Customer Reviews

RPG Maker 3

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Gamers are very picky. I know, because I am one. We want good, fun games and don't care how we get it as long as it's there. Very few gamers actually think about that last part. I'm here to say, after spending countless hours with Agetec's RPG Maker 3, that I appreciate developers a whole lot more and I am well informed on how difficult it really is to make your own video game.

As I said, this isn't a game. This is a designer's tool that is available for people hoping to be developers in the future. In that sense, Agetec has provided a great little package. RPG Maker features several tools and provides so many different things to do that it is entirely possible to spend hundreds of hours making a game to call your own. You can create character classes, then characters to put in those classes. You create items and set their price, uses, and who can use them. You make your own special attacks, enemies, cities, dungeons, world maps, events, and cut scenes. There is a ridiculous amount of things to do and it's completely up to you, the designer, to make use of the tools and come up with a good game.

Unfortunately, as I said, making a game is pretty damn hard. Agetec doesn't make it much easier with how they set up a few things. For example, making different events and linking them together is one of the hardest things I think I've ever done. Maybe it's so difficult to me because Agetec's developer lingo doesn't register or come close to being comprehensible, but anyone with experience should probably slide through the menus with ease. Once I got the hang of it, it wasn't too bad; linking conversations and options together with battles and other events wasn't all that tough after a few hours of practice. Luckily, it is always possible to Play Test your game and find errors in code, which is easily accessible in the Editor menu.

Another thing that might require the use of a spreadsheet program (like Excel) or just writing down numbers is keeping track of attributes and parameters. While making characters and monsters, it is extremely important to remember levels, HP, attack powers, and the like. After all, you don't want to have a tough time with monsters at the start of the game because you set their HP too high or their attack power up. Alternatively, you have to be sure to keep them challenging. That was my problem; I made all of my enemies rather easy and battles ended in two or three turns.

The biggest problem with RPG Maker 3 is that it looks and sounds as ugly as sin and the in-game controls are the same horror. The graphics are very archaic, which isn't surprising. Still, I was hoping for at least a slightly better-looking presentation. For example, there are over 50 animation effects available when making an attack. I tended to not use them, simply because they look awful. The character models are boxy and some of the different color variations are ridiculous. The music is repetitive and generic as could be, and the sound effects are similarly generic. I'm not expecting graphics or music on a Final Fantasy level, but I thought that the character models and environments could look a little better than they do.

Last of all, the controls are awful. By default, your on-screen character during your game walks at a snail's pace and only speeds up while holding the triangle button. Walking around a town feels almost like driving a go-kart because there is no way to turn around without making a circle and then heading in an opposite direction.

A very important thing to note is that buying or even playing RPG Maker 3 without a USB keyboard is a foolish choice indeed. I mentioned that it takes a long time to put things together, and that time is increased tenfold without the use of a keyboard. Even if you hunt-and-peck on a keyboard, you won't wear out your controller and your hands by typing in conversations with a controller.

Despite a lot of superficial complaints, however, RPG Maker 3 is the best way to put your imagination into a playable game. It might be ugly, but it's yours. My game was incredibly stupid, but for every minute of frustration, I'd later have a feeling of accomplishment any time I got something to work. Naturally, I'd recommend this to gamers interested in putting their ideas into virtual reality. If you're impatient, give it a try. You'll probably still spend hours on the game, even if you despise what is produced.

I decided to write this review pretty early, but only because I want to save some people their money. It's not that I hate the game, but it really just doesn't have enough substance to make it a reccomendable purchase.

Somebody has found something to complain about with each RPG Maker. RPG Maker 1 for playstation was excellent, yet people didn't like spending so much time creating games. The game also had some weird problems. Sometimes certain triggers would not work even though I spent hours inspecting them. Still, it was a fun game to play and it looked and sounded great for a 2d game. RPG Maker 2 was way too complicated. I don't mind spending time having to learn alot to play a game, but some things in RPG Maker 2 were ridiculous. If you wanted your attacks to do damage in a battle, you had to make a trigger for your items and a trigger for your items triggers and then an attack trigger. It was a little too advanced. Still, some people had fun with it.

