Machina of the Planet Tree -Planet Ruler- Reviews

Awesome characters and world lore! The battle system is top notch with awesome combos and animations! Such a hidden gem!--- I hope more people find out about this game! Also, if you have trouble getting just the right size for the game window, OnTopReplica helps a ton. And it's free, just search da interwebz!

It's been a long time since I played this game but I highly recommend it. It's simple, fun, and engaging. The art is pleasant and the overall aesthetic is easy on the eyes. The ost isn't too generic and matches the theme and art.

I'll complain about gameplay. it's classic JRPG too much . annoying invisible enemies every few step when movement . Boss - Mid boss that difficult to defeat . only thing I like is designed characters . and I noticed why bosses HP recovers themself every times after finish thier turn? HP increed more 10000 every times. that's impossible to defeat.

Machina of the Planet Tree - Planet Ruler, a game with such a confusing name, it must be worth your time, right? It's a classic RPG, made with the RPG Maker Engine. The concept is fairly easy, with an interesting battle mechanic allowing you to chain your attacks for maximum damage. Just don't forget to hit L-ALT + ENTER for a full-screen game experience, or use F1 to alter settings. Other people have complained about those things, but those complaints are wrong~! Let's get to some pro's, neutrals and cons: Pro: +Wonderful pixel-design on the main characters and main enemies. +Interesting battle techniques that can really rack up some damage~! +Plenty of things to loot, as long as you remember that healing items are called Attributes, as well as materials for +Weapon crafting. You can craft broken weapons into working ones, or upgrade the ones you have, provided you have the right Attributes. +Decent play-time. In 10-15 hours you could finish it entirely, unless you want to grind for some hard-to-get Attributes. +Great music from the moment you start playing. +Lovely drawn character portraits. Barely any stock RPG Maker portraits. Cons: -Insane spikes in difficulty on bosses. You'll find you can breeze through a dungeon and then get stuck on a boss that keeps healing insane amounts of HP. -Enemies, especially bosses, sometimes randomly attack multiple times in a row, killing all party members before you can even do anything to recover. -Great pixelart doesn't really match the standard RPG Maker background tiles. -Chest envy. Why do so many RPGs think it's necessary to give at least one character chest envy?! -At times there is lots of text while little is explained. -Some items are real hard to obtain (so I didn't bother getting everything). Lots of loot is based on randomness. -Terminology could have been better (I thought a higher Cost was a bad thing..) Neutral: ~Characters talk Japanese during battle. Great if you understand the language, confusing if you don't. They also repeat themselves a lot. I didn't find either of those to be real annoying, but some people do, so... ~There's a young girl VERY interested in the protagonist... Some people are into that sort of thing, so I just thought I'd mention that, as there are also those that aren't. ~Regular enemies are stock RPG Maker monsters. Not bad per se, just a bit sharp in contrast to the bosses they did put some extra effort in. ~Not a whole lot of story going on, but enough to be entertaining. Final thoughts: I can recommend this game, because I had a fun time with it. It's not too challenging overall, except for some boss fights. Don't forget to use the skills you have, even if they don't seem to do much. They can really help in a pinch. All in all it's a good game with great music, fun battles and attacks and lovely bits of pixel art. Don't let the nay-sayers get you down, this game is not as terrible as some thing. REMEMBER: L-ALT + Enter : Fullscreen F1: Option Menu

If you like old-school RPGs like Goldne Sun, Tales of Phantasia, or the early Final Fantasy games and you like anime of really any sort, this game is an absolute must. So very many things about this game made me smile. EASILY worth $13 but honestly if I knew how much I was going to enjoy the game I would have been willing to spend DOUBLE. For a game made by a very small indie company it has alot of polish and you can tell the developers took pride and care in making truely fun and enjoyable unlike so many big companies these days. If this game is on sale, don't even bother thinking or reading this review. Just buy it and play it right away. The makers of this game also left out lots of stuff you didn't like about other old style RPGs. No wandering around absolutely huge towns inspecting every single pot and table in every house and dungeon, no talking to hundreds of boring villagers, no exploring giant boring world maps. There isn't even much back tracking thanks to the handy warp system. I bought this game wanting an old-school style JRPG that stayed true to the good things about the genre and thats exactly what Machina of the Planet Tree delivered. Things I absolutely loved about the game: 1. Music (aka RPG ear candy) 2. Combat (Very Satisfying due to multiple things but especially the combo system) 3. Control Simplicity (seriously the game is played with 7 keys on the keyboard and thats including the arrow keys) 4. Not much time spent doing boring things (like inspecting the environment, traveling, and talking to NPCs) 5. Difficulty Level (is just right) 6. Combat voice acting (this is both cool and amusing regardless of if you understand much Japanese or not) 7. Amusing dialogue between the characters. I could list many more things but I really don't think I need to go on.

