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A lightweight but intuitive game making engine for all to enjoy!

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Created by Kadokawa / Jupiter and published by Nis America, RPG Maker: FES is a lightweight and very flexible game creation engine that's is fun to tinker around with, but how does it compare to its PC counterpart? Continue reading our review to find out the answer to that question and many more!



The FES game engine allows users to place preset assets and events with ease as well as letting them create maps with a robust world map and dungeon creator. The touch controls allow for easy placement and drawing for the various functions which is incredibly intuitive and gives the engine unparalleled ease of use which as you can probably already tell is the tool's strongest asset. You can even tweak some functions if you have basic knowledge of how game engine coding works such as creating a time of day or weather engine to run in your game or even make an adventure game similar to Zelda without using the built-in default battle system!

This game engine isn't perfect however, as a big flaw it has is a severe lack of assets such as character models, enemies, and objects. There's no way to create your own assets as far as we know which is a shame as that would alleviate much of the issues we have with the software. The biggest issue we have with the software "by a longshot" is that you can only upload a single project at a time for other players to download. This not only limits developers, but has caused a severe dearth of games to be released in the community download area of the app. Again you can purchase additional slots, but most people won't bother which is a very big problem for an app that relies on user-created content.



There's also a free player app that allows anyone to play games created on the engine free of charge on the 3DS which is nice, but there isn't alot of completed content available to the community, just a bunch of short user-created demo's which won't hold most players attention for long. Bottom line, the developers should have made at least one or two finished games available from the start to showcase what the engine is capable of and to appease the players who are interested in playing rather than creation.

Visually the engine allows players to create games that look like they belong on the Gameboy Advance, which is impressive given the hardware you're working with and the art-style of the pre-made assets are gorgeous in all of their 16-bit glory! The audio is another limitation that the game has as there just aren't many tracks so don't expect to craft a masterpiece in that regard, but what is there is pretty good.



Bottom-Line:

With easy to use tools and an intuitive interface RPG Maker: FES is one of the easiest game creation engines we've ever seen so even the most inexperienced developers can craft an epic adventure of their own with this software, however many aspects of the software leave much to be desired, but if you can live with these limitations this software is a real gem albeit a flawed one. We give RPG Maker: FES for the 3DS a decently solid level of recommendation.

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Score: ★★★★★★¾☆☆☆ 6.75/10

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#Review #KadokawaGames #NisAmerica #RPGMaker #GameEngine #3DS #Retail #eShop #Gaming

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