Over the years we have seen several people attempt to make an epic RPG in a web-based format. Most of them have been pretty lame.

Aaron over at flashportal.com turned me on to an overlooked RPG game called Max Mesiria RPG, so I took a few hours and delved into it.

The game looks really nice.  It has a classic RPG style, but doesn’t rely on outdated 16-bit sprites, rather, all the level art is rendered in full resolution and plenty of color, making them almost look like carefully painted scenes.  Even the character art and variety is pretty impressive as you delve into the game.

Unfortunately the game seems to be running an unusually low framerate, and the animation suffers for it.  Some of the frame-by-frame work on the battle-mode enemies is impressive, but the main character comes off choppy and lazily animated, which is a big contrast to how well drawn he is.

The sound in the game is certainly above average, with well produced music… although a few of the music loops do get annoying after a few minutes.

The gameplay isn’t anything fantastic, but as far as RPGs go, it’s not bad.  The game is split into multiple parts, which contain different chapters of the story.

The first part isn’t very impressive. It’s pretty slow, and the random battles are very annoying as you wonder aimlessly for some menial tasks.  It was almost slow enough to make me skip the second part, but I kept playing to give the series a fair chance.

I was actually glad I toughed it out because part 2 actually got interesting. You start to get more of a scope on the world the game takes place in and get drawn a little more to the character.  The random battles are still annoying, but that’s true of pretty much any old-style RPG.

While I still am not super-satisfied by the overall quality of the game, I am anticipating part 3 and hoping it continues to improve with each on-going chapter.

If you really like classic RPG games, like I do, you should give this game a shot.  If you aren’t a fan of the genre, you will probably find this game about as enjoyable as watching grass grow.

[ Play Max Meseria RPG ]