SaturN

First Thoughts
If I hadn't seen a screenshot on the front page of RMN, I would have missed out on this game altogether. At first glance, it looks like just about every other RM2K/3 game out there, especially the ones that are made for events like in a 30 day challenge. That's ok with me, because I often look for games that are small and use 98% RTP assets, because I like seeing how each game designer uses RTP in their own imaginative ways.

Long story short... I decided to play "Saturn" with zero expectations going into it, heck, there isn't even a title screen, but I was actually hooked on this game!

Story
Saturn has very little story to tell. Your character is never named and he never speaks, but he's clearly got a purpose to investigate the appearance of four mysterious landmarks. A Cave, A Mine, A Volcano, and a Temple. By talking to NPCs you start to get a glimpse of who your character is and why he's putting himself in danger, but the mystery is all revealed at the end, so I won't spoil it.
Oddly enough.. there are no references to the word "Saturn" anywhere so the game could have been called "The Adventure of the no-named hero" and the story would still play out just fine.

Game play and features
I am loving the game play in Saturn. You've got two attacks, a potion bottle, a bounty system for monsters, enhanced equipment configurations, and store owners who do not let you pick what to buy!

Attacks:

As you walk around, you'll battle enemies on screen using the Z and X keys. Z will strike the enemy directly in front of you, while X will use a special attack can hit multiple enemies at once. So in a way it's very Zelda like except you have 2 weapons. The monsters are plentiful and re-spawn if you leave the screen and come back. Your special attack is much stronger at first, but it has a cool down period so you have to wait before you can use it again. You'll use both weapons throughout the entire game. Most of the time, you can employ hit and run tactics and you'll only get hurt if you back yourself into a corner.

Potion Bottle:
The potion bottle is a great feature. As you kill enemies, your potion bottle fills up just a little bit. You can use the potion bottle to heal yourself anytime once it's more than half full by pressing 1 (or any number key). Using it will cause your HP to rise as the potion depletes, at which point you can just kill more enemies to refill it. When you've leveled up a few times, you'll also start gaining a little HP after every kill without the bottle.

Bounty System:
There are signs posted in the towns that show 5 monsters in the area that need to be eliminated. Once you have dispatched the required number of monsters of that type, you can return to the sign and collect your bounty and get a token that is used in the equipment store. These monsters are generally stronger than those around it and have a higher chance of afflicting status ailments on you.

Buy Equipment with Gold and Tokens:
Well.. "BUY" is not exactly the right word. Once you have received a token for collecting a bounty, you can trade it in along with some gold to get one of 5 items in that store. But it's a roll of the dice which one you get! Don't worry though, you'll never get a duplicate of an item you already own. If you don't get the one you want, go hunt another bounty and get another token. If you get all five tokens in each area, you'll get all 5 items.

Equipment Combos:
Your character has 4 empty slots for equipment, plus one slot for a special item. The "equipment" isn't actually weapons and armor really.. they are bonuses to your starting equipment. To increase your damage, you'd add Weapon I or Weapon II to one of the four available slots. To increase defense, you pick Armor I or Armor II. The challenge comes from decided what to put in those four slots. For example... you can have Weapon I, II, III, and IV in your slots and you'll do massive damage with your primary attack, but you'll have minimum defense, status resistance, or healing factors. If you can play the game without getting hit, you can kill really hard enemies with less than 3 hits. But if you touch the enemy, you're dead meat. The special item slot can only use artifacts that you get from doing side quests or bosses. I stuck with Dual Wield (for double damage), but there are other good ones. Some are trade offs however. For example there's a special item that doubles the gold dropped by monsters, but you earn no exp. Ultimately.. the configuration is up to you how to use your equipment and special item slots.. it just depends on your playing style. Your character will eventually cap out at level 50, and you'll do a fair amount of grinding towards the end of the game if you want to get ALL of the items.

Graphics and Custom Menu
Saturn has it's own custom menu system, a HUD to show hit points, cool down, gold, status ailments, and your potion bottle. The custom menu appears when you want to view your status, change equipment, or gamble for items at the store.
The pictures used for the custom menu system fit very well with the game and it looks completely natural. Wanted posters for bounties are pretty cool to view as well.


Music
The music appears to be strictly RTP assets. Most of the time the music fits the scene well, such as inside dungeons. But there are occasions when travelling just outside of town, the music seems a bit too happy for fighting monsters.

Overall
I give Saturn a score of 3.5, it's an enjoyable game to play! Going through each of the different acts was fun, even if it became rather repetitive over time. The final dungeon is large, and I spent an ungodly amount of time here grinding for the last items to get from the store. While each act is different, the screens within each act didn't vary very much from each other. What I didn't mention yet was the all the minigames in Saturn. I thought it was brilliant to include minigames in between acts and during each act's fetch quest. They break up the action in small doses and adds that little extra enjoyment. The only minigame that frustrated me was in the Calm Woods, where you have to follow the boss's path exactly as he does. Try it and you'll see!