Free Retro RPGs!

As part of The Spirit Blade Underground’s “Summer Of Free”, I decided to try out four different games from rpggames4free.com and give at least 15 minutes to each one. I made some notes of my first impressions and am presenting them here for anyone who is interested in some free rpgs with nostalgic graphics and sensibilities.

Sunset Over Imdahl- http://www.rpggames4free.com/files/fantasy/sunset-imdahl-full.rar

In this game you live in a village that has been under siege for a long time until a spell wipes out everyone but you. A mysterious stranger gives you the power to travel back in time and manipulate events so that the destruction of your town can be avoided.

The graphics in the game consist of very nice 16-bit hand drawn backgrounds. The dialogue is well-written and the story is intriguing. There’s a mystery to this plot that I’d be interested in searching out. However, I have played the game for close to 30 minutes and not seen a single battle. So it may be that this game has no combat elements at all.

This isn’t to say that I found the game boring, but if the game has no fighting in it, this would have been good to know going in.

Laxius Power: Random Story- http://www.rpggames4free.com/files/fantasy/laxius-power-full.exe

In my search for free rpgs, this game has popped up in several locations and is spoken of very highly. I can’t imagine why.

Rpgs4free presents the game synopsis as follows: This is one of the most popular freeware rpg available on the net. Laxius Power is already a legend, it has great graphics, a solid storyline and plenty of well developed characters. More than 50 hours of gameplay and 500 different monsters to fight!

The monsters and sprites do look great and the interface for combat is very intuitive to anyone who’s played turn based rpgs. Laxius Power seems specifically modeled after Japanese RPGs and even includes an extremely bad translation to complete the package. That, or it was written in English by someone whose primary strength is not writing. Dialogue is sloppy, full of out of character slang, bad grammar and even made up words. (A food store item is said to be very “nutricitive”. Thank you, George W. Bush.)

My hat goes off to anyone who successfully persists in giving this game 50 hours of their life.

Ahriman’s Prophecy- http://www.rpggames4free.com/files/fantasy/ahrimans-prophecy-full.exe

The description for this game reads: The Daughters of Light send you on a dangerous quest to discover the secrets of the prophecy and hopefully stop it in time. Play as a young, but soon to be powerfull magic wielder, in a complete adventure that beats many commercial role playing games.

So far, my initial impression has been very good. The writing is solid and the game does a good job of helping you know where to go and what to do without holding your hand the whole way. There is plenty to explore in the starting town alone. This game fits into the action rpg realm, similar in some ways to “The Secret Of Mana”, with a stronger rpg feel than the Zelda games.

When you come near to enemies, your attack button is enabled and you strike at them in real time. You can also open a menu during combat for potions and to ready spells or special abilities. Enemies are very simplistic at the start. Giant bees and snakes. Go ahead and take on the bees, but definitely run from those snakes! One hit and you’re dead!

Once you realize that you start out pretty weak and should not engage every enemy you see, the game gets off to a great start. You can also save at virtually any time, so as long as you take advantage of that before taking on a new enemy, you’ve got nothing to fear.

I’d recommend trying this game out!

Warrior Dragon- http://www.rpggames4free.com/files/fantasy/warrior-dragon-full.zip

This game easily has the weakest graphics of those I’ve mentioned so far. But it has a charming premise. A spoof of the “Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest” series, this game looks almost identical to the original 8-bit classic “Dragon Warrior” for the NES.

Basic menu navigation and battles are more similar than different and the game features the same kind of challenging level grind that fans of that series have come to expect. The twist is that you play a Dragon, chosen to fight a group of heroes who are about to wipe out all dragons to make the world safe for human domination.

I didn’t get very far in the story, though. Be prepared for a level grind right from the start. Use your limited starting cash wisely, stay close to the town while working on that first level and plan to stay at the inn a lot. And naturally, SAVE! Save often!

I was surprised at how addictive I found the level grind. It was a genuine strategic challenge to figure out when I should go back to town and when I should keep fighting a little longer. Most foes only surrendered 1 or 2 gold upon defeat, after having wiped out close to half of my health. And the inn restores me to full HP, but costs 6 gold! So at level one I found myself testing how low I could let my HP go before staying at the inn. And when I hit level 2, I suddenly felt extremely cool as I was now able to take down enemies much faster and while taking much less damage.

This would be an ideal game to figure out how to put on a phone. But even if you’re at home and need to take a break for a few minutes, this game may scratch your strategic itch and provide your level-grinding quota for the day.

I also stumbled upon another site that has a ton of free indie RPGs.- http://rpgdx.net/

I haven’t had a chance to look through many of the titles there yet, but there are quite a few they are all submitted by their creators, so legally it’s legit as well!

If you’re an RPG lover, why not jump over and try a few out, then send me your thoughts on them to contribute to “The Summer Of Free”?

Enjoy!