STEINBEISSER'S PROFILE

Judging by Liberty's personality - she can't stand the success of others, yet still wants to be popular -, I think she is most likely the culprit of the malware-infected itch.io uploads. First she tarnishes the reputation of popular games she isn't able to develop, then she "discovers" these malware-infected uploads to be praised as the savior - a behavior pattern typical of narcissitic arsonists. It's still only a working theory, though, but one I'm confident in since I'll probably get banned for simply stating my reasonable suspicion.

For crying out loud, this game aggravates me! First of all, there are countless spelling mistakes. Is there even one complete sentence that doesn't contain at least one mistake? I'm not a native English speaker, and I played games that violate the English language until its dying breath, but this game is worse. I wouldn't mind (that much) if the story was interesting, yet the story is the most generic, dilettantish piece of crap - even without considering the immersion-breaking shit (Chinese guy + video at the beginning, bin Laden comments, wish fulfillment Ashley "I want to bang dudes who cute girls like me normally don't want to bang" and so on).

And the bugs! For heaven's sake, this is the game's state after all these years? You can't be serious. Did anyone at any point playtest this game even once? I can bear with the awful mapping, but shouldn't bland map designs cause less bugs? The following examples could serve as a RPG Maker "best of" bug show:

Map on which Child Duke recruits Tiffany: The red treasure chest that contains a potion is mirrored. An invisible copy that can be opened an indefinite number of times (one click to close, one click to open again) can be found northwest of the original one's position on the upper edge of the screen (north of the triangle tree formation). After having opened the invisible copy first, the original one can also be opened an indefinite number of times (I didn't test if this can be done with regard to the original one from the start without having opened the copy before).

On the same map: Though it isn't really a bug, it doesn't make any sense to use the inn (50 GP per night) if a save crystal that restores for free is literally fifteen steps away (on the previous map).

The house (time machine) two screens further east "features" incomplete statues and the opportunity to walk on its outer frame (obstruction mapping). What's even worse: The tile that triggers Tiffany's temporary leave can be easily bypassed, even though triggering Tiffany's temporary leave is necessary to advance the story.

After the time travel scene: When stepping on the tile that triggers the "nothing happens" message, the player can continue to press forward (north) and thus walk on tiles he isn't supposed to be able to walk on (obstruction mapping).

When Child Duke returns to his father, he has to fight the Fire Boss again because of the time travel, but why are the treasure chests in this cave empty when they should also be untouched? And, more importantly: Tiffany shouldn't be able to remember Duke. These aren't even mistakes of "time travel can't be explained logically" caliber, these are just stupid consistency errors.

After having defeated Duke's father: Pressing enter on the tile below Duke's father triggers the following dialogue box: "Hi wassup with you did take some care for monsters Didn’t you?" (sic!). If a dialogue with Duke's father is initiated while standing on this tile, the aforementioned dialogue is added at the end of the conversation.

Inn on the King's Road to the castle: Sleeping here can only be triggered manually by pressing enter on the right tile. Since the night stop offer isn't triggered automatically, this turns into an obstruction mapping problem at the same time (the player can walk one tile further north "into" the inn than intended).

Same map: Several river tiles east of the small bridge can be walked on. The same applies to the deep blue water tiles east of the inn and to the ones (and several other water tiles) on the next map (obstruction mapping). Those water tiles can also be walked on in the northwestern part of the forest where the party has to fetch the apple. Speaking of the apple: Just fetching it makes it possible to advance the story. The player doesn't even have to deliver the apple to Duke's father.

Mountain cave east of Duke's house: There's a house that can't be entered (despite its door being open) - though it's probably irrelevant, since there aren't any mapped out house interiors anyway.

After the boss fight against Justin, the party is teleported out of the dungeon. If the player returns to the end of said dungeon, he can repeat the whole scene and fight Justin again.

I don't know if I want to complete this game - maybe when I'm in the mood to laugh about how bad this game is, though it's not amusing that this game made me shed my final tear. It's probably better to move on, all the more when even the nicely done FMV feel totally out of place.

I downloaded and played OceanPower from this CentroRPG site. While playing the game, it crashed several times, because it needed a few of the 38 files Don Miguel had added to his RTP - the ones mentioned here:

https://wiki.easyrpg.org/development/rtp-database/2000-rtp

Since I couldn't find those files on the internet, I replaced them with whatever I deemed appropriate, which nonetheless caused some weird effects (e.g. I had to bear with some NPCs being walking accessory symbols), but at least made the game playable.

The bottom line is that it doesn't suffice to have the RPG Maker 2000 RTP from the software's commercial release. In order to play some of those old games (especially the ones found on CentroRPG), you also need Don Miguel's added RTP files. Hopefully, RMtool.exe will be able to deliver on this front, too.