Freeloading With Tactical RPG Vantage Master

Thanks to 1UP for its 'Freeloading' article discussing Falcom's freely downloadable PC tactical RPG Vantage Master Online. According to the author, the title "surprising balance and depth of play", even though it "took rather a while to make, and by the time things were nearing completion it was showing its age pretty badly and was practically unmarketable. The usual course of action in that situation is to just ditch the project and cut one's losses. In Falcom's case, they wrapped it up, put it up for free download at their own expense, and even went so far as to make an English (sort of) translation."

Comments

A great freebie!

[dancingmad]

I've actually posted about a game in this series, VM Japan, before on /. When I was trying to find information on VM Japan I stumbled across the free version of VMO and downloaded it. Though the English translation is pretty bad (and the cutscenes aren't even trasnlated), it's a fun game. It's a tactical RPG (along the lines of Final Fantasy Tatics, Tatics Ogre, and it seems to share a lot with the upcoming Phantom Brave). However, you control it with the mouse and it runs as a miniziable windows app (more on that in a sec).

The graphics are dated but its a lot of fun. The system is simple; you control (via mouse, which is a new experience for me, but works real well) a main character who can summon magical familars. The nautiauls have various elemental attributes and one is weak against one other and strong against one other. Your objective is to kill off the enemy boss (by getting through his nautiauls). On the board there are power stones that you can claim for yourself (or your enemy can too) by standing on them. Stones add to your magical power, a big help. Every time you win a battle you win a new summon.

Simple yet fun. And since it runs as without going full screen as a normal Win32 app, you can run Winamp and AOL IM while playing, in and of itself a GREAT feature.

It even has network/internet play, which I haven't fooled around with much yet.

It's a great good will gesture for Falcom to put this out. It's a great download and if you enjoyed games like FFTA or Disgaea, it's defintely worth a download. I'm having a lot of fun with it.

be nice

[xmple]

You could show your them your sympathy and good heart by donating some pocket change to them... so maybe some other companies will do the same with their unfinished/obsolete games (sam & max anyone?)

The only problem is that their site is in japanese, and although "the fish" does a pretty good job, I can only make out their street address; (bottom of their site)