Lakria Legends

I am a fan of good story heavy RPG maker games and seeing as this is currently pretty highly rated - I decided to bring the reviews into the more balanced range it deserves to be in more.

The game is praised pretty highly and I must admit the pure quality of the game is rather high, if anything, I would compare it to some other overrated and overpraised games like Chrono Trigger...
It's a good quality game, no doubt, but it is... bland to say the least.. uninspiring characters and story(no, they are not badly written, in fact they are just what you would call 'classic', but that's exactly what makes it so dull)

The story is pretty lighthearted as you would expect from the more classical JRPG. You play as a typical MC, who somewhat surprisingly claims for a fact the many things happening around him and takes it 'fine' in a very weird way...
The journey past that is usual 'gain the power to bring greater good and stop the big bad'.

The finale is okay but the process of reaching it is mostly eh. I am pretty used to games which take a long time to open up by showing countless characters involved... but in this one story seemed more of a filler to go on with.

Another big issue for me were the delays in everything... I had to bind a speedhack x2 to a hotkey to play the game normally.. everything from combat to travel to screen/text transitions is extremely slow. This is often a problem in the RPG maker games but usually it's 'fine enough'/'bearable' tier.. but in this title it's an even bigger issue than usual.

Another big downside is the RNG. Too much RNG that does not add anything fun into the game... In game lootboxes RNG, Limited craft item amount RNG, Not 100% drops from one time bosses, RARE ITEMS FROM RARE MONSTERS(by far the biggest offender as completionist, I think I spent more time grinding said rare items than enjoying the game... I still remember the hell I had in the water area - 81 RARE MONSTER FIGHTS is what it took me to finally get both rare items in the water area... this was approximately 4 hours for item - the chance for said rare monsters is approximately 10% at most and you also need to know the area they can spawn in at all... so multiply the amount of fights I did by 10 for a total number of fights.. this much effort for what you won't even really bother to use at the point they drop.. needless to say I was always double the level of the party members that joined me... when a character joined me at lvl 25 I was already 50+)

I would certainly rate it higher if it was an older game, but being made in 2013 it's a bit too old to be a classic at this point and it did not add anything unique to the experience.

There are also quite a few critical bugs(version 3.0 which seems to be an update 7 years from when the game was actually made) that you need to know how to fix or you risk ruining your whole save file.(although anyone experienced can help you out and most can be fixed randomly if you stumble upon the trigger)
Not good for someone who is rather casual.

Now onto the more positives:
The maps are decently well made, even if too old for the release date.
The custom art for the old RPG maker is very well done.

Combat is okay, it's nothing groundbreaking but nothing terrible either. You got only 4 members for over half of the story and eventually get up to 6 characters to choose from, out of which you need MC to be there. The issue is usually the same one that 90% of the RPG maker titles share - basic attacking is usually by far the fastest option in comparison to taking time and selecting skills. There is no easy way to tinker agility in a good way for characters with good AoE to be able to easy spam their AoE without wasting time with other characters... that is without nerfing yourself too much.

Areas are done decently, there are mini puzzles of how to proceed for those that enjoy this.. again can be both positive and negativie, I overall dislike heavy puzzle focus but the amount in this game is on the 'just fine' tier.

Quite a few secrets - this can be both positive and negative, but I personally enjoy those.

Overall I would say it's a great game if you seek for a classical, non groundbreaking decent quality RPG. If you want to enjoy a good breathtaking story or something unique overall - the game will offer nothing of the sort.
Basically make sure you know what you are looking for with this title to not end up being disappointed.