????Gaia's Melody: ECHOED MELODIES Reviews

Hello, I LOVED THIS! I finished the game last night and honestly I just want to play more. I don't even know how to properly articulate how much fun this was! So much thought and detail was put into it, but especially heart. That's probably really my absolute favorite thing about this game; it just OOZES love and passion from every pore and it made for an exciting and inspiring experience! There's an absolutely staggering amount of content and I love it because it means I can play again and still discover new things. The world was rich, the story was right up my alley with its light-hearted comedy slash tragic drama flavors mixed together and the presentation was super impressive and full of character, beautiful! Also, I have to mention the battles in particular because I was really surprised by how fun they were despite being turnbased. They had a really good feel with the camera movements and the way characters bounced around the battlefield (it made for some really funny moments by accident too which was great) and all the special skills were so satisfyingly flashy that using them always gave me a rush. I just... really am gushing more than reviewing but in light of how much I enjoyed this game, I think that's okay, haha. I guess I should mention that there were indeed some bugs and some crashes but they were a very minor setback for me, really. PS Zephyr is precious OK I'M DONE.

This game is pretty damn good! I've been intrested in it for a while and I'm glad I was. The only thing I don't like is how much is lags. Probably due to my pc specs or something. It is also kinda buggy but that's what many would expect from a RPG MV game as the program is not as advanced as RPG VX ACE as far as I know. Enjoyed it either way.

I spent $60 to play Bravely Default 2, and I didn't bother finishing it because it was bland and had no character. Then I played this game, after learning what it is on Youtube, and I can feel the dedication to the crafts like it was a story the creator wanted to tell. It made me want to finish the game to the end. While its not without its flaws, that other reviewers already listed, it all holds together into something people can appreciate. Also who's Gaia?

This game has crashed multiple times but i have been able to put those aside. THIS IS A AMAZING GAME i recommend it to anyone the endings are great...well sad...but still i love this game i love the characters and its been Alot of fun and i cant wait for the sequel!