RPG Maker 3 has improved on some old problems. Alot of people complained about having no character portraits, and they put them in this game. Some of them match up with the characters, however 80 % of them do not look like the character models. That is another problem. There aren't that many character models in the game. It is ridiculous as to how few people there are and how many towns I plan on creating. You will see the same people over and over again. Also, alot of those models don't look good for the characters I have in mind. I just want some normal looking adventurers, yet many of the models are too strange looking. Even worse, your party will consist of the most stereotypical characters ever. Personally, I wanted a thief who could carry an axe. HOWEVER! The only male character model that could carry an axe was a dwarf. If I want my guy to carry an axe into battle, he has to be that dwarf model. If I want some dude to carry a sword into battle, he can either look like a gladiator or Charlton Heston from Ben-Hur. To sum this up, the character models are too limited and probably won't appeal to what you like.

Making towns, houses, and field menus is easy. You can create some interesting places pretty simply. Here's the problem with this feature, you can only create so much towns. You can't create an epic RPG because you are limited to how much stuff you can create. Plus, the game takes like 2400 memory. This is the most I have EVER seen on a game. The second highest was grand theft auto for 1100 memory. The game takes 2400 memory per game you create. Memory cards only come with 8000 or so memory. 2400 is ridiculous.

Creating events is like RPG Maker 1. Most of it is easy and it isn't nearly as complicated as RPG Maker 2. The storytelling feature is interesting. You can only create a limited number of storytelling stuff though, so that sucks.

The controls in the game aren't that good. You can only select options in the battle menu with the d-pad. In the terrain editor mode, the d-pad moves too slow, yet the analog stick moves real fast. To look around your character, you can use the right analog stick, yet it doesn't move fast enough. The worst part aobut the control scheme is walking. I shouldn't have to complain about walking, but it is alot like resident evil. You can only move forward and turn around real slowly. If you hold down the analog stick as far as it can go, your character will walk so f'ing slow. In order to sprint, you have to hold the triangle button down. This is AWFUL. It does not feel comfortable to hold triangle down. Besides, the triangle button is pressure sensitive. If you don't press down on it firmly it doesn't work. They screwed up because they made it so that you have to hold it down as far as it will go, otherwise you won't run.

The most striking problem of all... if you don't want to spend money on a keyboard for your playstation, don't even bother buying this game.

Wait, one more problem. Many times in battle when you cast a spell your playstation will have to slow down and load for a second or two. You will notice this and say, "What the hell? I shot off a fireball and my system had trouble loading?" It confuses me too, but apparently this game can't even handle it's crappy looking spell animations.

Wait, I found another problem. All the spell animations in the game look stupid. You can barely customize them, and it isn't fun doing that. They should of used RPG Maker 2's spell animation stuff because it was really fun and interesting.

To be honest, this game just isn't worth 50 dollars. It can be good, but it is so limited that eventually you won't care about how beautiful the terrain CAN look. If for 50 dollars you got the game, a keyboard, a memory card(because the game takes up a little over 1/4th of your memory card's memory), a hard-drive(there's a feature to use a hard drive because the game can't load up simple spell animations), and a network card to download people's games online, the game might be worth it.

RPG Maker 3 is a software program designed to help newbie coders learn how to make their own adventure game. As you might expect, some people think it is great - and others find it very limited.

Many modern games come with "level creators", so most people who are interested in game design have given a try at putting together a level or two. You lay out the rooms, add in textures, add in a few character models and then see how things go. You quickly learn just how much actual work is involved in designing a level that is enjoyable. It's not just about adding halls and doors. It's about designing a world that seems realistic, that is fun to explore, and that provides challenges.

That all being said, the toolset that you use to create your world should be as easy to use as possible. Since designers themselves often use in-house level design tools to create their own game levels, that should make sense. I'm not sure, therefore, why the RPG Maker 3 tools seem so cumbersome.

Yes, the user needs to be able to think in 3D space, and yes they MUST have a keyboard. That's not an unreasonable request if you're typing in dialogue. And yes, the user needs a few memory cards! When I'm doing song creation on my home PC, I have a very large hard drive to work with. I completely expect when I'm designing games on my PS2 that I have a few memory cards to work with, to save variations of my games and keep backup copies.

