Three the Hard Way

This game is all about telling a story, and an epic one at that. The game follows Vance and his career as a bounty hunter as he steadily climbs up from backwoods obscurity and becomes embroiled in his nation's politics and its enemies. There is a *very* large cast of interesting characters that sometimes follow RPG norms (bounty hunters and princesses falling in love) but nevertheless demand your attention. The majority of the game is linear, although at certain times, particular towards the end, nonlinearity breaks in and you can choose what to do next. The nonlinear breaks in the storyline are FinalDragon's fresh, safe way to provide a little replay value while maintaining a tight leash on a very tight storyline.

What about the rest of the game, though? The game is old-school RM2K, for sure, although you can see FinalDragon break a little from the most default options. The game's leveling system is replaced with random stat increases that eventually plateau and force you to move on to new battles, while distribution of character's abilities is through skill books, equipment, and other methods. Not all characters are equal, and you'll likely gravitate towards power-characters at the end of the game.

The game's graphics are a mishmash of RM2K's RTP and various charsets and facesets. They should either be immediately recognizable to regular indie game players or will probably be considered ill-fitting and ugly (sometimes both.)

With a storyline this epic, however, you should consider most other problems 'speed bumps' and just get over them. I really enjoyed Three the Hard Way for its reach and its characters, and I was able to get over problems like balance issues as I kept going.

This is an example of an epic indie RPG as it should be- without excess powerleveling sessions lasting 30-90 minutes. It's a long, great storyline, and if you can swallow the graphics and archaic design, you'll eat it all up.