Alter A.I.L.A.

Alter A.I.L.A. is a game with great style.

The story, the setting, the characters, the music, the map design, the custom graphics, these are all fantastic. The post-apocalyptic world is not crammed down the player's throat, it is allowed to develop naturally. The dialogue sticks to what is important instead of going off on wild tangents, as does the overall plot. The result is a very engrossing game. It's clear that the author knows how to tell a story and how to make the player believe in this world. I would go so far as to say it might be one of the most well-told and most polished RPG Maker games I've seen.

Where the game falls sadly very short is the most important place: in combat. If it were a movie it would be wonderful, but it is supposed to be a game. And yet, more than 98% of battles can be won with nothing but autoattack. Which is not just a result of a lack of challenge - it's more accurate to say that in 98% of cases, autoattack is the best possible strategy. Your characters only have two commands: Attack, and a single skill that's unique per character. As if that weren't boring enough, most of these skills are worthless except in rare cases, and the main character's skill is worthless in all cases. For example, the main character's skill simply scans an enemy's HP and weaknesses. Instead of skills, the author chose to have items do elemental damage, status effects, and buffs. But because items and money are hard to get, using anything other than normal attacks against normal enemies is very foolish. In short, the non-boss battles might as well not even exist, because they are almost totally non-interactive. This game requires less strategy and thought than Tic Tac Toe.

Overall, however, I felt that this was an extremely rare case where the rest of the game was so well done that I continued playing and enjoying it despite the nonexistant battles. If you play RPGs for the tactical gameplay, you should steer elsewhere. But if you play them for the story, this is your number one pick.