Empire

A surprisingly enjoyable RPG. The plot kind of goes off the rails in the last third, but the characters weren't bad, most of the story was solid, and the dialogue was fun. I wish some of the plot points had been fleshed out more, because the characters danced on some very morally grey ground, and I wish their motivations and the consequences had been explored more. Overall, though, an enjoyable experience, and I played through to a satisfying end.

For those who love turn based jrpgs of olden times, this is a classic. Those who love to grind...you'll love this game because it rewards grinding. (I know, I'm a minority here. But when you get an opportunity to one shot the "final" boss due to getting secret weapons from the secret boss...how can I pass that up?) But it's not all grinding. I liked the grey lines of morality in the game. If you like classic heroes...this one's not so much in that category. But if you like those who make questionable choices, give Empire a try. I can't wait to try its sequel, Mystica.

Many people seem to praise this game but i cant see it. Pretty bad writing with basic RPGM combat kills the game for me.

+ encounter rate can be set in game
+ somewhat interesting premise
+ included bestiary, notebook with lore
- boring, default RPGM combat - if you played one RPGM game you played them all.
- boring dungeons with very basic map design.
- writing, especially dialogue, is terrible.
- default RPGM tile set and most enemies

if you want to play decent RPGM games check out Last Dream, Forever Alone or Skyborne instead. You can get them for a similar price.

So far, it seems like Empire is one of the really, really good ones. Biggest and only complaint at the moment is that its name isn't really searchable. It does a great job establishing the characters, and it felt both well-made and polished. No bugs, spelling mistakes, or indications of anything amateurish at all. It is a traditional fantasy RPG, but sometimes, the formula is seen so often for a reason - because it works.

The game itself is very well put together for a game made in RPG Maker. The story is well written, the fights know how to keep the player engaged, and the story pace is in the player's control. Some gripes I do have is the necessity to grind out for skills in equipment. A lot of the vital information to make the game smoother is only present within an official guidebook as well, and with the little attention this game has, you will have to open the community tab. Long story shortened:
great game, needs more attention.

Empire is an RPGMaker game that sadly suffers from some serious flaws. Here are some of the ones I noticed:

-The game says you can play without grinding, but that proves very false fast. See there are ways to get EXP outside of battle, but not AP and you need AP to learn skills. Also I had to often stop to grind for money as I didn't have enough to buy new equipment for my party. In fact I was stopping so often to grind for AP and money I felt like this game should have been named Empire of Grind.
-The main character I couldn't stand at all. I get kinda where the dev was trying to go with this game, but you need to make the character care about your character and actions early on, else they will be disinterested. As it is I got to chapter 4 and didn't care about any of the people in my party yet.
-Terrible boss balance. I hit a boss in Chapter 3 that hit for more than I got in max HP, and the guide said to blind it. Great except...I didn't have a blind skill yet. Plus even if I had, blind would have just turned it into pray to the RNGGoddess that the RNG likes you enough to live through the fight as blind is only a chance they miss their attack.
-Also bosses cheat the system. I've seen bosses go 2x to my parties 1, but at random. As in they will usually go only once per round as my party goes, but sometimes they will go a second time, then will go at their usual time again on the next round.

Overall I think the dev needs to go through the game again, and play it without grinding at all to make sure it can be beaten without grinding like they claim in Chapter 1. Adding ways to earn AP outside of battle would help to make that true.

Rating: 8/10

I bought this game a while ago and it was sitting in my library just there. Decided to install and become immersed in one hell of a world. From the walkthrough, it helped substantially with everything finishing off the game 100%. Each character has a story to them and there are side quests and other tasks to do.

PROS
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Great story
Great mechanics
Huge world
Fantastic Character

Cons
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It is a grind to learn all the skills for your gear (this is mandatory) until you can fly and kill the yellow slimes
The God of Dark is the most bullshit boss and you cannot win unless you have full elixers.
Bosses can be overpowered but with the right setup you can win almost every fight first try.

It is 100% worth the money for this game. All the hours put into the game - worth every single penny.

