Beloved Rapture

I enjoyed my time with this one! The story at times can feel rushed in the back half, as others pointed out, but there are real moments of heart and vulnerability amongst the characters. I also applaud Beloved Rapture for tackling its themes with a sense of raw emotion and sincerity. The plot balances plenty of high-stakes action and revenge segments with some much appreciated small interactions between the team in between story beats. (I hope there's more in the director's cut! Level design here stands out as well, complementing the game's gorgeous visual direction and rewarding exploration. There were a few treasures I wasn't sure how to get, and there's not "checklist" available, so completionists might struggle a bit. By late game there are quite a few healing items; I found myself selling off items just to make menuing more efficient. I also didn't see much of a use for money by this point. I wonder if there's a money sink I just missed. (It would be cool to dump tons of money into those runes I missed!) There's a lot to enjoy here and I recommend taking your time with this one. Battles with lots of participants can be tedious at times but it's nice to feel powerful by the endgame. In poking around guides I learned when the story branches off in the latter half there was an entire dungeon I missed. That, plus the planned DLC, means I'll definitely come back to explore more of the storyline. I played this on the deck; steam reports less but it looks like my in-game save file has 27 hours.

Moving your character around the map is frustrating. There are so many obstructions to walking around, that it becomes more challenging than the combat. The fishing part of the game is not fun unless you think rapidly hammering the up arrow on your keyboard is fun. I mean, why not just hold the up arrow until the line tension goes up and then let off before the line snaps. Use finesse instead of brute force. Everything else seems good, but I only played for two hours.

I wrote a 3000 word review for this game. Steam limits the words to I have to summarize it the best I can. Beloved Rapture is a love letter to SNES RPGs. But it is more than a love letter. It is bringing that nostalgic feel into the future. Using RPG Maker 2003 of all engines! It is an absolutely gorgeous game, with maps that are so aesthetically appealing that they feel like complex paintings. It is such a technical feat with how much the developer strayed away from the RPG Maker 2003’s default stuff and how smooth and modern the end result became. The game is more than just a visual and technical achievement, it is a story written in the ink of the developer’s blood. A very dark and personal tale…with the occasional SNES-styled silliness we all grew to expect in these types of games. It is not bleak without hope. The characters do fight to brighten their lives. I was expecting a lot of RPG Maker 2003 jank. I enjoy the jank. I mean, I’ve only been using RPG Maker for like 20 years. There really was so much less of it than I ever anticipated. The custom menus were so damn smooth. The character’s sprites are so animated that only moving 4 directions never felt like you were limited. The game just had combo after combo of prettying up the engine’s faults and smoothing much jank over. The music is fantastic. I find myself relistening to much of it still. Despite how beautiful and elaborate the world is, the heart and soul of Beloved Rapture lies in its story. It is a tale about a disturbed young man coming of age and learning how to deal with the trauma that is inflicted on him. It may start like a typical JRPG, but let me tell you: it devolves into chaos fast. Many of the RPGs I have played have tragedy and death, but there is something quite ‘indie’ about how this game goes about it. There are no restrictions. When it goes dark, it is without restraint or fear of offending. I mean, the intro scene more or less sets this tone nonetheless. I love it when I feel like a story is truly unpredictable. Because it is. And I’m sure you can argue there are a lot of typical JRPG tropes in the beginning of this game and in the game overall, but tropes don’t mean anything to me. Flavor. Personality. Beloved Rapture is really its own thing. It was a journey that will stick with me. The fact it is finished and released is nothing short of miraculous. It was a game people declared that would never be released. Never say never. I had a great time playing this. Excited to see what is next for this team. Let’s keep the passion alive.

