RPG II: Dark Matter Demo

RPGs have one purpose and one purpose alone: make the players feel like they are actually playing an important role in the story. That is why the phrase “role-playing” is there, and also the reason some of the most critically-acclaimed games in the genre have gotten so much recognition. If it all feels like it’s running on a rail and you have no impact on your character, there’s no point in confusing the public with ill-chosen acronyms.

RPG II: Dark Matter is a hack & slash with some JRPG elements added for taste and a story that combines humor with classic fantasy tropes. The mixture might sound interesting on paper, but the actual execution leaves much to be desired in every way. Starting with the awkward dialog and repetitive gameplay, all the way to the boring combat system and unoriginal graphics, everything is a few notches below standards.

The story is technically a continuation to the one from the first episode in the saga, but that’s an effort few people are going to make. In short, you control a group of heroes trying to save The Perpetual Realm, a world created by the powerful Archimedes. Most of the dialog tries to be funny and serious at the same time, but the result is something that’s neither. Thus, you can just grind and not care about anything, because it really doesn’t matter if you are familiar with the plot or not.

Speaking of grinding, that’s what most of the gameplay is about anyway. The maps are just riddled with all sorts of enemies, and they take a pretty long time to defeat. That wouldn’t be a problem under normal circumstances, but since you are fighting the same creatures over and over again, it becomes repetitive. There is a stamina system in place to slow you down as well, which means that your characters can only perform an action if they have enough stamina.

Lastly, the visual presentation is a disappointment as well. As you can probably tell, the game was created using RPG Maker, which is obviously not a problem by itself. However, it would seem like there are no original assets to speak of, which denotes a lack of involvement from the developer. It’s difficult to take it seriously when it looks and sounds like every other game designed with RPG Maker.

In the end, RPG II: Dark Matter’s only hope was the story, because if the plot was brilliant enough people could have ignored the lack of original assets. However, the story appears to be a big joke, as is the dialog and everything about the characters themselves.

Note: You can support the game by voting for it on Steam Greenlight.