Thorne - Death Merchants
Thorne - Death Merchants is an action RPG based on the RPGMaker engine, and the very beginning was quite a shock to me, based on the language and innuendo being used. I was surprised, but I will make note that this is a mature type of game. It’s more along the lines of something like Secret of Mana in terms of the style of action RPG gameplay.
Anyway, you start as a captured prisoner, and you begin to tell your story of why you are not responsible for the current crime they are holding you for, and the parts where you are moving about and interacting with things are the flashbacks from the past as you tell the story to the officer in the place where you are being held.
– Real player with 9.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Episodic Action-Adventure Games.
I got this key from the developer in exchange for a review. This however does not sway my opinion.
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Interesting world, combined with wonderful maps
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Nice soundtrack
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Cheap
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Nameable Pet wolf
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Achievements are easily attainable
+/- Battles aren’t too hard
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Slow transitions and typos
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Missable optional cutscenes
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Missable items
Thorne – Death Merchants is a short game (2~4 hours), the first of a series of eight standalone episodic games. It’s a well-made game by experienced developers that is also being sold quite cheap! It features an interesting world with lovely looking environments and gray characters everywhere. The soundtrack is great and fits the game well. The game also allows you to have a pet wolf, whom you can name, pet, feed and command to search around for treasures. This was a pretty neat idea, though my wolf got stuck from time to time and it took me a while to realize I needed to let the wolf follow me, instead of using the whistle to call it to me. While the treasure hunting idea was fun, I didn’t really get into money or health trouble, so it was moot most of the time. In fact, if it wasn’t because of the achievements I wouldn’t have searched around at all. For the achievement hunters, this game has 22 easily enough attainable ones. Some of them are linked to optional and time-sensitive cutscenes, side-quests, treasure hunting, so you might miss a few of them at the end of the game.
– Real player with 8.9 hrs in game
Thorne - Son of Slaves (Ep.2)
- ### Morlan’s shorts:
There may be an ok story here with some ok jokes and ok graphics, yep, just ok.. but the game is badly programmed and has random crashes in, well, random places; the pacing/delay/“loading screens” are too slow for this type of game but the top-of-the-crop that breaks it for me is the collision detection. Battles are in real time and the character gets stuck everywhere there’s an obstacle, collides with the enemy and sticks to them and it becomes a chore of repeating a level to finish it because you keep getting stuck to the enemy and die. In particular the first “Troll” cave where you have to run between trolls/skeletetons/whatever and even if you have space to go through them, once you touch an enemy you’re basically glued to them! Tried that 4-5 times..NO! Wasting time because of bad programming is a BIG NO! This alone, made me r-quit it.
– Real player with 19.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Episodic Action-Adventure Games.
Thorne - Son of Slaves is the sequel game Thorne - Death Merchants.
This Action-RPG from Aldorlea Games and Lone Wolf Games.
I recommend this game.
Beautiful drawing and animation.
Interesting story.
Atmospheric musical accompaniment.
A lot of accessories to choose.
Dialogues are exciting and include a portion of humor.
In Thorne - Son of Slaves all the dynamic, no preludes, you immediately thrown into the thick of things.
Perhaps this genre seems to be outdated, but if you do not find fault with this game, and compared with similar games in the genre - I to recommend!
– Real player with 16.4 hrs in game
Millennium 2 - Take Me Higher
My playtime: 31.2h (based on steam, 100% achievement)
Grindy Achievement(s): Yes (4+ achievements).
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (28 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.
Intro
Millennium 2 - Take Me Higher is the second series of the Millennium series and a sequel to Millennium - A New Hope , a turn-based RPG Maker game. There is no difference between both games except new characters and areas to explore.
– Real player with 31.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Episodic Female Protagonist Games.
I enjoyed the first part of this Millennium series a lot and I thought that this series might be as fun as Aveyond. Unfortunately part 2 of Millennium just isn’t as good at all and reading reviews of the rest of the series I see that the main issues I have with part 2 only gets worse as it progresses.
The main storyline was much shorter than the first game. Things felt more unbalanced and there wasn’t enough areas to explore to make all the traversing through the map feel anything but like a boring grind once I’d already visited a place.
– Real player with 29.0 hrs in game
Fadó: Chapter One
Fadó is an episodic indie RPG, rooted in Irish mythology.
The first chapter introduces four story routes, each focusing on different characters, places, and events from Celtic myth.
You’ll also…
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Play as four iconic heroes across each of the four story routes: Cú Chulainn, Fionn Mac Cumhaill, Saint Brigid and Saint Patrick
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Explore a fantastical hand-drawn ancient Ireland
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Come face-to-face with legendary allies and otherworldly enemies in lively turn-based battles
Millennium - A New Hope
My playtime: 41.2h (based on steam, 100% achievement)
Grindy Achievement(s): Yes (7 achievements).
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (45 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.
Intro
Millennium - A New Hope is the first out of five series of a turn-based RPG Maker game with a lot of vast dungeons, quests, and secret rooms.
