Millennium - A New Hope
I played through the first few minutes of Aldorlea Games' latest RPG offering, "Millennium: A New Hope." I am actually in the process of adding it to the Rampant Games site, but due to illness I was unable to finish this weekend (UPDATE: It's up here now). I still want to play a bit more of it and get a better feel for how it plays.

Visually, the game is beautiful. There is some very striking pixel-art at work here, and some pushing of visual effects that push it beyond the typical RPG Maker fare. The character art is an improvement over past offerings from the indie studio. Even the user interface has been customized a bit more to make it "pop" and stand out from the RPG Maker crowd.

The story and dialog - well, that's the part I'm having trouble with. While all of Aldorlea Games' titles show some artifacts of being written by a non-native English speaker, the more story-heavy nature of this title makes the weakness a bit more apparent.

And the premise of the story, so far, has fallen pretty flat for me - at least in the first twenty minutes. It's a story about Marine, a young girl from a very poor village. In theory, her village is struggling against the oppression of a rich town. Aside from some pretty despicable behavior by the town guards against her father, however, so far the only crime the town seems to be committing is the sin of ... uh, having money. And leaving their neighbors alone. But her father grudgingly begins passing the torch of revolution over to his daughter.

Of course, this could be a bit of chilling set-up for young Marine becoming sort of a cute teen-aged Maximilien Robespierre later on in the series as her little revolution goes out of control. Maybe that's the way the story is heading, which would actually be pretty edgy. I don't really see it happening, but it would be cool, wouldn't it?

The fairy encounter early in the game has also seemed pretty forced, and the dialog clumsy. It tries to hard to be cute. And granted, it is explaining a weird situation. I realize I may be throwing bricks from within my own glass house here, but it feels like the story and writing could have used a little more time and editing.

The gameplay is pretty straightforward for jRPG-style games. Like many of Aldorlea's games, skills and items are sometimes used to expand upon non-combat actions. And the boss combats against the animal kings (guardians of the existing ruling class) are reportedly quite challenging. Unlike many games of the style, Millennium: A New Hope has opted to have unintelligent monsters yield semi-realistic items or body parts when slain - which can then be sold for gold - rather than dropping gold coins when defeated. It's an extra step for players, but a nod to some level of verisimilitude. I don't find it to be an unwelcome change.

I'll probably have more to say on this one later, but as always, I invite you to check these out on your own during the free trial. It's a fairly meaty download. I'll have a page up on my site later, but for now you can grab it directly at this link:

Download Millennium - A New Hope

Let us know what you think!

Labels: Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:42 AM (Permalink)