Just finished this game today, and really impressed overall. The game is around 7 to 10 hour long depending on how fast you can adapt to the combat system (which is pretty simple at first but does have some depth) and if you wanna farm for the last weapons or not (them being optional to finish the game). Difficulty is pretty well balanced, I think I wiped 3 or 4 times total, and never had to grind during the game except just before the final boss. Graphisms wise, well it's a rpg maker game, but a pretty good one : the character art is nice, the sprites go from decent to pretty cool. The maps are pretty well made with a definite attention to details. The music is average with some cool boss themes, but they aren't too agressive and go really well with the mood. Also, the game includes fully friendly character voicing in battle, wich means you get some hype while Cram is shouting things like Gravityyy NOIREEEE and things like that. For people who aren't into that, you can still remove the corresponding files if you want. The rest of the game isn't voiced sadly, but that goes with budget restriction probably. The game itself is pretty straightforward, there is basically no side quest except getting new weapons, and while the story will not be remembered forever, it's pretty decent. There is some pretty good comedy in the in game skits and most of the conversations, which will remind some people of the Tales of serie. Also, to note: a 2.0 version with some added content is to be expected, and this game is basically a test to see if people are interested in it : the studio wants to go for a big full blown rpg sequel if the players reactions are good. Conclusion : you definitely wanna play this game if you like these rpg maker games in general, it's one of the best in the genre. If you like jrpg in general, you probably wanna get a look at it, the combat system and the interaction between characters are pretty good and worth a try.

Short version: Novelty of the gameplay mechanics wears off. It’s an okay game, but that’s about it. Long version: Machina of the Planet -Planet Ruler- is a game I thought I was going to enjoy. Finding which attacks did the most damage in order to dominate the battle quick was fun. For the first few hours. Here close to the end, there are more cons than pros to keep going. Pros! -Custom made characters. -Unique fighting system where every ability has attributes that are either weak or strong against enemies. (Slashing, Blunt, Magic, Lightning, Holy, Fire, etc.) -D-skits. (Like the "Tales of" games.) -Find broken weapons, and repair them for more play options. (More agility over attack power, or more defense, etc.) Cons… -Default assets are abound, from the defense shield to customers at the bar to actual enemies. Not familiar with every asset in this version of RPGMaker, but I know enough. -Traditional “let’s call the male lead a perv” cringe humor. -Traditional tsundere foe. -Bosses are not balanced well. This is by far the worst thing, and it all depends on your abilities and upgraded weapons. Bosses start out as massive damage sponges taking quite a few turns to beat, then later on you’ll find a few that go down quick in a couple turns with some right combos (partly because you have more powerful abilities). One boss fight made everyone jump 2(!) levels, and it probably would have been warranted if anybody on the other side of the 5v3 fight had gotten off a single attack. As it was, Cram did close to 1.5 MILLION damage altogether in one turn, picking up Esty’s slack. -There is slew of bosses for you to fight at the end before the final boss. For no reason I can see aside from giving you levels because they go down fast and hard at that point. (Why is this a thing? And why are there 8? Why not just 4? Games like Chrono Cross do this kind of, but the fights are spread out.)

Pros: -Fairly balanced and creative battle system -Harem party? -Humorous skits Cons: (Luckily, most of these should be fairly easy to add in without significantly rewriting the story) -Lack of NPC interaction, especially for some of the antagonists -Not much backstory for some of the major characters -Not much customization via accessories. There's literally only two different accessories in the game, and both have the same effect but to a different degree. Unfortunately, there aren't even basic accessories for defending against status effects or elements.

This is my 2nd review for today, both for very deserving games (the other was for Fairy Fencer F). Now I have honestly of all my time playing JRPGS have never played an RPG Maker game, mainly because they all really looked the same to me. But I have to say Machina of the Planet Tree really stood out for me, so I felt now that I own the game and I have played through some of it, it is deserving of a review (from someone who hardly ever does reviews haha so please bear with me). Though made from RPG Maker (not sure which I'm assuming the most recent) looks almost nothing like an RPG Maker styled game. The combat is combo based with loads of very stylized and nice looking moves. The story is so far very well done. And the character art looks like it was drawn up by a professional or a group of people who spent lots of hard work and time devolping them. Just overall a game that is currently very deserving of more recongition by the community. This game being as well made as it is,still has that very classic and turn based styled feel to it. So if that's not your cup of tea maybe this game wouldn't be for you. I only am mentioning this because of how lost the art of turn based RPG's has become. But it's how times change of course. Anyways overall verdict... A game well put together using a very limited system, almost brings me to the point of being speechless haha. Well deserving of a purchase by any JRPG fan looking for a solid game. Well that's about it from me! I thank anyone who happens to read this! And of course I hope everyone is doing well and living the best they can! Happy playing my fellow gamers! :)

First impressions (1hr and half in): RPGmaker title, no doubt about it. But with that being said, attention to detail with the map tilesets is noticable - they took time and showed care for the creation of the areas I've seen so far. Character designs and pixel art are of good quality (within the confines of the engine), and the characters themselves are expressive enough visually to keep a scenes mood intact. Translation quality flows well enough, though personality of the characters so far seem to lack "something" - not sure what - but they feel a bit flat. More time playing may fix that though. Standard Jrpg music, nothing obnoxious so far, but nothing amazing either. Japanese voiceacting during combat is a personal plus for me, adds alot of personality. :) Unfortunately full voiceacting outside of combat does not exist - I assume it was just too out of reach for the devs. =/ Gameplay reminds me of a mix of Xenogears, and Star Ocean 2. If I had a complaint - using a controller is a bit twitchy/sensitve during combat, as my 360 controllers' dpad does not work within the game, and instead I have to fiddle with the combat menu using the joystick. But that's more a personal gripe. Enjoying it up to now - it's not a fancy, next-gen game - but it has noticable, genuine effort put into it, and likeable visuals. And so far the gameplay is fun.