Pros:
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4 difficulty choices
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Freedom to choose either random encounter or touch-based encounter at the beginning of the game
– Real player with 41.2 hrs in game
Initial Thoughts: 10 Hours (see below)
Keep in mind I’m playing on hard.
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This is possibly the most poorly balanced rpg I’ve ever played. The battles are horribly slow unless you turn on a menu option to increase the speed of the animations to 150%.
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It seems neither Marine nor Benoit have enough useful skills to properly combat enemies. The most useful skill Marine has is “Call Jeanne” which summons a fairy like creature that can attack multiple enemies and heal to great effect. This in theory could overpower a player if it weren’t possible for enemies to kill a character before you can summon the fairy and give it a command. I often found myself summoning it using it to heal twice then letting it attack. Some enemies are also totally immune to it’s attack (I just used to to heal in those instances).
– Real player with 36.5 hrs in game
Millennium 3 - Cry Wolf
Quality game all the way through. Not the top RPG (also less than top price!) but good. My second purchase of the Millennium series.
This game has custom art , music , sounds and no re-used rpgmaker stuff. The story is there and so is character development. Good stuff not great.
I would get Millennium 2 first - it’s a little better and a little longer. Millinium 1 I haven’t tried yet. Many re-used things from Millennium 2 are in the game, but many new things too.
– Real player with 25.4 hrs in game
My playtime: I have some offline playtime in this game but I finished the game in ~47.7h (100% achievement)
Grindy Achievement(s): Yes (1+ achievement, 1 achievement might take ~3h to finish).
Optional Achievement(s): No.
Difficult Achievement(s): No.
Intro
Millennium 3 - Cry Wolf is the third game of the Millennium series and a sequel to Millennium 2 - Take Me Higher . This game has a labyrinth-like dungeon, more side-scrolling dungeons, and a lot of homing enemies.
– Real player with 25.3 hrs in game
Millennium 5 - The Battle of the Millennium
After leveling up everyone to level 99… I guess for no reason… I played, won the tournament, and got a ‘bad’ ending. No spoiler on what the ending is, but after reading other reviews, I was sorely disappointed. I’m gonna assume they have more games planned with these characters which is why things aren’t resolved, but after reading the comments, I’m really not sure I want to even try for the ‘good’ ending. I love the character art and the characters themselves. The story’s okay and I like the monster designs and the weird world they’ve built. However, I can’t recommend this chapter of the game as-is, since it’s so unsatisfying or even all that interesting given the build-up.
– Real player with 110.7 hrs in game
Millennium 5 is a very disappointing ending to the series. Obviously, if you’ve played the first four you’re going to play this and it’s not a bad game on its own. However, there are things you should be prepared for.
First problem is, just like in Millenium 4, the overall game feels kind of lacking. There’s one town and a lot of very long dungeons and that’s about it. In the first two games, and, to a lesser extent, the third, it felt like there was more to the game world, more to discover, more NPCS and secrets other than the secret rooms.
– Real player with 58.7 hrs in game
Millennium 4 - Beyond Sunset
Much like the rest of the franchise its a run of the mill, JRPG.
simple with many many secrets and a good overall long running plot, with side arcs and side quests .
– Real player with 32.3 hrs in game
This is the worst game in the Millennium series. If you’ve enjoyed the series so far, you’re probably going to want to see it through. This review isn’t to dissuade any one from that, but to serve as a warning. Also, I will mention that while the fifth and final game is better it is a very disappointing wrap-up to the series.
First, I’ll talk about the one really great thing about this game: the ending. That’s not sarcastic. The end is very well-written, it’s an extremely well done moment. From a story perspective, it might be the best part of the series. I don’t want to spoil anything, but it’s very good and feels earned.
– Real player with 17.6 hrs in game
Space Pilgrim Episode I: Alpha Centauri
Overview:
Space Pilgrim Episode I: Alpha Centauri is a casual point-and-click RPG set in a sci-fi universe where Captain Gail Pilgrim makes her livelihood transporting cargo and passengers aboard her father’s old starship. In predictable fashion, something goes awry when the ship is in space, and the adventure begins.
Graphics and Sound:
What are you expecting for a game that you get “awarded” coupons for on Steam for crafting badges? Alright, I won’t cut any corners this time! The graphics and sound are both comparable to the graphics and sound to games made in the fourth generation of consoles, which is good enough for me, since I find game graphics from that generation to be aesthetically pleasing, and this game’s graphics are no exception. There’s nothing in particular that I like about the graphics, but there’s nothing I would consider game-breaking about any of the graphics.
– Real player with 13.5 hrs in game
Notes:
2020 friendly!
Episode 1 is currently free! 20-08-2019 (still F2P in January, 2020.
Special thanks to Rogue Wolf for bringing this to my attention!
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Review is spoiler free!
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Very enjoyable in 2019.
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Have played this episode through roughly 5 times since its release in 2015.
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Do not press F12 to screenshot as it will cause your game to crash. :P
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If you want the game full screen you only need to right click the application on your desktop
bar and choose properties full screen.
– Real player with 10.6 hrs in game