Neverspring Chronicles

For an $8.00 game, you really can't go wrong here. Neverspring Chronicles: Phoenix Down is a classic turn-based RPG with a minor active-battle system (you can get off extra damage through quick time events), with a story encompassing conflicts between gods, countries, and men; focusing on developing the individuals driving said conflict. While the story is fairly generic, it's well written, the characters are engaging and distinct, the setting is a fun near-apocalyptic magic-punk, which clearly has room for many more installments to come. My only gripe with the game is that it is extremely buggy; it crashes often, especially towards the end, and it's easy to soft lock in places (especially towns) because townsfolk will occaisonally randomly decide to stop moving in unfortunate spots while you're interacting with objects. There are also bugs with the level up system; sometimes you don't gain stats when levelling up, sometimes you lose stats when levelling up. Also, your gear randomly un...

A pretty solid one! Not sure how to put it into words, but you can really tell it's a passion project: there's a lot of love that shows into a lot of aspects of the game. Several aspects caught me off guard by being surprisingly better to what I expected going in (having played the old-school Final Fantasy games beforehand). For example, unlike old-school RPGs, I never felt like I had far too many resources: you really need to upgrade your equipment to catch up with the game's level, but you don't have unlimited resources of cash to do so, which leads to interesting choices. Also, the game is fairly stingy with mana replenishment, which makes an awful lot of sense within the worlbuilding. Also, the story is surprisingly nuanced, especially when compared with, say, Final Fantasy IV and the such. You can really see the motives of several parties and "understand where they¡re coming from", with the "irredemably evil" archetype used only sparingly and to great effect (both because it ai...

developed by one man. this is a fun game and priced right !