Having just finished playing Legionwood: Final Edition, logging just over 40 hours play time, I thought it only fair to create an account here and give a review.

The game description is fairly accurate, offering a classic 2D JRPG experience with 4 member turn based battles, AP system and random encounters a la Final Fantasy.

Story
A fairly traditional "boy from town must save the world from evil" plot. I thought the writing and plot line was adequate but unspectacular. Considerable effort has clearly been spent on the lore and history of the Legionwood world, making it feel believable.

Graphics
Again, nothing outstanding but they get the job done. Occasionally you get to see full screen custom artwork in some cut-scenes which was a nice touch, increasing the feeling of immersion in the game.

Sound
Some of the background music is actually surprising good. I found myself humming certain tunes that were particularly catchy.

Gameplay
Here is where there is considerable room for improvement. Gameplay consists mostly of:
- exposition/cut scenes
- then random encounters (actually make that a LOT of random encounters)
- a few puzzles here and there that greatly help break up the repetition
- boss fight
- level up, buy better equipment/techs (AKA spells)
- rinse and repeat

If you don't like grinding then you will not like this game. Much of the gameplay is all about random encounter after random encounter. At times I really wished the game had more to offer than this - more puzzles/minigames/side quests that could be solved without combat perhaps.

Despite the repetition, each dungeon is well designed and feels distinctly different from the previous one. The difficulty of the game is on the challenging side which I thought was a good thing. I don't want combat to just consist of mashing the attack button repeatedly.

There are 2 battles in the game that cannot be won (deliberate design). I thought this was very frustrating and annoying, having wasted a lot of time and game resources before realizing that I HAD to lose. I hope this is not a feature in the sequel.

The AP system gives you great freedom to customise character stats to your liking and was fun to tinker with. Later on in the game you get to pick your party of 4 from a bunch of different characters - unfortunately the interface to do this is very slow and clumsy. A slicker interface is required.

There is an optional super boss that I never got round to unlocking because I missed 2 key items (Pins of Creation), one of which can only be gotten before a certain time in the game which is annoying. Other than that I think I completed most of the side quests and spent a fair bit of time grinding for gold so I could afford to buy all the techs (spells) for all the characters.

I noticed some very minor typos here and there which spoiled the immersion. A few very minor bugs also exist - I could walk through a wall in one town and sail a ship into a port and then couldn't move. Nothing game breaking though and since you can save any time on the world map, you can always reload.

Conclusion
Having read through a bunch of RPG Maker tutorials I am aware of how much work has gone into this game. To have an actual completed game built by a small group of hobbyists is a fantastic achievement - and did I mention the game is FREE!?

Legionwood is a solid, unspectacular JRPG and is worth a playthrough if you are partial to a bit of grinding. I hope the team build on this and improve the gameplay for the sequel.