Hello. Quick disclaimer: I am a friend of the creator, Echo607, and am therefore destined to make a positive review of this game. However, if this game really [i]was[/i] bad, then I would pick it up, put it down, and then quietly pretend that I never played it to avoid hurting her feelings. So while I'm obviously biased, the fact that I have sunk 33 hours into this game means that I do genuinely recommend this game. The story follows Akira who embarks on a journey to find her missing sister, after her town is destroyed. The story takes place in Gaia, which is a similar setting as you would find in most RPG Maker Games, but with its own unique flavour. (The first town is literally named Teralolz.) The world of Gaia is memorable, visually interesting, and simultaneously silly and serious at the same time. You can't talk about this game without mentioning the level of polish this game has. Anyone who is familiar with RPG Maker will be able to see the absolutely game-making wizardry on display here. Each of the characters have their own unique idle sprites, so you can see each character's hair billow in the wind, or Akira's own tail move back and forth. Areas are remarkably well designed, with some areas having such gorgeous details like the morning sun seeping through the window and reflecting on the hardwood floor. And considering that this game was made by a visually impaired person, it makes the feats in game design on display, even [b]more[/b] of an accomplishment. However, I feel like the level of polish can be a double edged sword at times. As neat as it is for characters to leave a trail of audible footprints, was it really necessary in most of the outdoor maps? I would have just left it for Icilica and called it a day. The attention to detail is admirable, but I feel like it's too distracting at times to really warrant all of it. Also, while this game has an unprecedented level of polish to it, there were some areas that felt a little lacking in polish. [spoiler]When Kachie revealed that she was Kitsunei, I expected her to reveal she was hiding fox ears and a tail. Only...she didn't. If any moment deserved a custom sprite, it was that one.[/spoiler] Then there are times where it's unclear where you can and can't walk, the worst offender of this being Jade, where a good chunk of the map is just invisible-walled for no discernible reason. Then there were areas that were just too dark to navigate around in properly. Another nitpick is that on the world map, it's hard to tell which precise square you need to click on in order to enter the town in question, and it required a lot of trial and error just trying to get in. And for how well designed all of these towns are, it's a real shame that you don't have reason to visit most of them more than once... Some things you were expected to do, can be quite counter-intuitive. There was one side quest where Nameless Catgirl said she wanted to go back to her village. I went to said village and spoke to every single NPC multiple times and nothing happened. (Ninety percent of the villagers didn't even have modified dialogue.) I then fast-travelled to an offshoot area which connected to this town via dungeon, and nothing happened. In one last vain attempt, I went back to the town, and then trekked through the dungeon, and it was only when I exited the specific cave door, that [i][b]then[/b][/i] a cutscene played. Said cutscene told me to go to another area and find a way to remove Akira from the party. And after repeating what I did in the last area, and even sleeping at the Inn for good measure, nothing happened. That was when I gave up. I created a second save file and advanced the plot because I couldn't figure out what the game expected me to do. Worst of all, there were no hints. Like, having cute little markers on the map goes a long way, but this game really would have benefited from having a Quest Journal. Somewhere that the player can cross-reference when they've forgotten what they were doing. There's even a blank space in the menu, so it would be very easy to add. In terms of writing, Gaia's Melody is obviously inspired by many old-school RPGs, such as the Final Fantasy series. As a result, it inherits many of the same problems as them. The story is your typical world-saving adventure presented in a mostly linear format, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but can be kind of constricting at times. The story is decent, but it doesn't bring anything new to the table. Despite all that, one thing I [i]will[/i] say about this game, is that it was hard to put down. And that is an accomplishment for someone with as short of an attention span as me. Let's talk about the characters. Frankly, there are too many of them. The reason most stories revolve around five-ish characters is because it's how many the audience can keep track of at any given time. (Easier for the author too.) Gaia's Melody, on the other hand, has a core character cast of [b]twelve,[/b] and they're introduced in such rapid fire succession that it's hard to get invested in any of them before the next batch is introduced. I get that a lot of them were based off of real people, which helps in the long run, but many of the characters only serve one narrative (or gameplay) purpose, that it's hard to justify keeping them all. Tara exists to be Best Friend #2, Tadase exists to be Captain Friendzone, Miki and Niki...are Miki and Niki, [spoiler]Nameless Catgirl is only there to sacrifice herself,[/spoiler] Choko's brother just exists from time to time, and as much as I love my stoic angsty boys, Whyp didn't do anything that Zephyr didn't do better. I know it's too late to suggest this, but the game really would have benefited from combining characters together. Even though Tara has my favourite character design, all of her dialogue could easily have been given to Kachie. I think Whyp would have really blossomed as a character if [i]he[/i] was the one with the unspoken crush on Akira, and then wrestled with between that and his undying loyalty to Doken. [spoiler]And I would have felt a lot sadder if Choko sacrificed herself instead of Nameless Catgirl.[/spoiler] It's not that these characters weren't endearing, it's just that they're not as endearing as they could have been. That being said, I didn't hate any of the characters. Akira, Echo, Kachie, Doken, and Zephyr really stand out as their own people, with logical motivations and engaging personalities. [spoiler]I have mad respect for Echo for adopting the girl who killed her biological sister.[/spoiler] Even the villain roster is pretty diverse, full of sympathetic characters that I honestly wasn't expecting to get attached to. And Agares is solidly written. He is intimidating and to the point. There were some moments where his dialogue felt a bit weak, but for the most part, he was a well-foreshadowed antagonist, and has a presence that most modern villains would [b]die[/b] for. While I have many more nitpicks, at the end of the day, my only real complaint about this game is that it's a remake of a game written by a twelve-year-old. I get that rewriting a story like this is hard because of how much nostalgic value it has to you (my own Jr. High School stories exist in Fiction Limbo right now, for that reason), but as painful as it can be, sometimes the changes [i]are[/i] worth it. For what this game is, is it very well made and entertaining. But I think it could reached its full potential if it had been willing to leave some ideas on the cutting room floor. Overall, this was a really fun experience that oozes with personality. This game is quaint, it's charming, and clearly a labour of love. It's Echo607's pride and joy (after her hubby and tiny human, of course), and I wish Echo607 the best of luck on her future, game-making endeavours! :D

I've been a big fan of the developer's work for a while and their youtube channel is filled with useful hints and tips on how to use the RPG Maker engines to your advantage, so I have been eagerly awaiting the release of this game for quite some time. SO glad that it's finally here! So far I have only just finished the prologue (Teralolz) and although I never played the original version of the game I did watch a full playthrough of it by the developer herself. In just the bundle of minutes I've been playing I have greatly enjoyed myself, the game itself is primarily a standard RPG that you would expect from an RPG Maker game, however, the original artwork and the tweaked gameplay certainly make the game stand out from what the base engine does. There are a few default things here or there, but nothing that you would sit and think "Oh that's just the default blah blah blah". The story is gripping even with just the beginning part of the game. AAAAnyway, I could probably go on and on about this game for some time so I'll cut to the chase, If you are a fan of RPGs that are story driven and have a variety of characters (both likable and unlikable) then this is one of the games for you! If you don't like RPGs or just hate anything RPG Maker (there are people like that) then I'd say give the original a look (you can watch the whole game on the develoepr's youtube channel if you wanted to) and see if it interests you before buying. Me? I'm going back to the game now! P.S: Thanks Echo for all the hard work you've put into this game, I'm sure it will bring many hours of joy! (And probably some hours of anger and sadness) Keep up the good work! P.P.S: The Great Fighter Doken is still my favourite character!

