Score: 8
"Great RPG, minus the bugs."
date: August 13, 2009
The Mardek RPG series is a highly popular and clever RPG series by Pseudolonewolf of Fig Hunter games that plays like a tongue-in-cheek Final Fantasy game.
Combat in Mardek RPG is pure Final Fantasy fare, with reaction commands thrown in to spice things up. Graphics in combat are lovely--if you're like me, you'll especially love the forest fish from Chapter 1, which look like they were taken straight out of an M.C. Escher drawing. The graphics in the overworld, strangely, don't match with the graphics in combat at all. While everything is nicely hand-drawn and animated in combat, your characters and the world around them become low-tech sprites of the Final Fantasy IV variety once you return to exploration mode. Some people find this touch nostalgic--others find it aesthetically grating.
Mardek RPG Chapter 1 may seem confusing to you at first--in fact, the characters themselves seem pretty confused about what they're supposed to do or say during the opening sequence! But don't worry. Just keep playing, and you'll quickly realize that the beginning is actually a cute storytelling contrivance by the creator. The game proper has an actual plot worth mentioning, along with a fleshed-out game world, even if it isn't apparent at first.
Mardek RPG Chapter 2 continues the storyline of the previous chapter, but picks up eight years later, with Mardek and Deugan enlisted in the royal guard of Goznor (whatever that is). The tongue-in-cheek, highly self-aware humor of the first game is still here in spades, along with a helping of goofy teen angst. (My favorite line: "Well, I'd only kill a guy if he killed me first!")
Deserves a try if you're an RPG fan.
(note to other readers)
Looking at past reviews, it shows people are either
A) Illiterate
B) Dumb
Read for God sake! -- the creator clearly states that the bug is pretty impossible to fix at this moment, he even mentioned he'd be adding this chapter and the previous (with COMPLETE fixes) in the new Mardek (Mardek chapter 3) stop down-rating this game because of this. He's fully aware of the bug, he isn't going to fix it because he can't. Try reading the author's comments you fools.