That all being said, the game tools should be very easy to use, well organized, and easy to see. RPG Maker 3 just doesn't seem to come through on those points. The command sets are not always intuitive. The graphics are not PS2 worthy. And the components ...

You would think the actual components you had to work with would be relatively high quality. But they're not. The textures, character models, sounds, animations, and virtually every other aspect of your "building blocks" could really be improved. This is in essence the easiest part of the software product for them to have done right! There are trillions of character models out there in a wide variety of games. Why only provide a few stereotypical ones? PS2 developers have done some amazing things with textures and organic objects. Why give us cheezy low-rez versions? It was really rather surprising the low level of items provided with which to make your game.

I am a developer and I fully realize how hard it is to create a game. I understand that the best games come from learning the actual base level language that the console understands, and to work with that. That being said, I have used MANY level generators for games which are easy to use and which provide amazingly good graphics. Usually those level generators are provided as free bonus items included with a full length regular game. For this RPG Maker to sell as a standalone software product - and to have *poorer* level generation and building blocks - makes little sense to me.

Not Well Recommended.

If you have never seen or heard of RPG Maker before, it's not surprising. The line is much more well-known on the PC platform, where the software continues to be accessible and feature-filled. The previous two Playstation versions, on the other hand, have been limited by the size of the memory card and suffering from simplistic graphics and clunky interfaces.

Now we have RPG Maker 3, and you can finally say it is the definitive version of RPG Maker, and a must-have for anyone who wants to make a compelling PS2 RPG.

The first notable change will be the game engine itself. Gone are the "toonish" 3D sprites that were in RPG Maker 2, replaced by a much more "serious"-looking mapping engine and object model renderer. Building very large worlds is now possible, with a lot of options to choose from. The map painter is smooth to use with the analog thumb controller, but a USB Mouse might be an even better tool for mapping with. The amount of detail in this game that can be added is impressive, as you can go from massive world-building to nice-sized towns and castles, and even design all of the interiors of those towns and castles. Making environments just couldn't be easier.

The storytelling engine is pretty basic, but you won't mind it. Like everything else, it is very easy to set up backgrounds for your story sequence, and there are a lot of options that can be used -- background environments or pictures, spinning objects, and character portraits that can be silhouetted. If you are serious about crafting long-texted stories, however, it's best to use a USB Keyboard -- thumbing in text can be time-consuming, but comparatively it's still the best text entry interface of the three.

The best part of the creation process is definitely the character creation parts. You can create characters with a lot of depth to them, or not. PCs, NPCs, Monsters ... it's all here, and it's all extremely easy to use. Finding game balance will take a while to learn, but the samples (and sample game) available on the disc will really help out in this.

So, when all of this is put together, can you make a game with the same quality as popular RPGs like Final Fantasy X? Well, that's where you have to step outside the editor and become a player. After spending some time with it, the game engine itself is pretty good. The environments can be astoundingly large to traverse, the character models are well drawn, and the objects are nicely textured. The battle interface, on the other hand, is good but reminded me too much of the battle interface of Final Fantasy 1 more than Final Fantasy X. It's very simplistic, but still leagues above the previous titles' battle engines.

Even though Enterbrain's latest RPG Maker version (RPG Maker XP for the PC) has many flexible features, it is RPG Maker 3 for Playstation 2 that will eventually win the mass market over and usher in a new age of RPG Maker. After giving RPG Maker 3 nice polish and a more "serious" RPG look, I can't wait to see what Enterbrain's PS3 RPG Maker will look like.

This game is a bit of a disapointment. Sure, you can make your own game, but it'll have to be by the limitations given to you on the disc.

Characters and Monsters-

First of all, I was quite surprised when I found out you can't make your own characters or monsters! Imean, you figure, if you can make your own game, then that'd be a given! But, nope. You have to use a set of pre-made models as your characters, most of which are based off of Fantasy creatures and archetypes, so that pretty much stops you from making a NON-Fantasy genre RPG.

