March of Tulpas:Xanadu

it's an very good RPG - not a very good RPG for a rpgmaker game, straight up it's good compared to other RPGS of various types, I don't know why so little attention has been given to it.

Pacing, non linearity, freedom, a sense of discovery, all of it is absolute top notch. I only have one issue (not really an issue, more like a nitpick but it's still kind of bugging me), and it's that the final boss is really, really easy compared to the gatekeeper right before him. It's really easy to stabilize and once you do, he doesn't exactly do much. Compare him to the final boss of ebf5 for instance, where there are very many spinning plates you need to manage and can't ever get complacent.

For the amount of buildup, it was a bit disappointing, especially since the story theming is that of massive arbitrariness and how the resulting suffering could be overcome - but when he's actually fought, he kind of rolled over and died without doing a whole lot. I didn't even do anything particularly special, just buff, debuff and then spam imagine darts.

To be clear, everything else is incredible and you SHOULD BUY IT.

"I draw the world with the curse of love"
March of Tulpas is the kind of game you play and inevitably ask "Who makes something like this?"
All I know is their name is Rosenkreutz, and I want to applaud them. Even as an RPG Maker game, March of Tulpas is one-of-a-kind, and probably my favorite of the genre I've ever played.

All of the ingredients on display should sound familiar from throughout gaming: a time loop, roguelite-style gradually unlocking skills and stat floors, a party with diverse skillsets and strengths/weaknesses. But March of Tulpas proves that the right combination presented the right way makes the familiar into something fresh.

For each time loop in the game, the player is free to explore the world and try their hand at various dungeons. Every battle is visible and must be entered willingly, with each lighting one of a limited number of candles. Use all your candles, and the next screen transition advances the day. Three days, and your loop is over. You gain a variety of rewards, including more candles for setting a new max level record, and can craft upgrades like permanent stat increases or a higher starting level using materials found while exploring. Once you're prepared, it's back into the next loop.

This design encourages the player to intuit exactly how many battles they need to do to achieve their current goal, and avoid excessive grinding. The dungeons are fairly straightforward to navigate, short, and always include shortcuts. The game is well tutorialized, and even offers advice on which party members are well suited to each dungeon. Genuinely, I was impressed how often March of Tulpas deliberately avoided wasting my time. The game is easy to break into ~1 hour sessions, and I was always excited to continue playing.

The combat is as standard as it comes - selecting options from menus and watching damage numbers flood a battle log at the top of the screen. It's exactly the sort of RPG you're supposed to make in RPG Maker. The main departure is that healing in combat is scarce, relying mostly on heal-over-time buffs and a unique status "Dignity Break" which allows characters to attack with "Predation" skills, healing for all damage dealt. It strikes a nice balance, ensuring you can always enter battles with a fighting chance thanks to plenty of out-of-combat items, while what happens in battle depends on your strategy, team composition, and a little luck. Buffs, debuffs, and resource management are all integral to success. You'll absolutely want to level and use every party member, as well.

All that said, one of the upgrades is an increasing supply of 100% recovery items usable in battle, which lowered the difficulty over time. I still had a lot of fun with the boss fights; even when I wiped, I usually felt like I could then win using the information I'd gained. But if you want more of a challenge, everything like this making the game easier is optional, which should work for everyone.

Finally, for the largest elephant in the room (and my favorite part)... March of Tulpas is a bizarre fever dream of a game. Aesthetically, it is hard to even appropriately describe. The world is garish, freakish, and communicated in such a surreal and matter-of-fact tone. You will receive no explanation for most of the sights you see, whether they be hideous enemies in battle or leering faces watching you from the trees. NPCs speak in stilted, imperfect sentences (possibly a consequence of the translation from Japanese, but somehow contributing to the atmosphere). Your party members are simultaneously complete strangers, and your very best (imaginary) friends. Item and equipment names read like poetic chuuni nonsense. And most surprising of all, the backstory scenes are quite compelling. There is a narrative connecting everything here, and it's not even that strange, making every other choice so much more interesting.