I... I don't know how to score this one... it deserves... a 3.7 or something? 3.5 feels too low for what it accomplished, but I don't know if it deserves a 4.0 given the amount of time it took to arbitrarily grind random battles at some points and the lack of variety in the gameplay.

STORY:
Here we are, on a happy little island, where everybody's dream is to make a "dreamboat." The island is called RMTopia. ...Oh I get it. Basically dreamboats are airships. A dreamboat's radar falls out of the sky, and the adventurers who converge on it decide to team up and gather the rest of the pieces (which the radar conveniently points to) together. Along the way they see interesting places and pretty stuff. It's a cliche'd, cheerful little tale, filled with obvious jabs at the genre, with a much deeper underlying theme that the details build upon. (The fact that the enemies are all forum monsters, the name of the recurring boss, etc.) Because of the dissonance between the extremely stereotypical world and the extremely innovative party and enemy designs, I was actually very curious as to where things were going from the beginning, despite the mask of cliches the game wore. At the end, I was rewarded for sticking with it, as things came together impressively and the conclusion sent what was by far the deepest message of any of the stories. Among the contest entries, I've seen joke games, attempts at serious fantasy tales, attempts at making the default RTP resources INTO a joke game or serious fantasy tale, which is a feat in and of itself (I myself was unsuccessful), but none of the stories had much weight to them. This game, however, delivered a message, and despite a few simple second-language errors, the message was delivered very well.

GAMEPLAY:
The face of the gameplay was extremely creative. The game uses a class system somewhat reminiscent of Final Fantasy III - you start off as a weak default class with hidden potential, and can freely change between four other classes in the central town, each with their own unique set of skills. The classes, Developer, Writer, Artist, Musician, and Engineer, all fit the RMTopia theme, and their skills were all fitting as well. (My favorite was the Writer's Deus Ex Machina skill.) Health/Mana/TP were all renamed as well, and the re-namings all worked with the overarching them, but it took me a while to figure out how some of the items and skills worked at first because of it. (It took me even longer to figure out what some of the status ailments did.)

The class system and the creative theme, however, are most of the gameplay's appeal. Other than your time re-supplying in town, you walk in a straight line to 5 different points, fighting such enemies as "n00b," "Polite Troll," and "Bait Reviewer" along the way, with a rather huge difficulty spike between the second and third objective points, and no real direction as to where you're supposed to go after the first one. (So if you pick the wrong path you just get annihilated and try again.) Thanks to the massive difficulty spike (and a less ridiculous but still significant one at the very end), I found myself spending a long time grinding. The fights themselves were rather "meh" as well, since aside from the last boss and maybe one other fight it was more a matter of slowly bashing each other to death than using strategy and status ailments and the like. (Only the "musician" class really had anything more advanced than creative ways to do damage it seemed.) I actually had to take a quick break in the middle because I wasn't in the mood to grind.

OK fine, now I understand how some people felt the first time they ran into my last optional boss. If you've been mashing your way through a game and then you get hit with a brick wall, it stings a bit. To be fair, games like the Final Fantasy and Shin Megami Tensei series have been getting away with that for ages, but it's frustrating when an hour long game expects you to grind for part of that hour.

GRAPHICS:
The game's description sells itself short a bit, the original artwork really was pretty nice. I thought it added to the outwardly happy-go-lucky nature of the game and really set it apart as something unique.

SOUND:
The sound effects were pretty standard, but the music was unique and very well chosen. I thought it added to the experience a little, rather than just being there to fill the silence.

ATMOSPHERE:
The entire game was carefully set up to deliver a message. And it did so successfully. Everything fit together so well that this game is definitely in the top 3 of the RM Venture contest in terms of atmosphere setup for me, possibly #1.

FINAL VERDICT:
The gameplay was a chore at times (it wasn't just the grinding, it was that the grinding took so long and was constrained to such a tiny, cramped little space. There could have at least been some equipment to look for in the meantime). That was very unfortunate, because the entire rest of the game was excellent, and in the end I was glad I stuck through it.

I'd recommend that people at least give this one a shot, and if you ragequit then ask somebody how it ended.