One cool thing, at least, is that your character's picture is drawn in six, different art styles, so you can choose how you want his or her portrait to look, so that's at least something. You can go for an Anime portrait, or more of a traditonal painting type picture, for example.

The character models are a decent number, at close to 50 male and 50 female different character models, but you can't really choose the colors of your models, too much. Basically, there's Color Styles One and Two, which are normal. Three usually changes the ethnicity of your character model, and Four is usually an alien or demon colored palatte.

Text -

I actually bought a Logitech Keyboard controller for this game, only to find out that it doesn't work for this game, which pretty much sucks, as typing is SUCH A CHORE! If you aren't prepared to spend literally hours typing text with your Playstation controller, then DON'T buy this game! I actually wouldn't mind the manual typing that much, but the thing that really irks me is that there are numerous unused buttons on your controller (mainly, the shoulder buttons, select, and start) in the typing screen that easily could've been assigned to do things, such as the Space Bar, Shift, Caps Lock, Numbers, etc. But, no. Instead, you have to do ALL of this by moving your control stick over to the buttons on the display keyboard in the game. No shortcut buttons for Shift, Space, etc.

Come on! Most games that require you to type ANY kind of text at least let you use make a space inbetween words by hitting R1! Needless to say, the typing is very, VERY tedious. I'm patient enough to spend hours typing things by control stick and X alone, but I'm guessing most people won't be.

Assigning Point Values -

Another annoying thing is how they claim how EASY they make it to make your own game, but it's really not. Doing such things, as assigning attribute points to your characters can get you very lost in numbers quickly, if you don't keep track of things. There is no automatic regulation system that makes sure you aren't making your characters too strong or too weak for whichever part of the game you're at, so you have to keep all of this in check, yourself. It is quite easy to make a character too weak or too strong, or not have them level up with enough points, or not have them fairly balanced between each other, or anything else. You can easily get lost in numbers in assigning points and attributes, and there's nothing in the game to help you keep things balanced, so you'll have to be dilligent in balancing out everything, yourself. Unless you're fairly good at math, this won't be easy to do.

Movesets -

A very ANNOYING thing is how virtually everything else in the game has it's own master list, except Moves. For each Class of warrior, you have to make your own moves and assign them power points, effects, and animations. This takes usually about a minute or two to do for each move once you've mastered the process of doing it. The animations for the moves you do are fairly weak, but at least there's enough of them to make moves actually look different from each other. The frustrating thing is that once you've made an entire moveset for one class, the game WON'T let you re-use these moves! You'll spend about half an hour to 45 minutes making a class' moveset, but since the game doesn't have any kind of master list for the moves you've made, you will not be able to re-use them for other characters, without remaking them form scratch.

In other words, every move you make is exclusive only to the warrior class that you made them in. You can't re-use moves you've previously made. This means you'll be spending hours making move after move for your classes of warriors. It'd be a lot simpler if you could just access them from a list and re-use them for other classes, but no. This actually made me want to stop making classes of warriors after eight of them, because after making 128 moves total for every one of my classes, I got sick of making them and didn't want to recreate any new classes after that. The fact that you can't re-use previously made moves is a very annoying thing, that shouldn't have even been an issue here, being you can re-use ANYTHING you've made in the Field Editor section of RPG Maker 3.

Terrain and Town Editing -

Speaking of Field Editing, could making terrain BE any harder, here? I don't think I'll ever learn how to make smooth, unbumpy terrain in the Altitiude editor. Just making your own field is simple enough, but making it Smoothly, is another thing, entirely.

Making towns are simple enough, even if a bit limiting. Basically, you choose what kind of town you're going to make, in which most of differ only by the walls that surround them. Then, after filling in the type of sky, season, time of day, etc., that you want your town to have, you go to the Layout editor and start dropping buildings in them. It's a little annoying that you can't really test out what your town will look like from your character's point of view as you're making it, being that the Layout is a very dizzy-inducing overhead view shot. But it's a small complaint. Out of everything in this game-maker game, the town editor perhaps is the easiest thing to use and the closest thing you'll have to actually making something exactly as you see it. The town space you'll have is a bit small, but enough to actually make a fairly decent RPG village.

