Game Master Plus — the expanded and streamlined remake of Game Master, an epic journey for RPG/adventure/puzzle lovers. Choose Elsa's class, customise her and her allies' builds and find out about the mystery of the Wizard and his 'Game' while collecting carefully designed items and listening to beautiful music.
Accompany Elsa, a spirited teen-age girl who has just moved to a small town called Home with her mother. Set out on a quest full of mysteries to unravel: Why does the ancient game board in the Slumberwoods work only for you? What does the Elder know about it? Who was that guy they call the ‘Wizard’, and could he maybe still exist?
7 user reviews
7 Steam reviews
| LANGUAGE | AUDIO | SUBTITLES | INTERFACE |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | — | — | Y |
Context: In the the 1 hour I played of this, I managed to do one of the board games. Stopped at the area with the jumping puzzle, where you talk to the elf gathering silent water then she vanishes.
Why I decided to refund this:
The combat system is basic. If the class or encounter design was interesting and/or challenging, this would be perfectly fine, but this was not the case from what I've seen. This is particularly problematic because this "game board" concept seems to revolve around combat. The combat also had unnecessary animations with the shaking of health bars after every attack. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but you start to feel how much time it wastes when you have to see it over and over again. I also disliked how we couldn't see enemy health
The character-building aspect seemed to be ok but I never really got far enough to fully get a grasp on it. You have 3 stats in the game but there seems to be quite a lot of utility for equipment(like abilities tied to equipment). Like I said though, I never really got far enough to see much of this.
The game lacks explanations or has them in weird, out of place locations. There's definitely things which should've been included at the start rather than scattered outside the hub (mainly talking about the signs). And iirc there was one thing that wasn't explained well. An attack(buff maybe?) that permanently lowered defense but it never said if it was until combat or literally permanently.
Exploration consists of having to search the environment for random items. Not a bad idea, but proper exploration requires structure, direction and support, something this game lacks. Incentives to explore are strong from a gameplay perspective, but weak from a player perspective. And by that, I mean what you find during exploration is powerful and useful but not very enticing beyond that. The book with the lore in it is not very interesting(or maybe it's just written poorly, I don't remember). The combat-related items are powerful but uninteresting. The stat buffs are nice but again, not that interesting because the stats themselves aren't(something like bleed chane/damage or counter attack or something would've been more fun). There are blue orbs to collect, but I can't see any discernible way to discover them aside from trying to interact with everything in the environment. This isn't good because exploration should be more purposeful or directed.
On a related note, the jumping puzzle was poorly done. There were no indicators on where you could jump and I think the distance was inconsistent. It was rather annoying and the point where I decided to give up. Didn't want to risk going over 2 hours.
The story is weak and abrupt. It's more accurate to say things just happen rather than tell a coherent story. Some character interactions(like with the engineer) feel like we skipped the initial meeting and fast forwarded to when characters know each other.
Had minor performance issues at a point or two.
There is this odd, short delay with cutscenes sometimes.
There are typos and tbh, it felt like this developer was not a native English speaker at times. Which is fine, but you can tell, which is the problem. Perhaps the most egregious is the "cent" typo.
This might seem like an awful lot to take out of 1 hour of gameplay. But most aspects of the game left a pretty weak impression for me. They were red flags, indicators of what the game would be like later on. Is this the worst game ever? No. But it's not good either. I'd say it's on the lower end of RPGMaker games and not at a level I'd expect from a paid game. Though for me personally, that's more an issue of time than price.
Sound: 6
Graphics: 6
Gameplay: 7
Commands: 6
Fun: 4
Time to load / lag: 9
Bugs / Problems: 9
Final score: 4
[h1]Story[/h1]
The first half of the game doesn't have much plot beyond clearing game boards because of the protagonist's curiosity, though there is some lore about the previous heroine. The second half has more lore and more stakes, as well as several plot bombshells. While I did like the story of the second half, I can see the lack of real conflict in the first half turning new players off before they can get to the better half.
[h1]Gameplay[/h1]
The first few parts of the game make it hard to gather any resources. Enemies don't drop money and they aren't guaranteed to drop sellable items, meaning the player is stuck in a resource drought situation if they try to do traditional grinding. This can be intimidating because in the beginning, the only way to fully recover the robot is to pay 10 cents, which means inefficient gameplay can result in waste of limited money. The resource situation does get better in the later parts of the game, since the player can find free healing/save statues and an accessory that increases the drop rate.
As for combat balance, I can't fully answer that, since I only did a Joker run, though I will say that I disagree with the game's description claiming that it's "easy-going" and would argue it's more of a mid-difficulty game in the long run. All enemies follow very specific patterns and it's possible to plan around their AI, but in the later parts of the game, they can easily wreck the party with ailments like confusion, the exact effects of their skills is hard to determine through observation alone, and they tend to have higher speed. Healing, reviving, and ailment prevention tend to be more difficult or limited than in most other RPGs depending on the chosen class. Ironically, the supposedly gimmicky Joker class is probably the strongest in terms of healing and ailment prevention, making it the easiest class in the long run despite its weaker offensive capabilities and early game limitations.
For some reason, the game gives the player the option of using the Meteo Crusher skill once they unlock Moonlight Plateau, which can kill pretty much any board boss in one hit and even the strongest bosses in 3-6. However, it won't be available for the true final dungeon, which will force the player to actually play the game properly.
For non-combat gameplay, the game seems intimidating at first because of how there are hidden item goals, locked chests with a scarcity of keys, and a general lack of tutorials or prompts for the puzzles. The good news is that as far as I know, there is no missable content now that the cat quest was patched. Additionally, when the player first enters a non-town area, they'll find that they'll fall short of the hidden item goals no matter what they do. This is intentional because more content for every area in the game is unlocked as the player progresses through the story. Of course, this will require quite a bit of backtracking, which can be a bit tedious because the teleporter in Home can only connect to one other place at a time. IMO, it would have been better to have a proper teleport network to speed up backtracking.
While most people recommend the three-tile rule for mapping, this game feels like it's going for one or two tiles in many cases. Plants and objects are usually arranged in a way where you will only have one or two tiles to move, which is designed so that it's easier for the story to lock players out of certain locations and force them to use specific routes. One can say the maps have little wasted space, but at the same time, it can feel cramped and easy to bump into obstacles.
For those worried about the lack of a guide for the game, the game itself is open source, which means its files can be examined in RMMV if one is desperate or paranoid about missing stuff.
[h1]Verdict[/h1]
After actually beating the game, I'd say it's alright, though the beginning of the game is very dry in terms of story.
Ich kann Wanted poster bei dem Grabstein nicht anklicken es tut sich nichts 3 Poster habe ich schon ich denke das ist ein Spiele bug.Wo sonst sind die 4 Wanted poster?Bei game master fuer Rpg maker vx ace ging es nur beim Rpg maker mv nicht.
An easy but very nice RPG game. Its style really attracts me, and maybe anyone who loves 'nostalgia'.
And if you love collecting things, or riddling, this game can be unexpectedly a little hard for you.
BTW bugs are seen too often, and the scene called 'Sesame Hideout' even disappears! Hope it can be fixed sooner.
This game will make you exicted!
This looks like an easy game, but it's quite tricky at times. I love the gameplay and graphics, and most everything else. You have to go to different places to play a "game", which is not really a game, but an area where you have to do a couple of quizzes and fight a few enemies. After defeating the boss, you get something nice.
This is a nice old-school type of RPG, but not really for hard-core RPG players who like games to be really difficult.