This was a wonderful and expansive game! 9/10 and only 9 because all the combat steps got tiring for me and I couldn't buy ether in the beginning. So, totally personal issues. The story was really good and I was completely invested. Early on, I did get upset about the main character but, thankfully, I held on to see the evolution. I actually sat up straighter a couple of times going "Okay, lets do this!" I love the fact that, in the options, you could make it 0 encounter. If that hadn't been there, I would not have been able to finish. I like grinding but only when I have a close place to heal up completely. I often forget how I got into a place and get lost trying to get out and also I like to lazily mill around to make sure I picked up everything. Unlike another poster, and they have every right to their opinion, I like having the bosses take a long time, thought, and strategy. It reminded me of the original rpgs where you would hit the restroom, sit down with a drink and some snacks, and have to go through it multiple times with various parties until you got it just right. It makes it that much more gratifying when you beat them! For the first time ever, I actually beat a boss and then went back to do it again just to see if a different party and strategy would work better. Thank you for making this!

A classic RPG - great story, interesting, well fleshed out characters, turn based system, upgrading equipment, quests....really a 9/10. There is a little grinding involved, but it never got tedious for me, as sometimes it can. Took me over 70 hrs to play (I'm a completionist). Thank God for the developer's guide, but you can miss things, and that can really impact how you do further on in the game.

I have no words to express how i'm enjoy playing this game. Probably the best RPG maker i've played until now!
The graphics are great, new monsters, the battle system is awesome. The developer knows how to create a story and good characters with their own personalitys.
I'm still playing the game, and i can see the game is better than i thought. i even would like a sequel of the game, but i think i'll have to wait...
I do recommend it!

Story was interesting, but the battles and the game don't offer enough experience to justify the amount of trash mob battles to 'grind' up levels, leaving the player feeling frustrated.

8/10 Its a rock solid game. i very much enjoyed the story progression, the battle mechanics, and the OST (the music starts off average but gets quite a bit better as you progress though the game. im going to play through it one more time and then ill record some videos on it for youtube because as nice as the walkthrough is, a more visual guide would help out drastically. especially in the case of the Flare Dragon glitch which if you intend to play the game be sure to save before the dragon so you can get its scale. if you defeat the Dragon and dont get the drop you will be screwed on the optional super endgame bosses, you can finish the main story quest without it though so if you are a one and done kind of gamer than dont worry.

yes the game is a bit grindey but is that really a bad thing? at most some of the ratios for defeating mobs could be raised. also like 5 spelling errors i encountered in the game could be fixed.theres also a chain of sidequests for 1 of the characters Kelina that needs to be fixed properly. the walkthrough gives you half the info you need and you are left backtracking through the game to get what you need for her questline. all in all though im impressed by what Clecota has done here. they show promise in the story telling department of being a developer and look forward to more from them.

Its a huge game and worth the money. But depending on your love of JRPGs, its a mixed bag.

Pros: The story is very good. Because a JRPG is basically a story book on rails, this is a must to keep me engaged in one. Its actually good enough I've avoided moving forward in the detailed community guide which is also very good. I'm only using it right now to ensure I mop up discoveries before chapters pass - you can double back to get everything you missed eventually, but the story does cut off access to areas for finite periods, so it pays to thorough. This is connected to another pro - the fighting is challenging. There are healing points regularly spaced so you aren't stuck literally mashing the attack button to save resources to boss fights. The trade-off for this is that skills matter, and because skills are tied to your equipment - you learn skills over time by wielding different gear - you can't afford to miss anything as you move through the plot. Overall, its a fair balancing mechanism but for me is linked to the Cons of this game. Finally, there's a lot of content. Like Doom and Destiny, there's content that will carry you all the way through to level 99, including lots of end game content, making the game absolute steal for the price.

Cons: Extreme grind. You have to earn AP to learn skills from your gear. Most all monsters only give 1 AP and it can take up to 120 AP for to learn a skill. This in itself would be manageable, but there are essentially two sorts of mobs - basic mobs that you can kill quickly and appear in groups of up to six, and minor bosses that take time to kill and only appear in groups of 1-2. This means you can either spend time killing inconsequential mobs endlessly that only occur in select areas, or try to grind minor bosses. If the dev reads this, I would increase AP for the minor bosses to 3. Its a simple fix and would prevent doubling back to the starting area to grind inconsequential mobs for AP. The dev has added items that award XP to speed level up. But levels isn't really the problem, its the AP. Levels would matter less if you could acquire passives as you go...in this respect the game mechanics don't feel fully integrated. Its close to being very good, but as you tell by how much i've written here, its a bit frustrating in its present state. And that really gets me to the final con...as you play you're going to be frustrated, not because you're playing another poorly conceived RPG maker game, but rather because you're playing something that is so close to being a near perfect entry in the genre, but isn't.

