TWO THOUSAND, EIGHT HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE UNITED STATES DOLLARS.

Unusual thing to start an app review with, but Kadokawa are charging $2,865 USD for game assets for this edition of RPG Maker. Almost 200 items of DLC for this software.

Jesus wept.

What is RPG Maker, you ask?

RPG Maker is the worst thing to happen to gaming, ever. Yes, even worse than the Unity Asset Store.

It's a tool designed for children to create ripoffs of Final Fantasy, the ancient Japanese console RPG. No game development skill is needed, anyone, anyone at all, even people who should never make games, can make Final Fantasy ripoffs with RPG Maker. It's simple, and only takes a few hours to stamp one out (Andorlea studios, for example, has dumped around 130 RPG Maker asset flips onto Steam, they push one out every couple of weeks).

The problem is that it's not only valueless when people who lack the talent to be game developers are enabled to do so, circumventing the natural barrier that should protect the industry, it's actively harmful to the gaming industry. The pollution created by these endless, valueless RPG Maker asset flips on Steam choke the marketplace and make it extremely difficult for genuine, talented amateur developers who do the right thing to get visibility and find an audience for their genuinely made, real games.

And it's harmful to us gamers who have to sort through all these utterly cringey fan-fictions to find those genuinely made games.

Focusing on this product, and putting aside for a moment that they are seriously asking for almost three thousand dollars in DLC for this, it's truly, truly awful.

It can only do one thing, which is create ripoffs of Square's Final Fantasy game from 1987. The graphics and gameplay this engine provides are identical. The engine itself is one of the worst game engines to exist, failing to cater to modern PCs. Every game has locked resolution, no graphics options, and limited control customisability... it looks bad, plays worse. Today, if someone put the original, classic 1987 Final Fantasy in front of a PC gamer that had never seen it before, they'd think it was garbage.

Take that experience and couple it with the utterly cringey high school anime club dropout fan-fiction game design that comes from the people who use this crapware to circumvent the barriers preventing them from being able to tell their imaginary anime girlfriend that they're a game developer, and of course Valve's disastrous Steam Direct, and you can see why there's just so much RPG Maker crapware flooding onto the store.

Do I recommend this application? Yes, straight to hell where it belongs.

Gamers, you deserve better than this. And the fact Kadokawa is trying to scam would-be developers in their anime fan clubs out of $2,865 (on top of the ridiculous $70 price tag) just so they can make garbage fan-fictions is beyond the pale.

Their English forum has been infected by Woke virus. As the developer of the longest-living RPG Maker game in the world, As the shadow master of 66RPG/Project One, as the admin of DIYRPG, as a member of RMAsia, I disapprove such a development. We loved this software for so long and they ruined everything. We will take this industry back. Anyone who follows their path to abyss is now forbidden to use any of our assets in their games.

i enjoy using it