Einlanzer

Einlanzer is a masterpiece of a game, pure and simple. It takes you back to the old NES and SNES days. Careful work was put into this game, and the result is a solid, and fun adventure that will please most old-school people. Newcomers will appreciate it as well... heck, such a polished story, good controls, difficulty, etc. ANYONE who is looking for a fun time will like to play Einlanzer, I recommend this game HIGHLY. A+

Einlanzer is a good RPG Maker game with lots of flaws. If you can live with them, it’s a game for you. If not, it’s not. Einlanzer does some very important things right: It has (gameplay) customizations for every character in the form of subclasses and multiple equippable item types. You’re often forced to change your party due to narrative reasons or because of the strengths or weaknesses of enemies in an area you just got to. Every character feels distinct from one another and has flavourful dialogue. And even the movement of character sprites in cutscenes conveys information about them as well as their feelings. But these things come with downsides as well: The character customization is quite limited in that subclasses don’t change the character an awful lot and the type of items you will equip on your characters depends more on the item you just found that is much better than your previous item. And all of the characters just get their subclass immediately, meaning you don’t get a general feel for them before deciding on their specialization. Changing around the characters and items of your party can also be annoying, especially when areas are heavily biased towards one status effect (say, poison) and then you just equip everyone with anti-poison accessories and call it a day. And while the characters are interesting and distinct from one another, they are not really unique in the grand scheme of things. Einlanzer has some additional flaws that annoy me and make the game borderline unfun to me. Especially in the second half of the story, the difficulty spikes at seemingly random times. I didn’t bother doing one side dungeon even after completing five other dungeons and being ten levels ahead because it was just so difficult. That dungeon was also super confusing because you can’t really see which tiles you can move on (I feel like the game has a problem with “vertical movement” in general). The random encounter rate seems a bit too high, there are some status effects that feel super unfair (e.g. paralysis), equipment and “special effects” are sometimes underwhelming (why do multiattack effects like the Genji gloves only work with basic attacks, not even Abel’s elemental attacks? - probably balance reasons, but still), and some of the plot in the story was questionable. Most characters in the second half of the game feel tacked on with shiny new special things they can do but are rarely used since the cookie cutter characters you’ve been using all this time are much more reliable and you already have a bond with them, so to speak. There was also one game-breaking bug that trapped me in an area because it made certain tiles inaccessible that should be accessible and I had to restart to an earlier safe (only lost around thirty minutes; safe often in this game!). The world map is confusing to navigate at times and there are some really slow combat animations that grinded my gears. I don’t really know if I like the game or not. I haven’t finished it and I probably won’t do it since my excitement for the game decreased the further I got into it. I think it’s an unpolished game made with lots of love and that may not be enough for me personally. I’m still giving it a thumbs up due to me getting more than ten hours of enjoyment for a very low price, knowing more JRPG-inclined people will enjoy the game more than I did, and because the developer seems like a good person from the replies on other reviews I’ve read.

The game gave me a good sense of adventure and I find it rare these days. The characters are likeable, the story is somewhat generic but that isn't what matters. I liked the game because of it being so generic that I was surprised at the little things, how I suddenly started to care so much for the characters and their fate. If you like going on an adventure, leveling characters, building them, gearing them and have a story driven game with good characters this game is for you. And considering the price it should be worth a try for everyone.

Great old school turned based game. Thanks so much to the company for making this! There aren't many like it anymore. I got emotionally attached to the characters and it had a good story. Highly recommend.

Very nice plot, great character interactions and PLENTY of content to keep fans going.

Couple of hour in and i like it quite a lot! The story and character are good but they are still very cliche. still an amazing buy for that price if you want to play something that feel like a classic but don't want to replay a game you have played 10 time over (that why i took it in the first place) The only real problem i have is that for some reason the game don't detect my controler and i am stuck playing with my keyboard