Bottom line. Worth the money due to the price point. Nearly worth the time for the story. Devs please incorporate something like the suggestion above and you'll have made a masterpiece.

Solid game for an RPGMaker game. Well worth the price. I will say while I understood the reasoning behind the ending, it wasn't what I wanted.

I've played a ton of RPGMaker games and this one's pretty polished for a 20 peso game. Highly recommended.

Pros: well crafted old school jrpg style, turn based combat, with interesting story
Cons: you're gonna have to grind, even with the alternative means of gaining experience kindly provided in the game.

sample grind scenario: you are heading back to help defend the empire's tower where you are dropped off by ship and the only way you can get to the tower is through a canyon. there's one potions vendor and no equipment vendors, mind you, and you're given no advance warning by the game before your taken to this gauntlet you must run. everything seems okay, random encounters are fairly easy to moderate, so you feel you're at a decent level for where you are, and there's a couple of save/rejuve locations so that's cool. however, blocking your exit is a boss that can kill anyone in your party with a single blow or perform a group attack that brings all your characters down about a third with each hit. the only way to beat it, is to grind out random encounters until you have the collective power to take out this boss (the earth tyrant). let's just say it takes a while. and i wonder how many more bottlenecks like this are further along.

it does say something about the intrigue of the story that i was quite willing to grind it out, but some people might not want to deal. i also picked this game up for 49 cents on sale, about as killer a deal as you can get. i hope the folks at Clecota consider making more titles in this style, as i'm a fan going all the way back to chronotrigger.

Its one of the best rpg maker games i ever played.I can recommend this amazing game to everyone that likes a GREAT story and game play.Many hours to go,and i don't won it to end.

RECOMMENDED. Ratings : 7/10 (Useful Walkthrough, Nice Combat Mechanics, Kingdom Building)

The first thing that attracted me to this game was a detailed free walkthrough that was on the steam store page. From the walkthrough I can see that the gameworld is huge, filled with many main and side quests. Many of the sidequests also span multiple chapters too.

I bought the game at the full price of $4.99 and it is definitely worth the full price. I like the combat mechanics because it include learning skills from equipments. The armors and weapons that you equip will teach you new skills (both passive and active) after a certain number of battles. You can also learn recipes this way and I really like this system.

Another nice feature of this game is that "Kingdom Building" is incorporated into the storyline itself. You started off with a small team of young heroes who were escaping conscription from 2 kingdoms at war. They escape to a new location and after defeating the bosses there, they founded a new kingdom. Refugees and people who wanted to escape the war started going to the new kingdom and bolster its strength. The kingdom building, heroes reqcruitment, expansions and quests are all an integrated part of this interesting RPG storyline.

I love this game and recommend it. I hope to enjoy many more hours in this game, and will give an update when I am closer to the end.

============== 1st Update ============================

I have played 72 hours but am nowhere close to the end. However, I have played enough to give another update of this excellent game.

From what I played so far, I can say with full confidence that the developer is a MASTER story teller. You kind of started in the middle of the story, with the main character having lost his memory and not remembering anything. However, what is strange is that a lot of people around him seems to know him or have a connection with him. Many people also fear him, or accuse him of various autrosity which he cannot remember. Many people and events seems to be strangely interconnected that it created suspense and suspicion for the main character. Slowly he will piece together the whole story through tiny bits of flash-back, clues or conversation. Will finding out the truth of everything set you free? or maybe the truth of who you are and what you have done is too frightening. There are intrigue, betrayal, ambition and power struggles, coming from many sides. Certain characters are so irritating that I wish I could just kill them, but I cannot because they are scripted events !!! It is rare that an RPG Maker game evoked such strong sentiments in me, but I am glad that this one did.

First review, fun game and for only $5.00? I've had fun so far, keep up the great work and add in some great updates.

I can honestly say, I bought this out of random, and I thought it had good potential. Never did I think just how good it'd be and how much I'd like it. This was well worth the purchase and I love this games absolutely. Solid 9/10 for me. To further on this review, the Dev was extremely cooperative with the community. Clecota is definitely worth their salt as a Game Dev. I've spent 21 hours, to date, on this and I plan on more. I love that every party member has its uses, and you can freely change within battle, and sometimes it's needed.

Fun game! Reminds me of all the solid RPG's from my childhood and haven't encountered any bugs yet.