[h1]Scuffed Tween Game[/h1] [h2]Story[/h2] The story is made for tweens and IMO, is going to feel awkward for those of us who are older, especially with all the intentional misspellings that were clearly made for the sake of memes. I suppose this is intentional as part of a coming-of-age story, but I feel like the dialogue sounds too kidlike. Then again, maybe kids these days actually talk like this and I just need to reconnect with my inner child? For some reason, some adult NPCs in the game try to flirt with the tween party members. That is sus. That said, there is some good worldbuilding concerning the different races, the Gate, and the two parallel worlds. I also found the relationship between Akira and Echo interesting. Although they love each other, there are also trust issues because Echo forbids Akira from using magic and clearly knows something about her past. This lack of trust can potentially lead to a bad ending, but their relationship is still salvageable and can lead to the good and true endings. As for the endings, I wish there was a clear explanation for why they diverged so much. It makes some sense for the berserker weapon to cause the bad ending, but I don't understand how Echo's presence in the final battle can cause the true ending. I hope the sequel gives proper hints or explanations for the difference in the endings. [h2]Gameplay[/h2] The gameplay uses a normal turn-based system, but there are several balancing issues. In most RPGs, party members have to be balanced so that everyone feels viable, but in this game, several characters have way better balanced stat growths and skills than others. Akira can learn her AOEs earlier and has solid defenses and speed, allowing her to perform almost any magic role better and more safely than most other party members. Zephyr has such ridiculous magic offense and defense that he probably won't die to anything other than deathblow attacks. Doken has ridiculous HP growth and can learn a very cheap and powerful physical AOE that outperforms all other AOEs in the game. Most other characters take longer to learn their good AOE skills, but never really develop the defensive stats and HP needed to survive against enemies. Worse yet, there is no EXP sharing for inactive party members and Akira is locked into the party, meaning the party's levels will always be imbalanced and if the player wants to grind, they'll need to rotate party members. The bad defensive stats for the majority of party members is supposed to be mitigated by their ability to wipe the enemy just as quickly as the enemies can do to them, but this is hampered by the variance in deciding turn order. With bad RNG, it's possible for slow and strong magic casting foes to act before the entire party and wipe out all of the glass cannon party members. Thus, certain lategame enemy formations can feel like a coin flip for the majority of party members. The only good news is that KO doesn't prevent experience gain, but it's still kind of jarring to have this extreme glass cannon situation. The power differences are somewhat justified story-wise, but I feel like it's overdone to the point where everyone outside of the "big three" have a very hard time contributing to battle before they get wiped by the enemy. I actually played another game, Sword of Paladin, that had similar power gap issues between party members, but it still gave the low-tier characters enough durability and useful skills to meaningfully contribute in combat. The early game balancing is actually worse in some ways. Many enemies have access to the instant death skill, Crater Bite, but the player's revival options are very weak at this point of the game and there's no obvious way to resist instant death. This can make certain mobs a nightmare to run into, especially the small ones in one of the Mirrikh labs, which have both high speed and Crater Bite. The strangest thing is that I actually watched a bit of the developer's own LP of this game hoping to find some big brain strategy to overcome the enemies' high damage. Unfortunately, I saw that she died a lot and had to run from a lot of fights, which didn't inspire confidence. Item usage is also scuffed initially, since the first two tiers of healing items only do flat healing, which means they can't keep up with some characters' HP growth. IMO, it would have been better to just have percentage based healing items so that they'll still be effective no matter the characters' HP growth. Flat healing just doesn't scale well unless the dev is willing to implement several tiers of items like in Radiant Arc. [h2]Verdict[/h2] 6/10, which is barely enough for me to hit the recommend button. The game has good custom assets and the story is somewhat better than average despite how I'm not in the target audience, but the balancing issues and bizarre power gaps between party members makes the game feel very unpolished.

