That term sums up Centuria in a nutshell. At first glance, it seems like "yet another old school tribute" like Hero's Realm, Dragon Fantasy, and Generica; however, UPRC and company wisely integrate some modern game design theory into the mix to help differentiate the game from those RM classics. The results are generally good, but the jury's out on a few things.

Make no mistake about it: this is a fun, albeit simple game, and UPRC has proven that he has the chops to create competent works. It would have been nice if the demo had shown a few more "progressive" steps to really make the game live up to my review title, but there's still a lot of game left to see.

Presentation
Much like Generica and other old-fashioned tributes, Centuria boasts those classic 8-bit graphics in the same vein as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. The graphics are fairly charming here, though UPRC goes for a slightly more minimalistic approach than, say, Kentona. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the areas are still visually appealing enough.

Music was generally good and fitting, though some of the tracks hurt my eardrums a bit. I'll chalk this up to the limited and high-pitched nature of 8-bit music: it really is hit and miss. These questionable tracks were offset by some great ones, such as the boss theme and the theme of the first castle. Good stuff there.

Story
The story is about as basic as you'd expect: you're a chosen one (literally "chosen" as I'll explain in the gameplay section), and you have to help out the various kingdoms and regions of this world. You'll be rewarded for doing tasks...but it won't be easy, and you'll need the help of some locals. Part of me was hoping for a little more "development" in this department, especially considering some of the major progressive elements included in the gameplay, but I still found myself interested in this world enough. Why? Quests!

The quests all have a little story behind it, and the NPCs often change their dialogue to accompany the goings-on. Speaking of dialogue, it's solid and I never had a gripe with the writing at any point in the game. Your protagonist is silent, but it's kid of cute how it's presented: he or she (in my case she) will have text boxes full of "????" and "!!!!" - cute stuff.

Again, it's effective for what it is, but I'd like to see a little more development if the creator(s) are willing.

Gameplay
Some may say that this is a game with an identity crisis. It's a classic "fated heroes" quest with 8-bit graphics, simple combat, survival-oriented dungeon crawling that is undermined by touch encounters (!!!!! touch encounters in an old school game !!!!!), and a slow pace.

But they'd be so, so wrong.

The progressive elements added to Centuria help to make it more refreshing here in 2014, and give it the potential to supercede Dragon Fantasy and Generica - and possibly even give Hero's Realm a run for its money, but that would be an amazingly tall task due to the perfect storm of design elements in that behemoth. Some things just need enhanced execution and better fleshing out.

First and foremost, as anyone would expect, the battle system is turn-based and you have a party of heroes with very specific skill sets. You do get to choose some details about your main character (mine was a female fire mage/pyromancer, though she very well could've ended up as a male warrior), and you'll recruit plenty of heroes along the way (up to 7 in this demo). Like I said, their skill sets are very much specified (e.g. paladins will have a defense buff and a heal, but nothing else) - this is both good and bad.

On the one hand, these characters are all equally important in battle, and there will be some serious potential for awesome synergy later in the game. On the other hand, there's not really much to do in the demo's 150+ encounters other than attack and use the 1-2 spells available. You don't get additional spells as you level (at least as of the demo). The characters do have a special "burst" skill that requires 50 TP, but I found these skills to be pointless. Many of them are area-of-effect spells; what's the point of these if the only time you'll accumulate enough TP to use them in boss battles, when you're up against a single powerful foe? This is amplified by the fact that the burst spells are really just variations of the character's moves (for the most part). I think these should be worth less TP (maybe 25-30) and there should be a really powerful 75+ TP move that would be great for boss battles - sort of like a limit break.

I can see this skill system becoming an issue as the game goes on. Will I eventually become bored of the fights, especially because there are so many of them and leveling is rather slow? I hope not!

As I mentioned above, there are plenty of party members to recruit. Unfortunately, one of the small gripes I had with this system is that most of these new allies start at low levels. My last two recruits never caught up to my first three characters, who were all at the temporary max level of 5 by the end of my 2-hour experience. This makes them kind of weak in battle - a blessing and a curse. Although this gave me new wrinkles of strategy (I decided to give them items that decreased their chances of getting targeted by enemies), I also felt that it was punishing me for fighting and questing earlier in the game. Now I had to do even more fighting just to get them up to speed. So this was kind of a mixed bag.

