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.

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.

(Disclaimer: I was the QA lead for Sekai Project's localization of Machina of the Planet Tree -Planet Ruler- so feel free to take this with the entire salt shaker.)

Planet Ruler is an amazingly fun and adorable indie JRPG. I'm a fan of JRPGs in general, so I was expecting to enjoy working on this when I got the opportunity, but between the battle system and the catg-- I mean, the way I ended up really liking all of the characters, it exceeded my expectations.

To get the one big downside out of the way first, it's not all that long - I'd ballpark it as being around 7-10 hours for a playthrough that doesn't get stuck on any of the bosses, but it's hard for me to say because I had access to the game files so I knew a lot of the game's inner workings and also had to spend time checking every little thing, both of which distorted my playtime significantly. It's also fairly linear, with no real sidequests other than finding the items needed to upgrade your party's weapons.

But past that, it has a fairly unique battle system where you string attacks together using a "Cost" system - basically action points - and deal additional damage on later hits, based on both the number of attacks used, and the number of hits those attacks each dealt. Figuring out what enemies are weak to and then setting up a string of attacks that both builds up the combo meter and strings as many TP-costing "Over-Arts" as you can into the mix without using more TP than you want can be a challenge, but one the game rewards by letting you blow through enemies. Battles are pretty action-packed, especially because the game doesn't really encourage holding back - during boss fights especially, it ends up feeling like every turn is an extreme all-out attack.

I also ended up really clicking with more or less all of the characters. Cram is adoracute. *nods* Also, especially if you can understand a bit of Japanese, all three of the playable characters (plus Cronos) have amazingly adorable and hilarious voice acting in combat. Even if you can't, though, the banter between the party outside of combat is really, really good and funny.

So yeah. Even if I wasn't paid to work on this game, I'd have to recommend it to JRPG fans. For people who aren't into JRPGs very much but still enjoy anime-styled games, I'd still recommend trying it, especially if their objections are more that JRPGs are long and boring, or don't involve much strategy, than that they're too complicated. (If it's that they're too complex... yeah, Planet Ruler's combat system isn't super tough, but it's significantly more in-depth than "hit the bad guy, heal when you get hurt.")

The battle system really ruins the fun.
So, it's turn based and encourages you to plan out your attacks by having a move repetition penalty and a bonus for varied attacks.
So you DON'T want to button mash right?
No, you also have a 5 second timer for your combo, think fast!
But also, you need to account for what your opponent is weak against.
Tough crap that normally they're weak to only one attack, as if you only use the attack that actually does damage on them, you get a repetition penalty, and if you use weak attacks they resist big time.

So.. basically you're forced to think hard, button mash, vary up your attacks but not use pointless attacks.
So you lose out no matter what you do, because it's throwing several systems at you.

That alone is a hot mess. I'm not far into it but I have no idea how to fight this one boss battle when everything is being penalised.
I could just keep fighting smaller monsters until I can one shot it, but it's very strong and I don't want to spend that long when I'm clearly supposed to be in for a long thought out fight with this boss.

I don't really enjoy fighting, I do it to continue a story. So maybe someone who loves fighting might find this hot mess a unique thing to overcome, in which case go for it?

but generally, i feel like it's trying to do too much and not offering any option for personal style because it penalises everything...

I also found the sizing of the window ridiculous, it's about 1/4 the size of my screen, so I'm squinting and leaning in while trying to do thought out, fast, varied, not pointless attacks with writing so tiny and confusing layout of commands.

but that's totally fun right?

The art is what drew me in, and I'm big on RPGs normally, but this one, I feel like they tried to do something new and it flopped.

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.)

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.

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.

My playtime: 10:22:17 (based on in game clock)
Developer Response: No (last response is in 1 Aug, 2015).

Machina of the Planet Tree -Planet Ruler- is a RPG Maker game with a unique battle system; you can choose up to 4 skills to bring to battle and stack the skills to make a combo in any way you want. The game has 6+ dungeons in total.

The game uses a combination of RTP (default RPG Maker assets) and custom assets. The RTP assets somehow looks pale in comparison of the custom ones, but it works out somehow.

The game has a lot of pleasant musics. Also, if you're a fan of games where the characters speaks something whenever they are attacking, this game also has it.

To be honest, i didn't really remember much of the story; the game starts off by introducing about a lot of terms that i have no idea about; it's as if i was expected to understand those things right away. The game keeps on introducing more terms after that and even though some of them are explained in the end, it is explained in the optional content where you have to press a button to trigger it. This might works well for those who don't want to invest much in the game's story (since you can play the game just fine without the story), but it makes me can't relate to the characters at all.

Also, it might also because english isn't my native language, but sometimes the dialogue is kinda hard to understand. I kept on reading the sentences before the final boss fight and i still didn't understand most of it.

The game mostly focuses on the unique battle system; you can bring up to 4 skills to battle (you can change these skills in the middle of the battle without any penalty) and you'll have "cost" per turn that you can use to cast skills (some skills cost more "cost" than the others). Your turn will end once you used up all of your cost or you use "charge" option (basically the same as "defend" in any other RPG Maker games) where you can reduce incoming damage and recover some TP. These TP can be used to cast some magic (this is different from the skills because it's mainly buffs and heals) or to be used to temporarily strengthen your skills as you stack your combo. You can also recover these TP by attacking the enemy with your skills.