Oh man, Echo... I have a lot of respect for you, with how you finished your game and put it out there, someday I hope to do the same. This is hard to write, for the longest time I followed your work on YouTube, and when the game came out I bought it right away, I wanted to support you, and I still do even after leaving this review. But this game is very rough to get through. I would say the first 60-70% of this game is actually quite enjoyable. But pretty much as soon as you get to the part in the game where things open up and you have freedom to go to any place you want, for side activities, or finding final weapons for characters. The game becomes very convoluted and hard to follow, if you so much as miss a sentence or small bit of info for where to go next or who to talk to it just feels like running around aimlessly with no direction. Even with your minimap pointers, as soon as you get the destination things just get so messy. Your entire Majik Mushroom fetch quest is a great example of this, I took a small break around this time, so I had to watch your playthrough to see that I have to remove a guest character, then talk to her in the airship for more info? Why couldn't she just tell me when the Mushrooms were brought up? Thank god for your playthrough on YouTube. I get what you were going for, the open ended part of your game, you get freedom and that works in games a lot of the time, but this all just feels like tedious padding to extend the playtime of your game. It really doesn't feel like fun or something that progresses your story, just to get into the Jade Cave for example, it feels blocked off by things really unrelated to the story. I just cheesed it by finding that mushroom hiding in Jade (which kind of just feels like something you left in for testing purposes). But okay, I could forgive that, I'm about to enter the last dungeon right? It'll get back into the swing of things!! Oh how wrong I was... Echo... This part of your game without a doubt is one of the worst most time consuming, most frustrating parts in a game I've played for a loooong time. You split the party, with no real incentive before this to level anyone else up, with a huge final dungeon with a very unforgiving encounter rate, and all the enemies you fight are so strong they can kill your entire B or C team in a single turn. Most of my attacks hurt 0 on everything, even with the best gear I could buy for them (final weapons included). But okay okay okay... I can still make it to the end, my 30 hours played can still mean something, right?? Nope. This final dungeon is also riddled unrelenting lag, making battles super choppy, and filled with glitchy portals, that if saved in, will permanently lock your game. I found one glitchy portal with the background that looks like castle walls, once you go up the red stairs and enter the portal you can't take the portal back. Which I found out but at this point it was okay because I only had one team in there. (I saved and tested the same portal with all the teams too, same problem, you cannot get out) So I'm thinking it's okay, I didn't save with more than one team in there. I'm exploring for hours and can't get back to the place you start in when you get to the dungeon. So I go to your playthrough again, my first team, instead of running forward to their goal like you did, I went through the portal behind me, just trying to explore, but now your section with a 3 way split to all the areas, has glitched on me, and 2 of the 3 portals there take me to the same place, that I've already competed with a different team. So now that I've done all this, and saved over and over, not being able to get back to the starting area in your playthrough, and 2 of the 3 portals bringing me to the same place, I've now come to the horrible realisation that my game is stuck in limbo, and the 30 hours I've spent, and the hours of traversing this final dungeon, was all in vain. It's such a shame, really, I had so much fun poking around in your game, it was giving me so much inspiration for my own, and I really really really tried to beat it, which makes the fact that I can't due to a glitch at the end even more painful to take. So all in all, with the current state of the game (specifically the final dungeon) as of now I just can't recommend. A messy ending is one thing, but game breaking glitches are another.

Now, I'm giving this a "Yes" recommendation because there's no "It Depends" option, and it doesn't quite deserve a "No". If the amateurish art and graphics don't bother you, and you're lenient with the frequent outdated internet "lol random" writing and loads of tone inconsistencies, you should be fine. I can see from the other reviews that plenty of people are able to ignore these things and enjoy it, at the very least. That's not to say I only have negatives to say about the game. It very clearly had a lot of heart and effort put into it, and for an RPG Maker game it only barely looks like one, and it can be said without a shadow of a doubt that this isn't just a cash grab like 80% of the other RPG Maker games on Steam. That's all stuff about the presentation, the obvious issues/nonissues (depending on your preferences). As far as the gameplay goes, it's not bad. Nearly every map and town has plenty of hidden stuff to find, and the combat is servicable. There are at least a few convenience features to ease it along, like the ability to modify the random encounter rate and the fact that KOed party members always revive with 1 HP and still get EXP at the end of battles. Echo607 has gotten to be quite the prolific RPG Maker developer, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she comes out with when her art and writing improve.

I've been following the developer's YouTube channel for a while now. She's given really good tips on how to make games, not just in RPG Maker, but in general. So, when it finally came time for her to release a new game, I was excited to see her product! I'm currently very early on in the game, but from what I'm seeing, I'm loving it! Granted, it's nothing too spectacular as a game in general, but for an RPG Maker MV game, I'm blown away at how unlike an RPG Maker game it is! Some elements still are very 'default', including some sound effects and menu selection names, but I'd say that about 98% of what's in the game is not something you'd find in a default RPG Maker MV game. The visuals are beautiful. Everything from the maps to the sprites look amazing. Not perfect by any means, but amazing. The artist has such a unique character art style that really makes the game stand out. The battles are actually pretty fun! I'm not a huge fan of random encounters, but that can easily be adjusted in the game's menu, a feature that's useful if you're more focused on story and objectives than fighting. Again, I'm still very early in the game, but the story is very engaging and makes you want to know what's going to happen next. Akira, the protagonist, is a likeable character who has a pretty good sense of humor yet is very serious when she needs to be. Speaking of which, the game's style and sense of humor definitely matches that of the developer herself, as shown by her YouTube videos. It's not 'laugh out loud' funny (at least not to me), but it got me to smile and give a light chuckle at times. I don't really have any complaints/cons at the moment, and hopefully it'll stay that way. Overall, if you're a fan of RPG Maker games, this is certainly worth a try. If you're not a fan of RPG Maker games but are a fan of fantasy elements with a sense of humor, I think it's still worth a try.