I really wanted to like this game, but here are my problems: - The writing is atrocious. The characters are really hard to like because of that. Well, unless you just really like Millennial writing ... then this game is a masterpiece. The romance in the game pretty much came out of nowhere and added nothing to the story. It felt forced just so the creators could say "this game has LGBT themes!" The cutscenes are also just way over written. All of the characters pretty much sound the same. The dialogue is stilted. The vocabulary is too modern, not all evocative of a fantasy setting. Even though the plot is simple, it's hard to follow sometimes because it gets so contrived and hammy. - There's no real character customization. Yeah, you get to choose where stat points go, but the combat is so simple, you pretty much just end up stuffing all the points into defenses. There's very little equipment to choose from, so there's not much build variety there either. You can upgrade weapons (which are locked to specific characters) in a linear fashion, but it would have been cooler if you chose different upgrades for the weapons, thus choosing different builds for each character. There's also this lore idea that the weapons bond with the wielder based on the enemies they find, and that would have been a really cool mechanic: kill more of these enemies, get this upgrade. Instead, it's just used to explain the milestone progression: "You got to this point in the game and killed this boss, so everyone gets a new spell." - The difficulty curve is pretty bad. The beginning of the game was really challenging. Then I got some upgrades and it got easier and easier and easier, and I like a game that has some ebb and flow. I want it to regularly challenge me, but I also want to feel the growth of my characters. I think part of this problem has to do with my next issue. - Combat gets really boring. It was pretty fun at first, but it ultimately devolved into "Hit them until they're dead." I feel like only one of my four characters is of any real use, then there's a healer and two knuckleheads. You can pretty much ignore buffs and ailments, especially if you just equip everyone with regen rings. The Relica system (this game's version of limit breaks) seemed really promising, but it's just an optional power attack. I was hoping that as I unlocked more, I'd get different tools for different situations, and one character has that for sure, another character has two choices, and then there's two guys who just choose how much mana they want to spend/how hard they want to hit. - Exploration is mediocre. Because there's not a lot of neat equipment for different builds, there's not much to look for except the components you need for upgrades. The maps are really large and aren't really a joy to navigate. They look pretty great for the most part, even if they're a bit cluttered at times. Later in the game, though, you start noticing a lot of mistakes, and on top of the problems I was having, these really started to sour the experience for me. - I really can't stand the character profiles. This is more of a personal thing, but I prefer when profiles are just simple pictures used to help differentiate who's speaking. I don't like it when they convey emotion; I feel like the script and blocking should convey the story. Also, I just really don't like the art. It's ugly. THINGS I DID LIKE: The music was pretty good. Most of the sprites are decent. The tiles are honestly really well made. The fishing minigame grew on me, and I liked how it was a better way to make gold than fighting enemies, honestly. The combat animations are pretty great. I like most of the monster designs. I like the bestiary. The game had some good ideas and felt promising, but I'm ultimately dissatisfied, and if I could trade it in at this point, I would. I might suffer through the rest of it just to finish it, but ... I don't know. I think I'll just go play something else. ALL THAT SAID: I've been really harsh, and I feel bad about that. I don't want to discourage the creators; making a game is really hard, and I'm proud of them for giving it their best shot and putting something out there. I hope they keep working on things. I hope they learn from this and grow as artists and become great. My goal here is to be honest so that good can come from that. No hate. Just love.

Was given this game from the dev and totally forgot to leave a review for it. I don't have a lot to say on my experience with the game right now but I wanted to make sure to keep at it as I don't fully understand this type of game. I'm very new to it and will try to keep at it. I like the music, art style and exploration elements so far.

a strong no for me. the most infuriating bug that I find quite rare in any JRPG game: in battle it freezes and without saves you have to alt f4 and start everything over. How can you leave such a critical bug be and call yourself a full release v1.0+ I dont understand. Now I'm almost finished but after a battle that caused me to lose a lot of progress from this bug, I just can't bear finishing playing anymore. another thing I hate a lot is walking. It's so clucky and difficult to adjust to an exact spot. Sometimes you press an arrow button and there's no reaction. Sometimes you press it once it moves past a point already. Try it and you'll know what I mean. In the end all the time you spend on this game, 50% is simply wasted on walking, trying to adjust to the exact position to hit a road. whoever designs the walking system, together with the map design that exhibits so many narrow passage and poor indication, and race run mini games must be a genius. Story is ok, but dialogue is very weak. Chest reward quality very often doesn't match the difficulty to obtain. poorly-designed boring (and many) puzzle + extremely bad waking experience + other bugs + lack of teleport with clear guide in maps + lack of doc and guide Plus no sync between PC and steam deck. Steam deck experience is even worse. I bought it in the beginning for Steam Deck and regret it

After so many rpgs that I played, I think this is the first that ever suits my romance tastes.. haha Super thankful for this that I got to play it in my lifetime. Loved the dark, somber vibe it’s honestly one of the best and noteworthy for its old-school RPG genre. The story and its progression was amazing, also some of the sharp choice of words made it more impressive. Though the ending felt a bit rushed, it didn't take away from how great the game is. Thank you again for making this.