After just scrolling through pages of obscure rpgs on steam made by indie teams, I eventually came across this little gem. Before I spend the next couple paragraphs complaining, I should mention I actually enjoyed both hours of playtime the game had to offer. Despite the short length, it really felt like the developers were putting forth a bit of effort, rather than just slapping together mechanics and hoping they worked, as is the case with many other rpg maker games. That being said...

The Story
Looking at it by the broad strokes, the story's actually pretty good. The pacing is fluid, allowing it to build up to the more engaging scenes while never feeling like it gets in the way of gameplay. Every piece of the story feels like its own distinct chapter, giving the game a wholesome feel. It's a rarity in indie games for me to even remember how a story began, since so many of them either skip a lot of buildup, or never deviate from a single plot point, making it nothing more than a blur in my memory.

All that in mind, the writing itself feels mediocre at best, and choppy at worst. There were multiple times when the grammar was wrong, and characters would rarely display the emotions in text that they clearly should be experiencing. A wounded soldier, bleading to death, politely asks the player to please fetch some healing herbs in the same way that one asks for a glass of milk. A mother whose lost her child to an ogre acts with as much emotion as someone who lost their car keys. It all screams for need of an editor, or even just a second pair of eyes.

The Gameplay
If there's one thing this game doesn't lack in its gameplay it's ambition. The team created dozens of spells, a special move for each character, and like 10 or so different stats that can be raised upon level up. What the game doesn't do well is actually make use of all these different abilities. There's very little instruction, instead the game just lets you dawdle around a while until you get to the first spell seller and then slaps a dozen different spells in your face. This makes the spell system come across as daunting, since they're all randomly arranged with no real order to them. this could've easily been fixed by more gradually introducing spells, or organizing them based on type (Offensive, Defensive, Healing, etc). The game also never explains the stat system. While I can figure out what things like dexterity do from playing other rpgs, I have no idea what "resolve" is supposed to do.

I'd do a bit on music, art, and sound design but I don't know what's composed of free assets or not and I'm starting to wake up from my caffeine induced rambling state of mind, so I'm gonna just post this as is and go back to bed.

I picked this up on a whim, for about $1 on sale.

Despite visuals that seem to say "Indie Western RPG", this one feels like a low-budget JRPG to me.

The perspective is top-down, with your party represented by a single person walking the landscape. NPCs abound, with at least one and sometimes more on nearly every screen; some are story / quest NPCs, and others are your not-necessarily-tied-to-the-fiction merchants or trainers just standing around a war zone, waiting for people to visit.

Random ambush encounters are frequent, in the JPRG style -- in fact, I have yet to fight anything that was already on the landscape when I got there. There's a large variety of creatures and humanoids, again not necessarily well integrated into the fiction; I fought enemy soldiers, but also giant dragonflies and plague rats and other vermin while wandering the rainy forest. Combat is similar to the Wizardry titles; the static enemies stand in front of you, and you select your actions and target. Skills go off with grunts and clangs and minimal animation, while dramatic (and sometimes anachronistic) music plays. Everything drops gold and items in abundance, and I found myself quickly improving my gear with all sorts of magical armor and weapons, potions, scrolls, and more.

There's no tutorial, but the interface is intuitive enough to learn without one.Press ESC to get into the icon-based menu, and use left click to select, double-left to choose, and right-click to go back a level. You can save anywhere.

The writing is passable, also with that melodramatic, slightly anachronistic feel you typically see in a JRPG. It's not Game of Thrones by any stretch, but it's entertaining enough.

I understand the game is about 3 hours long, so the $2.99 price point seems fair at $1 / hour, albeit those 3 hours seem like they're going to be fairly combat-heavy. The marketing blurb for the game mentions random encounters and loot "every game", which implies the game is something you would want to replay. The so-far linear story doesn't seem to lend itself to playing over and over, but we'll see.

I bought this game on sale and didn’t give it much initial credit. To my great surprise it turned out to be very enjoyable. It has a decent playtime/price ratio. I hope there will be a sequel.

Pros:
- Vintage, but not too much pixelated graphics
- Immersive story
- Quite challenging combat system
- Condensed gameplay (no unnecessary backtracking and other time-consuming features)
- Very low price

Cons:
- Very short, only about 2 hrs of gameplay
- Only one path to complete the game

I wouldn't recommend this game. Not my favorite genre to begin with to be fair, but combat felt tedious, grindy and repetitive. Enemies seemed to soak damage, it just took forever, felt poorly balanced especially for an initial experience. And combat triggered way too often, I couldn't even take two steps and back to the grind. No tutorials or course, but there were few options to use anyway so I could figure out what little was there I guess. Animations of the characters walking looked way off, sliding at a speed inconsistent with the steps they took. The art style felt inconsistent between the backgrounds and characters. On the plus side, I feel like quite some work went into the game, although that doesn't make it fun for me unfortunately.

