RTP

Hello!
And welcome to RTP, a game that unsurprisingly uses RTPS only as assets! this is a short 2018 rpg made by Milennin using Rpgmaker MV, and that's a surprise, since so far I played some nice games buy this developer, but they all were made using the good old Rpgmaker2003. I'm talking about BETA (reviewed in 2020) and FADE (reviewed in 2021). Anyway this game isn't connected to the other two (that are part of the same series) and is a stand alone adventure. And a peculiar one.

The story is simple: you are a hero and the town is attacked, so he/she joins the defender and later attacks the lair of the bad guy to save the land from the invasion of monsters. Simple? Well yes, except that the protagonist and also the town are random: the first time I played I was a Ranger in a town at night, the second I was a Warlock in a town during a storm, and the third a was a female wizard in a snowy town!


That's a powerful hit! Anyway our cleric is down, I am not sure we'll survive...

The first thing we have to do is helping the defenders, and here it's important choosing who we'll aid since there are nine different classes and the first two heroes we will help will permanently join the team (we'll have a party of three plus one summoned ally, if available).
There are no experience points but each battle (since some can be avoided) will level up our party making it stronger, even if they will just upgrade their abilities, and always have the four class skills they have from the beginning.
Now, learning how to use these skills is MANDATORY to win, since there are no items, no consumables, no equipment, just these skills: some will cost MP (mana points, magic points, call them how you prefer) and others will let you earn MP. Some are useful against enemies when they use particular buffs, others will instead buff your characters, others are strong attacks or defenses. Characters are restored after each battle, but there is no save option or save point, so you have to win and defeat the bad guy... or die trying!

This game is basically a sort of roguelike in Rpgmaker, and I admit that was unexpected! I played the game twice (well, three times but the first time did not end well) fully and I fought two completely different final bosses! Cool! I admit that I found some classes better than others, but maybe I found them more interesting because I like a certain kind of playstile (Wizard-Warrior-Cleric was a good party for me, I also liked the Ranger and the Paladin, while I could never use the Warlock in an effective way!).

Despite the uber-generic look of the game mapping is good, the only gripe is that there aren't many different opponents, on the other way they attack using different strategies (the vampires summon bats, the succubus has her slaves, others buff themselves changing appearance, and so on) and require some strategy to be defeated. It's a pretty cool little game that requires some clever thinking and sinergy between the party members.


Rejoice! This time the heroes won! The snow town was saved!

Final Verdict
RTP is a surprise, a unique little game that seems to copy the classic party-based rpg game but instead offers something different. It's good, even if it may become a bit repetitive since it's all about battles, and skipping them is usually a bad thing, since you will find enemies that are stronger and stronger as you progress. I also found two issues: the first is that walking on the icy surfaces (on the snow town) makes the party walk slooooowly... and running becomes going at the standard walk speed! (luckily this is resetted once entered a new location). Second at a certain point for some reason the game made me act as the Warlock... that was dead! So I had to reset because there were no actions available and no option to skip! But ok, I was going to be defeated in any case.

RTP is a nice little game. simple but fast and challenging: the game works on small numbers (don't expect to inflict 9999 damage!) and short, fast gameplay but is still a very enjoyable experience, with a mix of old and new ideas. Not a game for everyone or something that will play for many hours (due to the lack of variety) but still a clever and well realized idea!