Franzen

[kane_magus]

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Heard about Franzen via an article on GamesRadar (one of those articles where they don't even mention the title of the game until the second paragraph) via my Google News app.

So, Franzen. It's a free (as in costs no money) RPG Maker game available on Steam that took me 6.5 hours to beat. So, it's not epically long like Final Fantasy VI (one of the games the article compares it to). However, with that said, by the end of it, the story still had the same sort of "epic" feeling to it that FF6 did, I'd have to say. It's quite good. It's a bit... weirder than FF6, though. One of the player characters is essentially just a kind of fleshy blob/centipede-looking thing with a human(-ish) head, and another player character is literally named "Fucker." So that's the kind of thing to expect going in.

The game, for better or worse, uses a rudimentary "active-time battle" system, similar to what was in FF6 or Chrono Trigger, rather than a typical turn-based system. Probably the most interesting thing about it, gameplay-wise, is that there is no XP at all, meaning no leveling up. You will be level 1 for the entire game. The only stat increases come from equipment and from "Daemon Core" consumable items that you get from beating some bosses and, near the end of the game, from a certain shop that sells them for 1000G each. Each Daemon Core item used will increase all of a character's stats by 50. So, of course, you can still become crazy godlike by the end, simply by buying a buttload of them. (I think I bought something like 8 of them [two for each character] after trying to fight one boss that had been kicking my butt, which trivialized said boss, and then, just for shits and giggles, I dumped what money I had left and bought 24 more of them before going into the Very Definitely Final Dungeon, in addition to the dozen or so free ones I got from defeated bosses, which basically removed any real challenge from the game, but that was fine.) You can still grind for money, if you really feel the need to, or to get certain items or equipment that you wouldn't be able to buy until later. It seems like if a given enemy can drop a thing, it will consistently drop that thing, so there's no RNG wrangling as far as that goes, which is nice.

There's a bit of an elemental rock-paper-scissors thing going on with equipment and abilities, which isn't really mentioned at all until near the end of the game (e.g. Metal weapons are more effective against Flesh enemies, but Metal armor defends against Metal attacks [so don't make the mistake I did of selling all your Steel equipment when you start finding "better" gear]). The way it goes is Metal and Flesh counter each other, and Light and Dark counter each other. Not that any of that really matters much for the majority of the game, or even later, once you buff up with Daemon Cores. Using the right elemental equipment against the right enemies will just make easy fights even easier. Using the wrong equipment can lead to eating a lot more damage than you otherwise would have, though, which is only partially negated by being super buff. The few new abilities you get over the course of the game only come via story events and from defeating four bosses on the overworld map.

Speaking of the overworld map, it only appears near the end of the game, once you gain control of an airship. Before that point, the game is pretty linear. And even after that point, the overworld mostly just consists of the couple of towns you went to before, along with a few short dungeons that lead to bosses that drop macguffins you need to get the best weapon, which may or may not be required to kill the final boss (and I don't know if it is or isn't, because I got it and used it, regardless). That said, while the game is mostly linear, it doesn't feel like it's on-rails, really, even if it kind of is.

I didn't run into any genuine bugs, but the game does lack a bit of polish, in the sense that there are some tiles you can walk on that really don't feel like you should be able to walk on them, and some consistent misspellings ("recieve" instead of "receive," "oppurtunity" instead of "opportunity," etc.), and the fact that the music was way too loud when I first launched it, with no in-game volume controls, which required me to lower the volume via Windows Volume Mixer. Aside from that, though, I didn't encounter any really bad game-breaking issues.

So, yeah, it's a pretty cool game. I'd recommend it.

The developer, Scumhead, has also made several other games that look kind of interesting (some free, some not, some on Steam, some not) in various other genres like FPS and Metroidvania. I may check those out later (particularly the free ones, but maybe even some of the for-sale ones).