Speaking of combo, you can use several skills until your cost runs out to make up combos. Some skills can generate more combo than other skills (due to it hitting more than the others) and some skills deals more damage than the others (due to weakness and resistance to each enemies). The interesting part is, you can't use the same skills consecutively (well, you actually can, but there will be a damage penalty for it), and the damage multiplier will be shown on the screen so you can pick out which skill is the best for the enemy.

With all of the amazing unique battle system, i kinda enjoyed the battle at first. However, it ends up becoming repetitive and boring when you have to fight random encounters a lot, especially because the battle is quite time consuming. I still enjoyed the boss fights, though. Ah, and the random encounters aren't that easy nor that hard. It's just that they have a lot of damage (my party got wiped out once) so you have to kill them before their turn comes.

The game has a lot of boss fights. Most of the bosses are the same as the others (they heal per turn, cast several skills, and so on), while there are some that are trickier to beat since they can't be killed by normal means. I had to reset the boss fights after spending like half an hour for this one (the one that cast heals to full health after you reduce its HP down to half). There was also one occasion where i was wiped out by a boss (it's the green version of the last boss) with full defense buff and i had no idea what to do with that (i somehow understand why it happened while i write this review though (i figured because i put all of my characters on charge position) but i'm not going back to check it again).

The game's dungeon designs are mediocre. It's mostly just a straightforward "maze" with a bit branching paths to excavation point. There is one maze like dungeon and one other challenging dungeon in the game though. However, i don't really find it an issue because i don't like the random encounters in the game.

There are also excavation points in the dungeons. You will get some items, from the common ones to the rare ones, several times from this points. These points will also reset whenever you load the game. I find it too tedious to do it over and over though. I think it'll be easier to just excavate everything with one click.

Although the game doesn't really focus on it, you can upgrade your gear by crafting. You need to grind the materials though so i just crafted whatever i can craft.

Pros:
- 6+ dungeons
- A lot of boss fights
- Multiplier and damage calculation is being shown on the screen

Cons:
- Hard-to-follow story
- Time consuming random encounters
- Time wasting excavation points

It's a RPG Maker game with unique battle system and beautiful art.

Yes.
To be honest, i had a hard time whether to recommend this game or not. It's not worth the full price for sure, but if you like to play RPG maker games and want to try out another RPG maker game with a unique combat system, it's a good game to play. Just make sure you get it on a discount.

6/10 About 5 hours in right now, and I wish I could say I love this game more. It's really not bad, but I'm not sure if I'll ever finish it.

I bought it in a HumbleBundle with mostly VNs, so that's what I was expecting. It was a pleasant surprise to find that it was a classic-styled RPG. The first hour in, I was sure I found a hidden gem - interesting plot, cute characters, cute dialogue, great BGM (no, you can't choose to turn off SE/BGM/CV selectively, but it's not really a problem). It's been at least a few years since I played my last classic RPG, and I was immediately reminded of why I loved the genre so much before.

After Retla joined the team, it became pretty clear that the gameplay was quite unbalanced. I love AP systems, where you're allocated a particular amount of points you can spend to do actions, but I feel like the game is being too lenient. With Retla and Cram's attacks, it was really easy to finish off four, and later five, enemies in one or two rounds, and I rarely took any damage. With Cram's regen skill, I never had to use any healing items. TP regenerates so quickly when you string combos and attack weaknesses, that the TP drinks were useless as well.

But I'm not one to complain about a game being too easy - it saves me time that I can spend on enjoying the story after all. And if simple gameplay was the only problem with the game, I'd easily give it an 7.5/10.

The boss battles. As a long-time fan of RPGs, both classic and modern, I'm used to spending 15-20 minutes in a boss battle and the frustration of losing at the end when the boss unleashes an ultimate that KOs all your characters. I love-hate the hard battles where you must adjust your attack strategies constantly.

Machina of the Planet Tree has none of that. Sure, you'll spend about 15-20 minutes on the later bosses. But it's a brainless 20 minutes, where you perform the same exact actions over and over again. Pray tell, why do the battles last so long then? Oh, it's just because the bosses have an insane amount of regen - and often have self-healing skills on top of that. Hit them with a 18000 combo? Hahaha, watch as 75% of that is regenerated at the end of the turn. And if you're lucky, you'll watch as the boss heals 20% HP in one spell (while you only do 5-7% damage each turn).
The bosses so far are dumb af, their attacks, strengths, and weaknesses never change. They are so easy to beat, yet have artificially inflated battle times that do nothing but waste players' times.

Not everything about this game is bad though. I mentioned the AP system, which, paired with the combo system, and the special attacks, would be quite interesting if the devs had balanced the game a bit more. I also like how you can choose when to read the story dialogue in the dungeons. The character voiceovers after each fight is also quite adorable!

I'm not sure if I'll finish the game, as the gameplay is too unbalanced, and frankly really boring, but I did get an hour or two of enjoyment, and it's quite worth the price that I got it at.