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  It has a classic RPG style, but doesn’t rely on outdated 16-bit sprites, rather, all the level art is rendered in full resolution and plenty of color, making them almost look like carefully painted scenes.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 ]

Traditionally, RPGs made in flash have been pretty lame. There’s a few that stand out now and then, and Mobile Weapon is about to join their ranks.

Tyler Projects has developed an amazing RPG engine for this game and pumped out a lot of really good 3d-rendered artwork to build a pretty detailed sci-fi world where everyone runs around in fighting robots. I loves me some fighting robots!

Not only does this game look beautiful, it SOUNDS beautiful. All the effects are there, and there’s plenty of variety with the music as you go from level to level and into combat screens.

The controls and interfaces on this game are very easy to pick up. I actually skipped all the tutorial stuff at the beginning and it didn’t hinder my abilities to play in any way. You can use the keyboard or the mouse, or a combination of both, so it’s desktop AND notebook friendly, which is more than some games can boast.

Unfortunately, I have a very short attention span, and the very first quest in this game was to go about gathering parts by killing things in random battles. After 20 or so battles without finding the last part I needed, I got bored and that ended my adventure… so I won’t be shelling out the $16 for the full version any time soon.

That said, I know a lot of RPG fans LOVE this type of game, and as I said earlier, it’s one of the best made RPGs I’ve ever seen in Flash. I would expect a great following for this game, and it may even convert a few people who aren’t typically fans of this genre. I just won’t be one of them.

If you have a lot of free time, and no social life, I think this might actually be worth the upgrade price, and you should DEFINITELY try the free version.

[ Try Mobile Weapon Now ]