Another thing. Why isn't there an option to edit a World Map? It'd be a lot easier to just make an entire country or continent, and just fill the spaces in with towns. But, no. Instead, you have to make fields and towns like "levels," one at a time, and warp to them when playing. That's pretty lame that there's no real Overworld, you can make.

Music -

The songs in this game are fairly decent and standard fair for an RPG title, but also a bit generic. While none of the songs are really bad or anything, my suggestion if you decide to buy this game, would be to preview all of the songs first and then decide which one you won't mind hearing for hours on end while editing your game, because you'll have to stick with hearing that song on an endless loop, for HOURS!

You could be more resourceful and grab your iPod or turn on the radio while editing, but even THAT gets repetitive. There's only so many songs you can stand listening to while spending a very long time editing a video game. I decided to use a non-song, such as the Wind blowing, to avoid having the same track play on an endless loop, driving me insane!

Most of the music is your standard RPG style piano and harpsichord tunes, so the music isn't too bad. Just not that great, either.

Story Aspect -

The storyline editor is more annoying than fun, like you'd probably expect it to be. This all comes from the massive amount of manual controller typing you'll have to be doing. The story elements are only as limited by your imagination, and how long you can manually type before getting arthritis.

Overall -

Overall, I thought making my own game would've been fun. I am certainly patient enough to spend numerous months finely crafting my own game to perfection, if I needed to. But this game-maker title only makes it seem like more of a chore than anything else. I'm sure real game makers actually have more fun making real games than anyone possibly could with this title. I'm a bit dissapointed, overall.

I'd have to say, if they were to expand this series, then:

1) They should come up with other genres. If not other game-making genres, then at least an RPG Maker that's not limited to only Fantasy creatures and settings.

2) They REALLY need to improve the typing, here. You know how your phone can automatically remember words you've texted before in Text Messaging? Well, they need that, here. They should allow you to stockpile a list of Frequently Used Words, or something. And they need to make use of ALL of the buttons on a controller if you're going to spend hours typing things on a standard PS2 controller. Not letting you hit R1 just to make a space or L1 to shift is pretty lazy.

3) They NEED a Character Creator editor, because just using the standard models given pretty much sucks.

4) Field Editing needs to be much easier. Sort of like a "Sim City" style.

5) They need a walkthrough mode, or a help screen, or something. Sort of like that cartoon Paper Clip in Microsoft Word. Especially when it comes to editing terrain and fields.

6) They need to make Moveset editing and Point Assigning a lot easier. Come up with a system, or something. I don't mind losing creative control when it comes to making points and values.

When it comes right down to it, I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone who isn't serious about becoming a video game creator. Because other than people who want to spend their living making RPG games, I can't see anyone else really enjoying the process of making your own RPG title. I'd like to consider myself very creative and highly motivated, but even I found this game to be tedious and tiresome in their layout of making your own game.

It isn't the time it takes making a video game from scratch that gets me. It's how frustrating and ultimately boring it is, making it.

*** Stars.

This is the kind of title I hate to talk bad about, but I would lack integrity if I didn't. Woe is me.

As a diehard RPG fan of the "old days" (NES and SNES rockin' the best ones in my opinion), I couldn't help but desire an "RPG maker." After all, I don't buy PC titles unless they include the very important words "Map Editor Included" or something similar.

For me, customization is my game. I typically spend hundreds of hours (probably thousands, more like it) just in the customization of games as I make scenarios and then tie them to my campaigns. By golly, I do it because I want to see how they play out. (Not to mention the pride in "creating" a cool game for myself or others - knowing full well the makers of the map editors are the real champs.)

RPG Maker 3, bless its little heart, falls short in so many different ways that I only have a meager recommendation for the title. The negatives are too great to mention (like having what seem like 64-bit graphics instead of 512 or awkward interfaces and character movements), even for folks like me who cherish this line of "work."

However, here comes my bleak recommendation...

I will support all things associated with classic RPGs until the day I die. In fact, it was Final Fantasy that inspired me to do this sort of thing. My dream is to make an old school, Final Fantasy-quality RPG some day. RPG Maker 3 is the next step to do that shy of dropping cash to get an advanced education, a new PC, new skills, and programming software and books.

