Final Fantasy-esque

Mardek is a Final Fantasyesque RPG (J-ish, but from a British developer) implemented in Flash; at present, there are three of a projected eight chapters.

Oddly, game characters on the map are tiny pixelated creates like something from NES days, while dialog and menu images of the same characters are pretty nice cartoon art; perhaps this is an attempt to have things both ways -- retro and not too retro.

Combat is the usual JRPG tedium; you have a party of characters, attacks are triggered in sequence, you can use items and spells and such. And as usual there are scads of wandering monsters, so you wind up fighting a lot of repetitive battles.

However, there's quite a lot of depth to the system for a Flash game -- character effects such as poison, antidotes, a large number of spells, and so on. There's a system of quests and a quest log and a fairly decent story arc.

Where Mardek works best, however, is in the dialog; the main characters, Mardek and Deugan, may be fantasy adventurers but they a bantering Brit sarcasm down. Not that the dialog is up to, say, Ben There, Dan That level, but it's a lot more amusing than the usual sturm-und-drang nonsense of most RPGs.

So worth playing? Sure, if you like the JRPG style and don't mind the combat.

Turn-Based Battle isn't as satirically perfect as Upgrade Complete or Achievement Unlocked, two games from the same developer with the same snarky metacommentary on common game tropes. But it's still pretty amusing.

Voices & Visions is a Lovecraftian RPG Maker game. As "The Wanderer," you investigate a village where Evil Things are happening, finding bits of prose left here and there by The Prophet and ultimately fighting a final boss battle, getting either the Good or Bad ending.

It has the main flaw of RPG Maker games -- tedious Final Fantasy-esque combat -- but many virtues as well. Indeed, except in rare cases, combat is entirely optional; you don't level up through combat, and there are only a few occasions in which it's required.

The game takes place over ten "days," but time does not pass autonomously; rather, when you choose to go to sleep at the inn, the next day begins. Each day, new things appear in the village, so even if you explore every last area (and some are purely optional dungeons or wilderness areas), you will eventually run out of things to do and want to sleep to see the new content.

The characters who join you are well portrayed, and each have individual personalities as well as "feats" that can benefit you -- abilities that let you (a limited number of times per day) overcome obstacles without using items.

The game becomes somewhat surreal in later days, with the protagonist hearing voices and subject to visions that play an important part in unravelling the game's mystery. This is, to be sure, an unusual aspect to an RPG. In some ways, Visions & Voices plays out more like a graphic adventure than an RPG.

In short, while the game is subject to the limitations of RPG Maker, Karsuman and Craze are pushing the tool in experimental and interesting directions.

Sonny 2 is in many ways an impressive game -- but I have to note for the sake of fairness that it's also a game of a type I do not particularly like. Others clearly do -- almost 7.5m plays on Armor Games, and over 1m on Kongregate.

Iffermoon is in some ways the opposite of many of the games we point to -- graphically polished, conventional gameplay, and long-playing. It's a 2D sidescrolling RPG, but with backgrounds and characters rendered in 3D, with a generally pastel, cute look. Most of the game is played in sidescroller mode -- you move about, collecting coins of different colors and 'talking' with other characters by moving atop them. However, when you enter battle, you cut to a battle screen, ala Final Fantasy; also ala Final Fantasy your single character in sidescrolling mode actually represents your party, four of whom you may use during a battle. Unlike FF, combat is real-time, except that each character gradually "charges up," and when charged, you can click trigger a special attack or action by the character.

Final Vision is a platform RPG from the mind of Alspal - think Knytt meets Castlevania. Decked out with charmingly crude pixel art, the game is one giant, sprawling level in which you, the king of said level/kingdom, run around killing things to get stronger and buy more stuff. I don't know about you, but that sounds geekalicious to me.

The game is a veritable homage to Final Fantasy: pixel art from the series composes the save statues that dot the land; items and spells are copied straight from the source; even your choice of classes is a one-time imitation of the FFV job system. You also get an airship early on, though being able to travel in only two directions somewhat limits the sense of flight.

Vicky: What's that? It looks like Final Fantasy.

Me: No, it's a game called Aveyond.

Vicky (after watching for several minutes): It looks fun. Can I play?

Vicky's right; Aveyond does play a lot like Final Fantasy--maybe about V, since the graphics are 2D sprites in an oblique overhead view. It's a game you wouldn't be surprised to find on your SNES or Genesis.