If you like this kind of game, then you can't go wrong with this one. I've played this through and found the game well polished and bug-free. What I like about the way this game works is that it can be completely mouse driven. ( I'm a lazy git. )
R-click on the main screen takes you to the Backpack, Equip etc. then its all L-click to select things and R-click to go back. Simples.
The rogue-like element can be a bit vicious, so I suggest you save lots.
Storyline does the job of smoothly moving the game along and is enhanced by a voice over in certain parts.
I like the Gamemaster NPC's which you have to interact with in order to advance in the game. Hint, save before playing with these guys.
All in all , a few hours of fun wrapped up in a well presented package at a reasonable price.

I am very disappointed in this game! This is the 4th RPG Maker game of this Dev! I went all thure the game with out any healing stuff? The cave map is the same as his 1st game : The Cavern of time??? YOur maping is even better now then the last 3. I love where you put black arrows telling us where to go to leave the maps. The Combat is way to hard even if you do not have no healing stuff. I always run away from battle b/c i did not have no healing!?!?!?! Come on SimProse I know you can done better then this. I love the story a little bit. I need more storys. Give us more lore. Let have towns we can go to and shop and talk to people to get lore. I am tired of my armor or weapons brecking. This game is even more bad then Cavern of time! I want to add more to this i will in due time. Is this replayable I say NO! it is not. The gameplay suck most due to The combat, No healing, NO shops, not a lot of story/Lore/Weapn and armor keep breaking every where i turn around. I am very disappointed you step back 10 steps backwards in makeing games. I was Lvl 4 and it took 1 hr to beat but it took more b/c i had to keep restarting. Do i recommend this game I am afraid I do not! I really do want to but it was not fun at all! I rate this as a 1 out of 10

Unfortunately, I couldn't bring myself to complete this game, due the intense amount of grinding. I get that it's a major selling point for many buyers, but I personally don't enjoy it. As I didn't get far, I can't really comment on the story/art, beyond that it's pretty much exactly what you see in the screenshots. The developer is really nice though, so maybe you should buy this game to support nice people?
Idk.

Unfortunately, I couldn't bring myself to complete this game, due the intense amount of grinding. I get that it's a major selling point for many buyers, but I personally don't enjoy it. As I didn't get far, I can't really comment on the story/art, beyond that it's pretty much exactly what you see in the screenshots. The developer is really nice though, so maybe you should buy this game to support nice people?
Idk.

RPG Maker strikes again!

Honor Cry: Aftermath is one of hundreds of low effort retro-pixel RPG Maker asset/construction kit flips spamming the Steam catalog, made with the RPG Maker video game construction kit... in their own words, "Our easy to use tools are simple enough for a child." Like all RPG Maker "games", this is essentially a bunch of low quality/canned assets from RPG Maker, some software generated character images, coupled with a cringeworthy high school anime club fan fiction.

As with all RPG Maker games, the poor quality engine displays badly in fullscreen and doesn't have full HD support or any graphics tweaking options, making this unacceptable for any dedicated modern PC gamer. The point can be made that the intention of RPG Maker is to make demos and small games to pass around friends, and shouldn't be used for "professional" game development.

Like most RPG Maker shovelware and asset flips, the game features extremely low quality copy + pasted 2D retro pixel art, looks awful, and has even worse gameplay. RPG Maker is an absolutely terrible construction kit, and never results in games of any reasonable quality or value to gamers.

This RPG Maker shovelware has a very unoriginal story about two soldiers ending a war, but it does boast some mediocre voice acting to go with the high school fan fiction writing, but that didn't really make any difference as far as public reception goes. RPG Maker games are widely disregarded amonst the gaming public and this was no exception.

The poor quality of this game is reflected in the general public reception. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. That's right, only 2. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in the game is to be expected. Gamers just didn't take this low quality game seriously, and for good reason.

Honor Cry: Aftermath is relatively cheap at $2 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. Gamers who want a good retro JRPG experience would be better off playing the originals, like Final Fantasy, Star Ocean or Chrono Trigger.

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