Adventure Corner ~ The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time

Welcome to Adventure Corner, a column where members of the RPGamer staff can give their thoughts, impressions, and pseudo-reviews for various adventure titles that don’t come under our usual coverage. Adventure Corner is aimed at delivering opinions on a wide range of titles, including visual novels, point-and-click adventures, investigative mysteries, and so forth.

In this edition of the column, we take a look at a puzzle game that mixes pixelated turn-based RPG combat with occasional full motion video scenes in The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time.

The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time

Some titles just have the audacity to shout from the rooftops how amazing they are.  What Coin Drop Games has done here with The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time is nothing short of a…fun subversion of how contentious the game development cycle can be and how seriously fan expectations can become in the gaming industry.  This parody finds ways to toss in some fun puzzles and some full-motion video (FMV) scenes to create a unique visual presentation that doesn’t take long to soak in.

Lucas and Jacob are two lifelong friends who have recently reconnected in college.  While reconnecting, they bond over the time they had with The Greatest RPG of All Time, which is never mentioned explicitly by any other term, and their realization that maybe there are some things they would change.  So, they reminisce, and they build the game back up from their memories, their alterations, and, ultimately, their disagreements.  The player follows along with the remake as the game’s characters piece together what does not feel right about their world, while it warps through side-scrolling pixel artwork and FMV interactions between the two developers.

Sometimes hints and other conversations are found as audio files while exploring.

Combing through every inch of each room for pieces of the original game’s manual is crucial in The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time, because everything is a puzzle.  These pages of the manual give hints for future encounters that, without them, would require a lot of bumbling around the combat system to figure out what will work.  These manuals also provide snippets of information that can be used to clear puzzles in the environment that pop up as well.  Each new room and manual piece unravels another piece of subtext that all add together into a subversive parody, which also works as an homage to the feelings that the grand adventures in RPGs can evoke in people.  This is all condensed into a bite-sized story since, as the title suggests, it only deals with the end of the game.  It takes place primarily in the final dungeon, only glossing over the rest of the journey that captivated these developers when they were young.

Every room has something to bypass using logic gleaned from either manuals, common sense, or the videos.  This ties everything together and puts more of the focus on the story, which makes it easier to avoid being stuck too long at any given point.  Combat, in particular, has moments of frustration when it is treated straight like an RPG.  This is due to every attack, except for each enemy’s specific weakness, dealing no damage to them.  This causes players to dig through the manuals to find the right combinations, or eventually die and get booted back to the nearest save point.  These fights are always in scripted locations, and damage totals only serve to give players extra time to figure out that enemy’s weakness.

The beginning of a powerful move against some sentient computer monitors. But, is it the right one?

Every turn in The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time‘s combat takes up to six attack possibilities from the party that the player chooses, which are played out in a sequence.  Depending on the fight, there can be up to four party members in combat, each party member has three attack moves, and an item they can use.  Attacks can be used up to two times each per turn, and when combined in a particular order, can create additional combo attacks.  Enemies can be weak to an individual attack or a combo finisher.  This means that trying to create combos often results in a lot of errors for little payoff, which makes following the manual guides important to avoid party-wiping.  Checking on the collected guides can be done in combat as well, making the whole thing only frustrating when deciphering the clues to win the fight takes up too much time.

Sometimes it can be hard to tell what puzzles are necessary for progression and which ones lead to secrets and treasure.  As the playthrough takes place during a final dungeon, players are equipped with the best gear, and ultimately, the only real treasures are more pieces to the manual or additional FMV scenes.  Some treasure chests are still full of in-game consumables, which don’t amount to anything other than to throw players off.  Players should expect to break the walls around them, see moments that blend reality with gameplay, and meta references that all combine to a level of zaniness that can make it hard to figure out what’s happening and what to do next.  Spending time figuring out what to do will happen, but the hints and puzzles aren’t overly difficult to comprehend.  In turn, that makes the eureka moments occasionally feel more like a sigh of frustration because the answer can feel so simple in hindsight.

One of the areas where visuals meld FMV and pixels, while drastically changing what was seen before.

The visuals of The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time are not always the most straightforward or expected.  Despite a relatively linear progression, as side areas only feature treasure, the art style and how the story is presented are absolutely crazy at times.  The main gameplay portions are presented with side-scrolling pixel art that connect rooms with a sense of a singular game world, while presenting the final dungeon.  As the party explores, there are moments where the angle changes to first person, causing the visuals to become more grainy.  Occasionally, the FMV scenes also bleed into the gameplay, splicing with the other aspects of the presentation to create a wondrous mash-up where players won’t know quite what to expect next.  The quality of the FMV scenes, with the voice acting and amateur documentary-film style, lends a quaint charm that makes them exciting to come across.  The soundtrack is interesting because it has the muted and repeated sounds that one would find in a puzzle game, so it won’t distract players from trying to figure out the latest answer.  When the soundrack’s presentation varies the most is during the turn-based combat sections, which cause a jolt when factoring in the thoughtful puzzle gameplay, but these songs still fit despite the RPG segments not really being an RPG.

The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time is quite an interesting exploration of how remakes and fan creations can spiral due to a variety of reactions to the final product.  Creating this meta commentary to fit within a reinvention of recognizable RPG combat is a unique way of presenting the actual puzzle-heavy gameplay.  Some puzzles can be difficult, but there’s a rhythm to them that keeps the main focus on the social commentary of remakes.  The precise combat can be frustrating to get used to, but the way the presentation blurs reality with pixelated visuals is something that sticks the landing wonderfully.

Disclosure: This article is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.