Also, one of the characters I received, a warrior, was already very similar to one of my first party members. As a result, I never even used her in battle once: and she stayed at level 3. I do think that characters not in your party should still gain equal EXP. Combine this with having new recruits start at our main character's level, and I'll be much more into the recruitment system. I would also like to see them all get a sidequest and some backstory/development, which would add even more "progressive" elements to this game.

So what really makes me call this game "progressive old school"? The answer lies in some of the above design elements, but it's focused more on the out-of-combat gameplay.

First of all, this world is already shaping up to be huge - there are sea caves, abandoned castles, and plenty of other places to traverse. Extrapolate this over the course of a full game, and you're looking at a game with far more optional content than any of the early Dragon Quest of Final Fantasy games. I would've liked to have seen a couple more locations on the world map, mainly because it was just so huge - another cave and a small house with a quest would've been great.

Speaking of quests, there are plenty of them (about a dozen in this 2-hour demo). Most of these are very rewarding, and only a few are required to advance the story. Most of them are enjoyable, though the wheat collecting was a little annoying because they were dispersed over such a large area and you had to find every single one of them. These quests were generally well thought out and had a nice backstory behind them (well, at least for this kind of game). This is progressive gaming right here! Bringing western design elements into a JRPG is what Xenoblade did so well, and I'll be excited to see it fleshed out in this game and some of the other RM games that are doing the same thing.

(It would've been nice if the quests in the second town had more rewards. I felt like I was left hanging on a couple of them.)

I loved the achivement system in this game. The rewards were all good and I felt like they were attainable, but not cheap. Some of them are legitimately challenging (such as defeating the first boss at level 1, when regular enemies can kill you in two hits!) while others were inevitable benchmarks (such as finding 20 hidden items). I never did encounter a rare enemy, so I was kind of disappointed that I didn't get the "fight a rare enemy" achievement.

Achievements are a progressive element that help breathe life into old school gameplay. Why? Old school games require a lot of grinding and are often survival-based. Expect to burn a lot of items and MP over the course of a dungeon crawl. Achievements give you a little bit more to look forward to, especially in the absence of a world-class plot. I hope this system becomes more intricate over time!

The other big progressive element is the lack of random battles. No random battles in an old school game is like watching baseball on a time limit: the pacing is faster but nothing is lost as a result. You'll still have to grind, and you'll still have a tough time slogging through dungeons at low levels. But now most encounters are on your terms. If you don't want to fight 10 battles on your way between towns, then you don't have to!

This instantly makes old school-style games twice as playable, especially when they have the amount of backtracking and optional content as this one.

Speaking of leveling, I do have a bit of a gripe there. Leveling up is slow, but each level give you quite a large bonus. I kind of wish the levels were easier to attain but the stat boosts were smaller. I would feel like I was making more progress, and this might help with your balancing. I was kicking serious butt by the time I cleared the first region of quests, but then I got to the new area and was getting reamed...until I finished gaining that next level, and then everything became easy again. A smoother development/leveling pace would really help.

That sort of ties into my balancing concerns. Generally, this game is well balanced: items are right on the money in terms of cost and effect, and equipment is fantastic. I do have some issues with the handling of money: pots and chests may only have 4-6 gold, but you can sell that tunic dropped by a slime for 75 gold. Some tweaking here would be great.

Battle balancing is the same way. The early and mid parts of the demo are quite challenging - and even the first boss is tough since you'll only have 3 party members. But by the end of the demo, nothing could even touch me. The goblin boss was a piece of cake, especially for a game in this genre. I recommend retweaking your balancing a little bit.

Conclusion
With all that said, it's a fun and refreshing game. The progressive design elements helped keep me playing through the demo's numerous battles, though overall I'd like to see these ideas fleshed out a bit more. Additional skills, rebalancing of some enemies/rewards, smoother leveling, and perhaps even more optional content would have all made this demo one of the best on RMN. As it stands, it's still a damn good demo and a fun 2-hour experience. I have high hopes, and high expectations, for this one!

Story: 3/5
Gameplay: 3.75/5
Presentation: 4/5
Fun Factor: 4/5
Overall: 3.69/5