OMORI is one of my favorite games, perhaps even my #1, in general.
I wouldn’t say I’m a huge fan of that era/style of RPGs but To The Moon is an absolutely fantastic game.
Omori is fantastic
It’s one of those games that’s best to go in blind (while knowing of the content warning)
I really want to like omori but it hit one of my biggest pet peeves in gaming. I abhore it when winning an “impossible” fight is mathematically possible to win but then the cutscene has you lose anyway. I dont have as much issue with actual impossible fights or fights with losing cutscenes after winning that game over on a loss. Its just fights that are meant to be impossible but arent, without changing any part of the outcome.
(Spoilers here for prospective players) Outside of the dream for the first time (assuming it happens more than once), I stocked up on medical supplies and unequipped the knife, and then beat Aubrey with my bare hands, and she still freaks out that I have a knife. Instantly lost my immersion and I dropped the game.
I dropped inscryption for the same reason when I won despite the static at the end of act 2 and the game doesn’t even acknowledge your success.
Demons Roots is probably the best RPG Maker game I’ve played that was actually playable as an RPG. (So, not counting things like To The Moon which other people have already mentioned.)
I wasn’t a fan of most of the sexual content in Demons Roots, but taking the whole thing as basically a giant love letter to fucked up doujinshi stories – i.e. to unpolished indie writing with wild genre bending plot twists in addition to the hentai stuff – I can accept it for what it is. The game has that RPGMaker wabi-sabi; it’s not especially well-crafted software… but the combat was OK (unlike a lot of indie RPGs), the music was good – a mix of original and mostly well chosen asset packs (I still listen to some of it occasionally!), and, without getting into spoilers, it did a couple of very memorable things…
Pretty confident “Look Outside” is an RPG maker game. I cannot recommend it enough. It is an immaculately written game, and oozes passion and personality.
Obligatory To The Moon mention.
Space Funeral
Fuck yeah space funeral. One minute you’re being jumpscared by dramatic Charles Baudelaire readings and then chatting up Dracula in the next. It fucking rules
I loved Space Funeral! It feels like such a love letter to fucking around and making something unique.
The main battle theme has ben my phone ringtone for years.
To The Moon (XP) is pretty good. The Legend of the Philosopher Stone (RM2K3) is a personal fave although its incomplete and cancelled Final Fantasy Endless Nova (RM2K) is only a FF in name and is also really good.
Then there’s the ones everyone’s talked about; Ara Fell (originally), In and so on
For story driven ones i liked To the Moon, that others have mentioned, Finding Paradise, OneShot, and The coffin of andy and leyley (which is still ongoing). Some that have combat but are still focused on a story are Omori, and End roll. Almost all games where you go eventually go into someone’s mind, i’m noticing now.
Fear and Hunger 2 is pretty swell. The first one was kind of a bit too edgy for the sake of edginess, but miro did a much better job on the sequel
I only played RPG Maker games when RPG Maker 2000 (and 2003) were the only ones available. And just recently tried out some later releases with the Open Source implementation of RPG Maker 2000/2003 called EasyRPG using RetroArch. :D As someone who is oldschool, my favorite games I played are Vampire’s Dawn and Chocobo Panic (and Chocobo Panic in Space). The Chocobo games aren’t RPGs at all, and are stylized Pac Man like games. There are a few German games I played (but never finished) and don’t remember the names anymore, mostly horror themed adventures… :-(
There are some modern RPG Maker games that look pretty “professional”. Need to play one to see how things have evolved.





