OHRRPGCE Gaiden #2: False Skies
Link: https://feenicks.itch.io/false-skies (Available for $8.99, demo included)
Originally published on January 21, 2023
Once upon a time, there was a game called 7th Dragon. Produced by Phantasy Star creator Rieko Kodama and former Etrian Odyssey director Kazuya Niinou, it purported to combine the top-down adventure of a Dragon Quest game with the first-person dungeon crawling of Etrian Odyssey. The game was never officially released abroad, but was eventually translated into English by a dedicated fan. 7th Dragon was charming in many ways, but also flawed. The character classes weren't especially balanced, and the environment was full of damage-dealing flowers that were frustrating to compensate for. Some pretty good sequels to 7th Dragon were made for the PSP, but they were tighter affairs, and not quite in line with what the original was.
In 2022, an indie RPG called False Skies was released. Developed in the OHRRPGCE engine, it's the closest I've seen a game come to capturing what the 7th Dragon team must have been aiming for. It mixes Etrian Odyssey style crawling through challenging but fair dungeons, with character building that builds upon Dragon Quest III. Other games from the Game Boy era are brought into the mix as well, like the repels of Pokemon and the mysterious worlds of the early SaGa titles. The result feels distinctly modern even as it evokes the early history of the genre. Despite some serious qualms, it's one of the best traditional RPGs I've played in its engine.
The game itself is slow to start. At the beginning, as I directed my party through early dungeons, I couldn't help but think, "is this it?" Early enemies are weak, and barely required using the tools that the game gives you early on. False Skies lets every class equip any piece of equipment, to varying effect based on their proficiencies. Each character has their choice of six or seven types of weapons with distinctive strengths and weaknesses. Over time, though, enemies developed counters and battles required careful thinking. A sword might trigger an extra enemy attack, while a spear negates it. Hammers are needed to damage hardy enemies. Claws hit twice, but that could mean twice as many counters. Building your party means preparing for these eventualities in advance.
The real appeal for me in this game, though, are the dungeons. Many recent Japanese RPGs are weak in terms of level design, even if the combat design is good. Others turn towards gimmicks or puzzles as a means of catching the player's interest. By comparison, False Skies has a wonderful variety of dungeons. Some are navigation puzzles reminiscent of Pokemon Red and Blue's Mt. Moon. Others feature gimmicks like exploding balloon monsters and giant lasers to dodge. A few seemingly exist in the world just to track down and explore, regardless of their effect on the larger story. The developer of False Skies previously made a proper first-person dungeon crawler called Festivus, and False Skies makes use of that skill set without letting it overwhelm the rest of the game.
The storytelling in False Skies is also charming, although it's rather low-key compared to the bombast of Final Fantasy or even the succinct perfection of Dragon Quest. It takes place in a crumbling future setting where magic and technology have become equally obscure--my favorite kind! The characters make use of computers and communication networks but remain isolated from much of the world around them. When a mysterious force starts severing those networks, your local town's community comes together to solve the problem. False Skies leaves the player character and their party as blank slates, but puts a good amount of effort into fleshing out the people you meet along the way. It's an adventure that positions your party as part of a network of administrators, fighters, scholars and doctors across the world, most of which have their own names and personalities. Comparative glory is something you have to earn.
When the game's worldbuilding and level design come together, it makes for a fun time. One of my favorite setpieces so far is the basement of the Library of Demod, a teleporter maze. Teleporters are a lot of work to handle in the world of False Skies, and are therefore carefully regulated. Giant teleporters can be dangerous and unpredictable. So of course the scholars of the Library made a network of portable teleporters, which is an equally terrible idea. Computers deep within the archives hold data files divulging that no, the scholars here are convinced teleporting is super safe and convenient. When you finally meet them, they're living seemingly normal lives on the bottom floor. Their peers upstairs may not understand their way of life, but that has nothing to do with them. They don't even bother to fix the elevator until you show up.
There's a class system, which gives plenty of options for character development but is also stricter than I expected. Each character has the chance to "promote" several times across tiers of classes. Some of these choices are obvious--a medic is simply a better version of a healer, for instance. Other choices require more thought. You can promote a mage or a sorcerer into an evoker, which isn't strictly like both. Or you could try a Librarian, which scans enemy weaknesses and learns abilities which damage specific enemy types. Promoting a recon to an infiltrator makes sense, but infiltrators are even better with guns then they are with daggers, so why not try guns? Not to mention that you can mix and match classes at will: why not make your healer into a hexer, instead? Or light infantry? Worst comes to worst, you can simply make a new character in Mappore.
At the same time, a character can only promote once per tier. This gave me some pause while playing the game. While you gain access to promoting at around level 10 or so, the early classes continue to learn abilities well after that point. The Generalist especially (the class of your main character) learns skills up to level 50. Classes of upper tiers are also hidden around the world, meaning that it's possible to be locked out of a class you'd otherwise want if you promote your characters early enough. The game does throw you a bone by giving you a "Class Data" key items with each class's learnsets, but I had no idea that information was there until I read it elsewhere in a guide!
Certain quests also seem a bit buggy, though I can't say for sure. An early optional quest suggests that you visit a cave in Bran Myr to track down some lost folks, but I couldn't find them anywhere there. (The enemies there are fairly tough as well, which doesn't help.) Another asks that you find researchers in a "side area," which I also had to leave incomplete. None of these quests are essential, and False Skies is nice enough to seed multiple copies of its hidden classes around the world so that you'll have options even after crossing a "point of no return." But considering the thought that otherwise went into designing the gameworld, it would be nice to have confirmation one way or another as to whether these quests are mysterious or broken in some way. The creator of this game is still updating it, so we may well know in the future.
In all other respects, False Skies is an excellent game of its type. It builds on the strengths of earlier titles while still forging its own path. Dragon Quest III doesn't allow for nonbinary party members, but this game does. Etrian Odyssey doesn't have a bickering villain squad of hapless horned people, but this game does. The class system encourages multiple playthroughs and challenge runs, but the game is just easy enough that you can build slightly inefficient parties without being hammered into the ground. The music isn't Yuzu Koshiro, but it's otherwise very good. The visuals are aesthetically pleasing; the variety of facial expressions for each character is especially impressive. If this was an RPG Maker game, it would be in contention for the best of the year made in that engine. As an OHRRPGCE game, it raises the standard for what a big, complex RPG looks like in that engine even if it doesn't break the rules entirely. If you like RPGS of the style made for the Game Boy or SNES, you should check it out. At $8.99, it's on par with indie RPGs released for two or three times that price.