RPG Maker MV

Genre: Content Creation Application / Turn-Based RPG

Players: 1, Online Content Sharing

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Review:

RPG Maker MV, released on PC in 2015 and ported to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2020, is a Content Creation Application in a long-running franchise that allows players to create and share their own custom-made RPGs. This series has something of an established pedigree, as multiple cult hit games have been developed using versions of the software over the years – To the Moon was originally created on RPG Maker software, the Corpse Party franchise began its life as an RPG Maker game, and infamously Super Columbine Massacre RPG also has RPG Maker to thank for its existence.

In part because of this, would-be game designers tempted to buy RPG Maker MV might picture themselves creating a game that is similarly embraced by players. And while that is theoretically possible, it is highly unlikely that this dream will come even close to reality for most who create something using the Nintendo Switch version of the software. This is for multiple reasons, but the simplest one may be that the Nintendo Switch version lacks some of the important utility of the PC version – namely, the ability to edit the Javascript at work behind the scenes, and the ability to publish a self-contained Javascript app of your game that you can peddle as your own product.

Still, perhaps you’re not looking to sell your game on Steam, but just want to share it with the world. The Nintendo Switch version of RPG Maker MV is fully capable of doing that… but there is an extremely steep learning curve involved in actually creating something playable. RPG Maker MV begins with a frustratingly brief tutorial that goes over the basic functions of the game, but this tutorial glosses over the majority of features and options available in this package, many of which will confuse or outright mystify would-be game creators. There are no tooltips here, no help menu, no extended tutorials… in fact, the game won’t even let you revisit the opening tutorial after you go through it once.

In other words, if you want to use this application and have any amount of success with it, you’re going to need to consult online user guides and wikis, because the game itself makes little effort to make its use understandable to players.

This isn’t just a matter of lacking tutorials and poorly-documented settings. RPG Maker MV seems dead-set on over-complicating things that shouldn’t be that complicated. The simple act of creating a room to move around in proved to be an ordeal, having to sort through multiple menus to try to find the tiles I wanted, and then discovering that the floor I created could only be walked on vertically, not horizontally, despite pulling from the same page of tiles as another floor that allowed free movement. Why is this? I still don’t know, although I imagine I could probably get an answer if I became a member of the game’s creation community and posted a question about it on a message board or something.

To some, this won’t be seen as an issue. After all, isn’t it great that creators are working together to problem-solve and help each other build better experiences? But if I need to seek the help of a community simply to create a walkable floor, that seems excessive.

That’s not even getting into the scripting of events, the adjusting of stats of player-characters and monsters, the adjustment of countless behind-the-scenes elements that give this game a great deal of flexibility… make no mistake, this software affords its most dedicated users a wealth of options to make their own custom RPG… but only the most dedicated users will make it that far.

There are other issues here beyond this game’s steep learning curve. The controls are awkward and take some getting used to. However, worse than this is that often making selections in the application’s menu will require the game to take a moment to load without putting up the game’s actual loading screen. This frequently makes it seem like either the game isn’t registering your button presses, or has frozen up. Multiple times while playing this application to review it, I briefly thought that I caused the software to crash, only to realize that it was doing one of these uncommunicated loads. At other times, this unresponsiveness was due to a menu requiring a different button to be pressed than what seemed to be the correct one.

I should note that while this application does have touchscreen controls, these controls feel even more frustrating at times due to this game frequently pausing to load things or expecting an input other than what the player is naturally inclined to make.

There are at least some solid RPG-style songs and sounds included here, but I’ll note that the default sounds for menu selections are ear-piercingly terrible, making it a crapshoot when you try another user’s game – did they take a moment to swap out the terrible sounds for ones that won’t drive you up a wall? It’s like playing Russian Roulette with your sanity each time you fire up a new game…

The graphics, meanwhile, are fine, if archaic – this game uses 2D pixel art visuals that don’t seem very much beyond what was available in the 16-bit era, and they generally lack that era’s charm. The Nintendo Switch version of the game also suffers in this area because there is no ability to import your own graphics, and this game does not include any sort of graphics editor – you are stuck with what is included here. Even worse, you cannot mix tile sets on the same screen – if you want to use a chair from one tile set and a wall from another, you’re out of luck.

One bright spot here is that if players don’t want to deal with all the hassle of trying to figure out this software, they can at the very least access the games created by other more dedicated users. However, this is hardly a reason in itself to purchase the full software, as the freely-available RPG Maker MV Player will let you do the same thing without spending a single cent. Of course, that’s not to say that RPG Maker MV doesn’t benefit from the free access to its games – it does mean, after all, that your games will be available to everyone, not just those who bought RPG Maker MV.

However, I should note one major flaw with downloading games created by other players – it takes an excruciatingly long time to do. It’s inexplicable why this would be the case, too – it’s not like these games need to download art assets. And of course, you can’t queue games to download and then go play something else while it works, everything has to be done while the application is running. Ugh. Even after downloading a game, you’ll spend a lot of time in loading screens- games take an extraordinary amount of time to load and to save your game.

Oh, there is one other issue I need to mention here – this game’s profanity filter is extremely overzealous, redacting anything even remotely close to something that could be considered offensive. Just how bad is it? “Who is hitting me? It is a goblin who moved next door! This is exactly what I said would happen!” gets censored to become “Who i@@@@@ting me? It i@@@ goblin w@@@@@ved next door! This i@@@@actly what I said would happen!” (except with asterisks instead of @ symbols). Any game created using RPG Maker MV that wasn’t painstakingly proofread will be full of these redactions, regardless of how innocent the maker’s intent was.

If this review of RPG Maker MV seems extremely negative, take it as coming from the perspective of a more casual user of this Content Creation Application – this simply is not an application that is meant for me. However, I would argue that it isn’t meant for the overwhelming majority of those who will have an interest in using the software. Prospective game designers hoping for something like “Mario Maker, but for RPGs”, will find themselves in for a rude awakening, and even those hoping for a game design kit with competent tutorials, an intuitive interface, and useful descriptions for its features will find those expectations obliterated here.

And yet, even with how absolutely atrocious this application is for newbie would-be game designers, I cannot go so far as to say that it is outright bad, because I know that there will be a small portion of those who get their hands on it who will jump through all of the unnecessary hoops the game forces them through, who will go through the painstaking process to learn how to use it, and who will be able to find a way to use this software to create something special. Just know that for the overwhelming majority of the people who read this, that person will not be you.

tl;dr – RPG Maker MV is a Content Creation Application in the long-running series where users can create their own RPG and share it. Unfortunately, this software does a terrible job explaining its functions, is unnecessarily confusing, does a poor job conveying information to the player, and has an unintuitive and frustrating interface. For those willing to dedicate themselves to reading through countless wikis and spending a significant portion of their life solving this game’s problems on online message boards, this game still holds an immense potential to create something special… but most will find this software’s flaws too steep a hill to climb to reach that potential.

Grade: C-

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