The Amber Throne Reviews

A genuine hidden gem of a JRPG. Made in RPGmaker but defined by its gorgeous hand-drawn art, making up the entire world. Then there's the beautiful ambient music which elevates the whole experience to an ethereal and evocative adventure. It has your typical overworld exploration, and somewhat basic turn based combat. It's functional, and fast-paced. Think something like Fear and Hunger in the sense that it's not so stat-focused, but more about neat little gimmicks. I think it's neat and helps the experience. Then there's the story. The main reason I have this at 4 stars. Imagine a dark fairy tale. Something like the original myths written by the Grimms. It's less about explaining every detail and introducing each individual character and more about allowing you to experience a strange, inventive and cryptic, yet still meaningful world. All aspects combined, you get a thoroughly fresh experience that I loved all the way until the end. My only complaints are that the game does have bugs and obvious playtesting errors, and that there's unsolicited nudity which is worth mentioning considering the game is obscure and unrated.

It's an RPG in the loosest sense. Positives: Art is great Music is good Pacing is a through line. No grinding..also* Overarching story and concepts are really great. Negatives: *No grinding. Not challenging at all for experienced gamers. No content Explorations is not rewarding Side quests result in nothing of benefit Story writing is not fleshed out and often confusing or missing key content. Characters help with nothing in narration or moving the story along in any meaningful way Ovarall this is just not a very rewarding RPG. Skills feel like a burden. -> Strategies are basic AF ... that you can run through this from beginning to end doing nothing but fight what they throw in front of you...and still feel you wasted however many hours you played. Maybe focusing on the art and story would have been a route to go, because all the RPG elements are just that, elements. I felt more annoyed playing this game than any sense of satisfactory outcome or story payoff. I ended with zero emotional connection to any of the characters or sense of accomplishment ... and that sums it up.

I've had this game in my library for years and I just got around to play it. I am very saddened that I haven't experienced this gem of a game any sooner. I really adored this passion project and I hope you would get to experience it too. Also artwork shows main character holding a rifle but she only uses a sword so that was a fucking lie