RPG Maker FES Review: Tools Of The Trade

Long before Super Mario Maker brought ease-of-use game creation to the mass market, the RPG Maker series hit the scene, helping fans build their own games without explicit coding knowledge. Unfortunately, there's always been a bit of a learning curve.

RPG Maker FES isn't the first handheld entry in the long-running series, but it is the first to get an English language release. Published by NIS America, FES brings the creation suite to the Nintendo 3DS, and boy does the series benefit from the touch and two-screen capabilities of the console.

Gameplay

The game itself is blatant in what it offers -- a simple RPG-building system and the ability to download and share levels from yourself and other players around the world. Without a hand-holding tutorial, the game makes clear that it's there for however you want to use it, letting you decide how in-depth you want to go based on the concepts you should already be aware of.

In a way, it's a weakness in a platform that would otherwise be enormously fun to use, even for those not familiar with game design. When you first select 'Create New' from the game's menu, you're offered options like Map Settings, Event Settings, Database and Test Play. Each of the first three categories are your game's innards.

You'll edit scenery and overworld in the first, changing things like background music, adding and erasing tiles and placing the events you'll build. In Event Settings, you'll issue commands to build the aforementioned quests and "events," in turn making most of your game. This is also where you'll build dialogue, most of which (if you're like us) will seem jumbled and cringey.

In Database, you can browse a selection of and create your enemies, player characters, monsters and more in the third. It's incredibly overwhelming, but with enough fiddling, even the freshest of minds can create something, and at least feel a little bit proud.

After spending a couple of hours in the games 'Create' mode, we had a simple overworld full of probably too many volcanoes, a huge lake and a Grim Reaper-esque character walking in circles, spouting nonsense until approached by the player character. It was a tedious couple of hours, but it was fun, though it's clear that the true meat of the game can only really be unlocked by those in the know.

With that in mind, game sharing and downloading could be RPG Maker FES' saving grace. Oddly enough, the most-downloaded game on the service is an interactive tutorial of sorts, showcasing the game's features. Helpful? Sure! Though, it might have been nice to have it built into the base game and not made by a user.

Of course, since the game just released, there's not much by way of content on the service, with only two of the game's 99 results pages showing content, including a handful of test games and demos with "adventure" or "saga" in the title. You can sort by top rated, most downloaded or by keyword, a far cry from the confusion of Super Mario Maker's suite. There's even a selection of recommended games, something we can only hope will grow in the coming months.

Now, content codes are still a thing, and to share "unreleased" games with friends, you'll need to pass along that code. It's a tedious but necessary feature, hopefully to avoid overtly phallic games, one would imagine.

Additionally, there's also a free RPG Maker FES Player available on the eShop, which means if you're just looking to play games created by other, you don't need to have the base game.

Verdict

RPG Maker FES nestles itself nicely with other game creation suites. Since it's one the first outings on a dual-screen handheld, it's hard to not compare it to games like WarioWare DIY or Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS, two games that sport stronger, simpler user interfaces, a collection of tutorials and a breadth of internal as well as external content.

The negatives of FES stem from its lack of tutorial and any sort of built-in "single player" component. It would have been nice to have something along the lines of Mario Maker's '100 Mario Mode,' though we can understand why something like that would require much more maintenance.

Sure, the RPG Maker series isn't known for being a "game" in the traditional sense, but it feels weird jumping into a creation tool without understanding the basics of what the game you'll make could entail. From our experience? Think classic Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest mixed with mid-'00s internet Flash games, which isn't exactly a bad thing.

For the most part, RPG Maker FES is a clean, effective game making tool. For aspiring creatives, there's a lot to love here, and it's especially nice having these tools on the go. Hopefully this means more handheld RPG Maker in the future, because we can only imagine how a Nintendo Switch version would look and feel. For now, RPG Maker FES is more than enough.

Rating: Four out of five stars.

RPG Maker FES is now available for the Nintendo 3DS. A review copy was provided by the game's publisher.