RPG Maker Dungeon #13: Enchant Farm

26 Dec, 2024

Originally published on January 29, 2024

I brought up the VIPRPG movement in an earlier RPG Maker Dungeon post. Without getting into too much detail, games made by this crowd are typically free and experimental titles built in the RPG Maker 2000 engine. A great example is Helen's Mysterious Castle, a compact dungeon crawler that fully embraces the aesthetics of "RTP graphics" but plays nothing like a standard RPG Maker game. Its heroine Helen is one of the standard "RTP Heroes" that populate the database of new projects along with Alex, Carol and friends.

Little did I know that there is an entirely separate cast of VIPRPG stalwarts alongside Helen and company. Enchant Farm is a game that's all about personified versions of stock spells in the RPG Maker engine. Fire I is a haughty noble. Stone I speaks only rarely. Electric Barrier loves curry. And so on. It's reminiscent of Touhou, perhaps the greatest example of fans building an elaborate world of characters and in-jokes out of a handful of spare details.

Enchant Farm¹ is a game about these characters exploring a mysterious island and its many dungeons. There's an explanation at the beginning regarding "mouja" and "shinja" but none of it matters much. The point is that this is an attempt to bridge the "search action RPG" codified by Nepheshel with 2011's new king of dungeon crawling Dark Souls. Enemies drop souls, which can be traded to raise stats or buy items, rather than experience. Secret passages reveal hidden items that allow the player to match or overtake the difficulty curve. The game leaves the player to check off goals in whatever order they see fit, within reason.

I find Enchant Farm to be much less punishing than Dark Souls or Nepheshel. Losing a fight costs half of your souls rather than all of them. A "teleport fairy" allows the protagonist to warp between generous checkpoints, making travel a cinch. Unlike Nepheshel, which gates additional characters behind difficult challenges, it's easy to find new party members in Enchant Farm so long as you know where to look. It's likely you'll have a full party in just a few hours of play,

What Enchant Farm lacks in initial difficulty, though, it makes up for in flexibility. The game offers a choice of seven characters at the start. Do you choose Burst I, an initially powerful jack of all trades that must rely on their gimmicks to do damage in the final stages? Or Water I, who is fairly weak until they gain the ability to shift between stat-changing forms in the mid-game? Each has elemental weaknesses and resistances that make an immediate impact on the beginning of the game. For instance, while Fire I's magic is a boon for later stages, the opening water stage demands that they find an ally to cover for them.

I chose Wind I, a favorite among the VIPRPG community. (The creator of Enchant Farm, Kiito, previously made a Wind I themed game titled Wind I Creator.) Wind I is the ultimate glass cannon, powerful but sickly. They are perpetually afflicted by the "Ill" status that keeps them from ever having more than just 1 HP. But their evasion is high, they're immune to other status effects and they quickly become immune to group attacks. Equip the Focus Sash, which allows them to survive a hit without dying, and they become surprisingly hardy.

If you don't choose Wind I at the start, you find them bent over on the ground near the starting area. Wind I requires powerful medication to be revived. Take too long and they die, depriving you of their services. But sprint east around Fire I's ghost mansion, find the abandoned ship and rescue the pirate inside to find the medicine Wind I needs. Yet defeating the guards that patrol the abandoned ship require leveling up your characters, as well as crafting weapons that are strong against the water element. Picking up Water I near the pirate cave, at least, lets you tank the sailors on patrol.

Enchant Farm lets you play through with any combination of characters, weapons and elements you want so long as you're keeping weaknesses and resistances in mind. The synthesis system, which allows you to transform weapons and armor into elemental versions via special materials, lends itself to improvisational play. Combining a simple Wooden Catalyst with a Grass elemental shard to make a Mystic Branch lets the player trivialize the opening dungeon regardless of which character they picked.

Really, the game's true descendant isn't Dark Souls but Pokemon. Multiple enemies in the game have designs and skills that reference the likes of Krabby and Ratatta. Items like "Choice Band" work very similarly to their Pokemon equivalents. Even certain elemental interactions, like the "neutral" Burst I being ineffective against ghost types, are borrowed directly from the series. Just in case the elemental interactions become too fiddly for some, the game also takes care to spell out exactly how effective an attack might be from 0% to over 300%.

Enchant Farm lacks the rock-hard difficulty of Dark Souls and the gloomy atmosphere of Nepheshel. Its characters can be gimmicky, and I haven't figured out how to use physical attacks as effectively as magical attacks with the available tools. What it is, though, is a breezy game of exploration that rewards both improvisation and foreknowledge. It's a distinct and accessible take on the "search action RPG" that's perfect for speedrunning.

Enchant Farm is translated by a community of folks on 4chan who have previously translated titles like Hat World and Final Fantasy ?/Hatena. While I'm grateful for their efforts, I could also do without bits like a section in the included "VIPRPG Glossary" text file that jokes about a character's nickname being read as a racial slur in English. "If you can't handle that," they say, "I don't know what to tell you." Maybe localize the name differently, then? No surprise that a (very good) game made by 2chan edgelords was translated by 4chan edgelords, I suppose.