Graphics: 89% Sound: 92% Gameplay: 86% Control: 90% Story: 86% Overall: 89%

Pretty sails.   Pretty character and monster art.   I hope there isn't a troll under this bridge... or worse!   I wouldn't want to set foot in those swamps, yet our heroine does so barefoot.

Millennium: A New Hope 10/11/09 Neal Chandran

Millennium is a brand new IP from Aldorlea, the indie developer best known for the Laxius Force series. Millennium is being released episodically much like Final Fantasy IV: The After Years and Aveyond 3 are/were. I had a chance to play Millennium's first episode entitled "A New Hope." The game's moniker may be far from original, but it has quite a bit of original content in the art direction, soundtrack, environmental textures, and storyline. True to Aldorlea form, it is also a robust and often challenging game that will easily keep players busy far longer than many of its peers. This is easily Aldorlea's most aesthetically pleasing, accessible, and refined effort to date.

Graphics and Sound

A first impression counts for a lot and the title screen made a very good one. The beautiful artwork and the complementary music made me want to hang out at the title screen for a while and not get started right away. These appealing aesthetics continue in the graphics and music of the game proper.

There is no doubt that this game is an RPG Maker XP game, but it is a very beautiful XP game. Many environments had custom textures in the tiles that looked great. Some dungeons, like the mountainous Rocky Path, featured backgrounds that were almost photorealistic. The lovely character art during battles and in the flash, title, and Game Over screens looked very refined and reminded me of the sylized European cartoons I watched as a child when I lived over there. The enemy art was 100% original as well and even the basic monsters looked good. I found the art a very nice change of pace from the usual Japanese and American styled art I've seen in so many RPGs and I found myself picking fights just to look at the character art more often. The majority of NPC sprites were default XP sprites with some unique ones for the playable and/or important characters. The sprites looked fine and integrated well with the environments, but did not do justice to the character art.

The original soundtrack was quite varied. Many songs had an airy feel and utilized various Asian instruments and themes. Other pieces were reminiscent of western music styles, such as various kinds of classical, downtempo/ambient electronica, and even heavy metal. Seriously, I was headbanging the first time I heard the boss theme. Some pieces even had vocal clips in them, like the "ahhs" in the Green Grass village theme, the south Asian style chanting towards the end of the overworld theme, or the various kinds of chanting in the monastery theme. Speaking of voices, two of the characters even had a few battle grunt type voice clips when doing martial arts moves. The sound was on point and I hope to hear more from this talented new composer.

Story

The story stars Marine, a strong-willed teenage girl who lives in the poverty-stricken village of Green Grass with her father Stanislas and younger sister Merline. The city-state of Mystrock holds all the power and resources and lets the rest of the countryside go to shambles while they grow fat off their greedy wealth. Stanislas is the one person brave enough to keep pounding on the gates of Mystrock to fight for the rights of the peasants. One of these struggles brings Stanislas back to Green Grass with a severe injury. Marine does not understand why her father keeps fighting such a seemingly hopeless battle like this. Why can't Green Grass just live at peace with Mystrock and forego all this drama? Why can't Stanislas be like a normal daddy and just stay in Green Grass so they can be a regular family like they were before Mom died? Child, you'll understand soon enough.

Since Stanislas is injured, he tasks Marine to deliver a package to her grandfather who lives in a somewhat far away town. Father and daughter always took the journey together, but now daughter must do this on her own. Marine then learns more about why her father fights Mystrock the way he does, how their laws unfairly oppress peasants everywhere, and that the only way to be heard is to gather a legion of 13 willing warriors to take down each of Mystrock's champions. Marine is initially reluctant to go that route because how much can one small peasant girl do against the political and military might of Mystrock? But she finds her conviction and decides she has nothing to lose, even if everyone else thinks she is crazy. Looks like the apple does not fall far from the tree.

The scope of Millennium thus far feels similar to that of Suikoden where it's not so much "save the world" but more "liberate your homeland from the oppressive rule of the establishment." This tighter focus and faster progression compared to the Laxius titles is a nice contrast. The script had places here and there where the English was not perfect, but the dialogue was easy enough to follow and characters had distinct personalities. Some of my favorite moments were when Marine occasionally let her more playful side show that behind this heroine hellbent on advocacy was a real teenage girl who likes to have a little fun once in a while.

Where will Marine's journey take her? What kinds of heroes will she seek out? Will they fight alongside her or just regard her as a crackpot kid with a hopeless pipe dream? What nefarious schemes are the facially tattooed Lord Dragon and the moustached Lord Borgan plotting to keep Mystrock mighty while keeping everyone else down? Well, we're not going to know until future episodes come out.

Gameplay

Millennium: A New Hope has four difficulty levels for players to choose from: Very Easy, Easy, Normal, and Hard. The main storyline can be completed at any difficulty level, and I played on Normal. In addition to making battles easier or harder, the number of hidden uber-bosses to be found in the optional Animal Kings sidequest differs depending on the level chosen.

Players should not be fooled by the Very Easy or Easy difficulty options, because they are not "get out of jail free" cards. Sure, battles will be a cinch, but exploration will still be a challenge. Environments are expansive and some dungeon areas may have players pulling their hair out. Personally, I rather enjoyed being delightfully lost and felt a sense of accomplishment when I got through the more difficult dungeons. Even the first task of guiding Marine through the vast fields outside her village en route to the overworld and her grandfather's house had me happily going around in circles for a bit till I had the "a-ha!" moment of finding a new path. The only downside players may find to the exploration is that once a dungeon's boss is defeated, the party needs to hoof it back to the entrance. In addition, players may need to go through some dungeons multiple times to get from one place to another on the overworld, especially if they are backtracking to complete sidequests.

The gameplay mechanics themselves are what players would expect in a Japanese style RPG of the 16-bit tradition. There are towns, dungeons, and an overworld to explore, though the majority of the game is spent in dungeons. There are turn based battles to fight in the hostile areas and these battles occur randomly. The default encounter rate is neither too high nor to low and can be raised or lowered while in a dungeon. Progression is fairly linear, but there are plenty of secrets, sidequests and opportunities to venture off the beaten path. Keeping track of quests is easy with the quest journal, and a "talk" feature like that found in Phantasy Star 4 is a quick and easy way to remind players of what their main objective is. To further aid convenience, saving can be done anywhere and any time outside of battle.

Like other Aldorlea offerings, there is plenty in Millennium: A New Hope to keep players busy and enhance the worldbuilding. In the 16-17 hours I spent with it, I only had around 25% of the sidequests completed and barely a handful of the secrets uncovered. In other words, completionist players should be kept busy for 1.5 to 2 times as many hours.

Overall

Millennium: A New Hope has edged out 3 Stars of Destiny as my favorite Aldorlea game to date. Anyone who has been hesitant to take a chance on an Aldorlea game should definitely give Millennium: A New Hope a look. Games such as this one and Warfare Studios' Dark Souls 2 are raising the bar on the kinds of production values players will soon come to expect from commercial RPG Maker titles and I eagerly await Millennium's next episode.

Post-Script: Episode 2 is currently scheduled for release in December of this year, Episode 3 is planned for a Q1 2010 release, and there are rumors that there may be a fourth or fifth episode in the works.