This is a story-spoiler free Review of "Nocturne: Rebirth" – a RPG Maker XP game released in 2009 in Japanese and later translated into English.

Introduction:

Let me start out by saying that if you like RPG Maker games in general, you should play this game. It is truly an excellent piece and it's surprising that this was created by unpaid guys and released for free!

It is no secret that this game includes Vampires and the story begins with the main playable character Reviel, who encounters a young girl deep in the forest and at night, just after he woke up. Wait, what? He just woke up? Breakfast? The girl could be breakfast, technically. Well, no, he was sleeping for many years and do you know how to find out why?
Play. The. Game!

Story:

Now I don't want to spoil the story, but it's pretty good. The story and character development might not be from Game of Thrones, but have you played other computer games? It fares very well in comparison to many a game that actually costs money. (Did I mention it's for free, yet???)

Hate story? Don't worry. This game certainly isn't just a novel. The gameplay is cool, fun and looks amaaazing! The animations are superb and I really mean it.

Difficulty:

Difficulty is always an issue in every single game. It's too hard. It's too easy. I like turtles.
Well, they solved this one pretty well here.
Let me introduce you to the "Brave Clear" System: In every zone you go, you will be notified of the Brave Clear level and if you beat the dungeon at this level or lower, you will get a bonus reward and of course the satisfaction of tough fights and the knowledge of you having a super great brain to counter all of these Boss techniques! This means that you can just overpower enemies by levelling up more, but let me mention that beating the last Boss at Brave Clear level gives you a hint for something extra, whereas the other fights "only" have a bonus item.
Now from other RPG games you will know that you always get experience after every fight and eventually you level up. Don't worry! Let me introduce you to the next awesome feature of this game:

The Skill and level up system:

You level up by spending the experience points you accumulate on the skills you want. If you don't learn skills, you don't level up, but still accumulate experience points in fights of course. There are active and passive skills of all different kinds (there are several skill trees) and did I mention that the animations look awesome? You will probably want to save your game at some point and just try out every single spell there is!
Anyways, some negative feedback here: The higher level you are, the more passive skills you can have. The higher you level up your passive skills, however, the more they "cost" and hence the less passive skills you can have. This strange counteraction really blurs the line of judgement of whether something is worth upgrading or not, especially with vastly increasing experience-cost towards the highest skill ranks.

Riddles:

If you don't like riddles, know that they are pretty much optional, but keep in mind that solving a riddle makes you feel proud and smart, and skipping a riddle might even result in you feeling bad for yourself.
So yes, there are several riddles throughout the dungeons, but overall they aren't too difficult and if you get stuck you can skip them. (I skipped one jerk of a riddle as well...)

Graphics:

Amazing! Custom! Amazing!
Indeed, the characters don't look like the character from that other RPG Maker game you just played. Instead they look good and with several combat animations you just have to wonder how good these pixelated RPG Maker games can actually look like.

Ingame Manual:

There is an ingame manual and it's actually pretty useful. I myself asked a question in the comments and noticed later on that my answer was actually in the ingame manual all along. Furthermore there are several NPCs with tips and tricks in the village and it's definitely worth having a look, especially if you try to Brave Clear everything.

Crafting, item drops and money:

Some people like to craft, others just want a big sword. And luckily there is a system for that as well: Alchemy. You can build powerful weapons, armor or useful stuff like a Skill & Level reset item. You can also craft items for your familiars (see below), however I found this part to be very lacking, I personally did not craft even one single thing there, as I lacked the ingredients and patience to look through the long, long list.
Now the second part: item drops. I found them to be incredibly low, you can farm for an hour and just get nothing or crap. Then again you might get lucky and randomly find the best item in the game! So no, I did not like this. The difference in power between some items is simply too large for them being low chance random drops.
A small thing was ingame money: At first I had very little, but after some point it just became meaningless, as I had to level up my familiars and the money just came flooding in. It is a minor issue though.

Familiars:

Another system is how you basically summon party members to assist you in combat. It's all explained in the game how it works, so I will simply give some feedback.
I am in two minds about this system. I like summoning cool creatures to fight with me, however I also always try to optimize my performance (Brave Clearing says hello again) and with that being said my followers usually ended up being my slaves for healing and if not healing, then I wouldn't even have them attack, but just defend/guard, as not to get hit too hard where I then have to spend the next several rounds healing everything again. So who was dealing the damage? My main character, pretty much. And to be honest, I like my main character being the strong one, but then it feels somewhat almost pointless to have this huge follower system. But then again, it's still cool overall. A little tip: Followers count into the Brave Level and level up "normally", but rather slowly, so you don't have to worry about overlevelling them. Anyways, try them all out, they all have different skills!

Sound and Music:

The music is pretty good. There are many different soundtracks and I actually sometimes entered an area and then just stopped in order to listen to the music for a minute.

Conclusion:

Play the game. Just do it already. It's not all perfect... but almost! Seriously, this game impressed me and I think it will you, too. If you have a game that's better, you better tell us, because it must be great then!