So in reality, my recommendation is that you support all things RPG, trying to find ways to make them popular in today's society. (Obviously we RPGers are a small number, comparatively speaking.) But titles like RPG Maker 3 are our voice in this world of fast-button-pushing video games that seem to corner the U.S. market.

This title was made for us, even if it can't compare to Final Fantasy 1 through 12 (no matter how good you are with it).

In all reality, if you love classic RPGs, you will like RPG Maker 3. To love it would require a different desire regarding RPGs, I would think. But your creative imagination will not decrease from utilizing this product, however, and RPG is the name of the game. This one is for us, good or bad.

"RPG Maker 3" had potential. It could have been a great deal of fun. But there's one HUGE problem holding it back... limitation.

I will admit, when I first got RPG Maker 3 for the PS2, I spent a few months playing with it, and it was fun. You basically build 3D fields, towns and dungeons by setting down preset models of houses and castles and props, and you can use characters from a library of preset models for your party and/or NPCs. You can make "Event Screens" that have text and images to fill out the story. It's just a lot of fun at first.

But after playing with it for a while, you notice the limitations...
-There aren't that many character models. You basically HAVE to use the most generic Warriors, Archers, Dwarfs and Mages imaginable. And the models are all a bit silly looking. And if you plan on making more than one or two towns, you'll have to use the same NPC models over and over again.
-There's no variety in the dungeons or towns either. Similar to the characters, you have very limited options, and you'll be plopping down the same wooden house over and over again.
-Also, you have limits to how much you can put into your game, which is a bit annoying. If you aren't careful, you might have to start deleting things you already put up.
-Also, the animation and flow of your gameplay is kinda poor.

It's a shame, because I really wanted to use this game, but it's too limiting... There should easily have been twice as much material, because as-is, it feels very bare-bones. It's not an awful tool, and I'm sure people can make decent RPGs with it, but I just expected more.

OK, first off I made 2 game on rpg maker 2 and the were a joy to make. I am also getting rpg maker 1 for Christmas. Rpg Maker 3 is just sooooo limited. On rpg maker 2 you could customize your own characters and you had over a hundred models to choose from. On rpg maker 3 you only have about 20-30 and you can't customize them at all. The spells look crappy and you really can't customize the way they look. On rpg maker 2 you have the image editor which allows you to do many things. As far as I know you can't make buildings, can't put random battles in towns and you are very limited on how you can make a dongeon look. All of this you can do in rpg maker 2.

OK, now for the good stuff. First off you can see yourself in battle which is something you couldn't do in the other two. Second, the graphics are way better than the other two games so if you are big on graphics like my mom is this is definitly the version for you. But most important of all it's so easy to use I mean seriously it took me not even a whole week if I add the entire time up together to figure out everything where as on rpg maker 2 I had to end up buying the guid and don't worry if your buying rpg maker 2 get the guide it's on here as well.

So yeah if you're an absolute newbie to the series or picky on grapics trust me you'll want to get this version. But if you're exsperienced with this series and really don't give a hoot about graphic pass this up because you probably won't like it.

First I would like comment on earlier remarks about the graphics , they are not terrible, the best description I can come up with is SEGA Dream cast quality for consolers and Morrowind for PC gamers this software is amazing for what it is if you are interested in making games this is a good choice why you might ask ? well first off some people complain about not undestanding the terms used but in truth they serve as an easy intro to game design iterface wich will pay of if you become serious and move on to Dark basic and Caligari Gamespace or similar software In the time it took to write this my son figured out how to make a dungeon and a town, I came to amazon hoping that prima had made a guide for RPG MKR 3 for my son because they made one for #2 and noticed these crtiques I want Aspiring game designers to know this is a great step forward to making something closer to your ideas into something solid

I wanted to see a vast improvement on the two previous RPG Makers. What I got was a complete waste of money. The game is seriously lacking the simplicity of its siblings. And the load time is so long, you get too frustrated waiting or things to enjoy anything you have created when you finally figure out how to create it... BAH! I'm not impressed and do not recommend this game to anyone, unless they like tedious, time-consuming work.