set aside a save file before you head to the final showdown just in case you need to go level up some more. It is likely that you will.

Also note that for this last battle (technically over 100 battles in the showdown but it's set up like one long battle with little breaks), the battle dynamics completely change. You are stripped of your gear, your skills will narrow down to a few options and you will be limited on how many times you use them. You are also given the opportunity to trick your opponents which is basically like rolling dice. It can help or hurt you. You must have high stats and make good decisions and you must know your characters well. But beware! There are 3 endings and a very large margin of error and very small window to get the true ending. This can be frustrating but it can be done :)

I recommend this game with reservations. There are some good playthroughs on youtube to help give you an idea of what you are getting into.

I've enjoyed the series, and was loving the jungle maps in M5 until.....Benoit calls himself a pu**y. Seriously?? Wow, REALLY uncalled for. I get that the series has 'grown up' a little, but the dialogue has just gotten mean and obnoxious. Younger players don't need that, especially if they've played from M1 on. Otherwise it's an amusing and pretty good game overall. But Benoit's scene... c'mon, really? If M6 comes out, I won't be buying it.

not good

After leveling up everyone to level 99... I guess for no reason... I played, won the tournament, and got a 'bad' ending. No spoiler on what the ending is, but after reading other reviews, I was sorely disappointed. I'm gonna assume they have more games planned with these characters which is why things aren't resolved, but after reading the comments, I'm really not sure I want to even try for the 'good' ending. I love the character art and the characters themselves. The story's okay and I like the monster designs and the weird world they've built. However, I can't recommend this chapter of the game as-is, since it's so unsatisfying or even all that interesting given the build-up.

I also recall the first game set this whole thing up as an adult telling a kid this story about how everything became some sort of near-utopia, which doesn't make much sense if you can get a 'bad' ending... but then, that sort of framing device doesn't really work well anyhow.

"And so, Marine and her friends continued to grind endlessly in a dungeon, facing the same monsters over and over. She took a hit and lost 75 hit points, but then Benoit attacked, dealing 295 hit points, defeating the giant spider..."

"I don't caaaaaaaaaaare..."

"THEN, they wandered aimlessly in a series of caverns. They went right, but it was a dead end. They tried inspecting every stone and statue they came across, but they yielded nothing."

"....does tv exist in our world?"

"Eventually, our party of heroes decided to exit and enter, again facing the exact same group of monsters as before! The battle begins with Marine dealing 362 damage points!"

"...am I being punished?"

The finale of the Millennium saga, this game is a fine ending to an expansive tale. There are enough differences to keep the series fresh, and the wrap-up was decent.

Starting cold will start you at level 46 (Marine, anyway).

It is time to end this and bring in a new world ruled with benevolence. Will you succeed?

I would recommend this game for the patient. It's long and tedious and the end, for me, was frustrating. It depends on personality, I guess.

Final episode and a very good story - the party is now in training after finally beating the odds and getting a team together despite the overtures of the opposition. Bear becoming struck down by a bite is hilarous and the story focuses on trying to find a cure. It allows the party to be split into separate groups each having their own small story. The main setting is a beautiful beach and then different settings after that. You learn a little more about each of the characters' nature and background. It is a rather long episode cuminlating with the battle against Lord Dragon and his offsiders. This battle must be won in a certain way as there are 3 different endings so it is best to save and play each ending for effect. The correct ending does leave a lot to imagination as to what happens to each of the characters on both sides of the battle and it would have been nice to have a little more detail and outcome. Overall a great ending to a great series

I will just say that I cannot recommend this game enough. It was truly a very amazing conclusion to the series and anyone who just dismisses these games for being made in RPG Maker is missing out on a great RPG. Though I do feel that while this game could in theory stand alone, all the best moments mean so much more when you have played the first four games and really understand just how much everyone went through to finally make it to the grand finale.

About the only real drawback is that you do have to level up all your characters pretty high to have a shot in the final showdown, it's recommended to just max them all out. That definitely took quite a bit of time, but the game does give you a very ideal chance to pull this off by basically having the plot send you off to go grind a ton.

I also do feel that it is obvious a lot of care was put into the dialoge for the tournament. The dialogue between your characters and their opponents not only does a great job of characterization for everyone, but it varies depending on what your current score is, whether you won or lost that time, and what the character's overall win/lose record is. Some of the dialogue is downright hilarious. The characterization here is really great as well. By the end of it I really had a good sense of what the Mystrock Lords and Ladies were like and actually even came to find a few of them to be interesting characters. I definitely liked Gisele and Mai a lot. Nate also was pretty interesting even if he was obviously meant to be hated. Truly, all of them were interesting characters with distinct personalities and that shows the love that was put into the final showdown. What was even more neat was the fact that enough care was taken to give each of them their own battle theme. The soundtrack in this game was quite good even if it's been good in all the games so far, but this one just had some added stuf that did a great job of making all the scenes all that much more emotional.

However what really makes the game is the ending. Even though it's pretty obvious that since we're playing as Marine and her friends that the true ending is for her to succeed, how this happens is not something that would be easily guessed. I won't spoil it, but it definitely got quite the reaction out of me. To me any game capable of making me feel something for the characters and events is doing it right.

I also feel this game did a much better job with the realism and having everything be well explained by the plot and done so well. For example the game gives a beautiful excuse to have the Bear unable to be in your party for most of the game because you'd rely on him too much and not train the rest of the characters if you could. The plot that came with that reason then gave a great excuse to use all those characters you haven't used since they games they joined in, though at times it was annoying because you'd get a party that really wasn't good and would need to grind a bit to have a shot. The monsters in this game are definitely tough!

Overall pros:
+Quite a lengthy game, you're looking at about 30 hours of playtime and the tournament is actually not a large chunk of that.
+The characterization is top notch here.
+Very challenging monsters and the tournament is also pretty challenging as well even if the battles are shorter there

Overall cons:
-A lot of grinding. While it's not as bad with it actually being justified by plot much of the time, there were points where it dragged because you needed to grind up a not so hot party.
-Definitely going to want to get the guide for this one because the parties switch up so often and you have to be well prepared to even have a shot. The guide does a great job of advising without spoilers on how to prepare for all of this, howevr.
-As of now, the game has 6 broken achievements so it cannot be 100%ed without cheating. The dev is aware and has been good about fixing them for other games, but it is likely to take time. Edit: As of 3/26/18 the broken achievements have now been either removed or fixed and the game is capable of being 100%ed.

So in the end, I very much recommend this game and truly, play the series from the beginning if possible. The series ends up running at about 90 hours of play all together and a very large amount of that is very good and leading up to an incredibly epic conclusion that will mean all that much more if you started from the very beginning. The final conclusion will mean so much more when you truly understand all the things Marine has done to get to this point and it really starts off with that fateful day when Marine left Green Grass, tripped on something and met a little fairy who decided to live in her earring from then on and it means so much more if you get to see Marine grow from being a weak peasant girl to being a capable martial artist who inspied others to join her on her crazy quest to challenge Mystrock.