Angels of Exodus by Illustrious

Liam dreams to reunite with his brother after he received a letter from him. However Meriveau is in the New World, so the trip won't be short. Liam reaches the town of Fern during the evening, hoping to catch a ride to Meriveau. This time the demo never gets to Meriveau, nor we'll experience the shenigans and battles of the original title, and it's just a short introduction to a bigger adventure that was never made.

 

Angel of Exodus is a peculiar title: in this prologue we can explore the little town of Fern, chat with bizarre individuale, gamble and even hunt faeries (honestly I did not like that minigame, but it's optional), anyway he real focus of the game is leaving the place. This time there isn't action and all plays more like and adventure game, with a couple of cutscenes that hint to some mysterious menaces that the two brothers will have to face in the future. Aside for a couple of maps that are pretty simple and used in cutscenes, the game looks like a big improvement over the first demo.

 

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Random Fact: in both Angels of Exodus and Forever Across Dreams appears a character called "the sneaky wizard" (that resembles a Black Mag from Final Fantasy). He hides in some corner of a map, and the player has to find him, however you can find him only once in each of these demos (or so I think!), so we have no idea about which reward was offered by finding him. Anyway play and see if you can find him too!

Forever Across Dreams by Illustrious

Liam dreams to reunite with his brother, so he travels to Meriveau, a peaceful town, and he finally reaches his brother's home. But his arrival doesn't go as planned and after exploring a bit the town strange and unexplicable things start happening! As Liam loses contact with the reality he gets mysterious powers, but he will also have to face challenges and enemies.

 Forever Across Dreams starts as a low-fantasy story, and then it suddenly becomes a mysteryous adventure. Unfortunately the game is a demo, so many questions will be left unanswered. This is what you can expect from a classic Rpgmaker 2000 game, exploration ,battles and the occasional puzzle, but there are some particular edits and surprisingly little detailed animation (like when a secondary character types on a keyboard).

 

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Oniromancie

Random Fact: Angels of Exodus was an attempt of Illustrious to remake this game. The plot is in fact the same, and the intro sequence (with the dialogue in front of a waterfall) is also virtually identical, save for the use of different assets, the new game also contains an alternate main screen with the old title Forever Across Dreams. However in this remake the story takes a different direction, and it's even shorter than this demo, offering only a sort of prologue. But this will be seen next time!

 

Alvorada Do Mal by Calunio (portoguese)

Alvorada do Mal (Dawn of Evil) is the story of Dorio, an ordinary high-school boy who one day finds out that strange things are happening in his school, his house, and his entire city. People start to behave oddly, badly, and turn into monsters. Not knowing what to do, Dorio and a few friends escape town, and eventually come across a strange masked man who says a powerful evil being is bringing a new era of evil to the world. Between not believing and not wanting to be a part of it, Dorio and his friends are caught up in a strange set of events, and have to travel through strange places and try to figure out what's going on.

 

 

Alvorada do Mal is a dark modern horror RPG using basic Rm2k3 system with lots of custom graphics, edits and also minigames. This game impressed me because it creates a convincing and interesting modern world where the supernatural is present, some maps like for example the big city (Magnopolis) are impressive. The game has also various paths that lead to different situations: in the beginning you may befriend a school bully and have him join the team, but it's not mandatory, later there is a situation where Dorio may become more than human and get some powers, which ones will be the player's choice. The game also uses a selection of popular music from Green Day, Offspring and Metallica, but they fit the theme since Dorio is a teenager and the game also has a section that takes place at a concert. My only gripe is that this game was never complete, so there isn't an ending to the adventures of Dorio and friends. Pity. Anyway you can still enjoy this unique game finding it here:

 

Internet Archive

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Random Fact: although the demo was sadly never translated in english, there is a collection of all the minigames featured in the game that's instead available in english: you can find and download this "minigames-only" version from the first link together with the Demo 4 version.

Tales of Urodora by Budowear

Phalcia and Urodora are two separated worlds: the people of Phalcia used to exile people, often criminals, to the barren lands of Urodora, that soon became overpopulated. Valian, the man who rose as the leader of the people in Urodora, built an army to start a war against those who exiliated them… unfortunately for him the Phalcians have some gifted individual called Dreamchasers that can reach Urodora through dreams, while Urodora doesnt.

We start playing as Daryl, a promising young knight that fights for Valian in the war… but we also play as Raine, a young Dreamchaser from Phalcia that doesn't know how he came to Urodora, as Vistido, a mercenary Phalcian general, and the mysterious sorceress Deseree.

 

Tales of Urodora is a classic Rpgmaker game with random battles, many cutscenes and dialogues and lots of walking around. In fact it will happen to visit the same areas many times even if using a different character, and the adventure is mostly linear. I consider this more an adventure than an rpg since most of the time (but not always) we'll play as a single character rather than a party of heroes.
For a 2002 game this isn't bad, and the assets are used pretty well, still more recent games will be probably more varied, interesting and entertaining. 

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Random Fact: the title screen, that doesn't even display a title, was used as it is also for another Rpgmaker 2000 game, El dragón rojo (see here). Other games like Sword of Salvation or Tallon instead added the title of the game on the picture.

The Song of Elegin by Madriel222

The Song of Elegin starts on the aftermath of the defeat of evil: the demons were banished from the realm, and now after the Xiannodel Wars, those who were trained in the arcane arts find themselves purposeless, and the masses they protected from the dark demonic forces now look at them with distrust and fear.
Oroth Naraskodel is an apprentice mage who's 10 year training at the arcane academy known as The Order. A deeply caring and empathetic individual, Oroth now heads back to his childhood home of Innarlith, back to a father whom he believes abandoned his responsibilities as a parent. Embarking on the long odyssey with his childhood friend, the young warrior Berundd, he will attempt to find purpose in this world. What will start out simply as a journey home will evolve into a great adventure that will make our heroes reveal and face the greatest conspiracy the world has ever known.

The Song of Elegin is apparently a classic Rpgmaker2003 fantasy game: there is a certain freedom to explore and talk to people to obtain a series of optional quests, the game uses classical random battle encounters, but there are also some really interesting features, like the day/night cycle that also changes the dialogues of the npcs encountered, there are many custom menus to keep track of the various quests and to manage spells and characters. Overall these additions are good, but add an extra layer of complexity that not every player may like. Mapping is for the most part pretty good, with varied areas ike colorful villages and dark forests, sunny beaches and snowy areas.

 

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Random Fact: Madriel isn't just the name of the developer of the game, but also of an important character that appears in this adventure. This character (like all the important ones) has a unique faceset, and coincidentally is the same used for Nickel Arand, the protagonist of another game created by Madriel222, Final Fantasy The Phoenix Prophecies. But that's another game for another day.

 

The Shadow of Life by Legacy

During the middle ages Lord Ferith the Seer escapes from the king that wants to execute him. But since the lady who saved him is going to be burned as a witch, he returns to the castle to rescue her, unfortunately during the attempt he is killed by the king's men, and she dies in the pyre too.

In 2001 a young man that lives in the city of Kerain, Narin Ressanon, is haunted by some weird dreams about mysterious entities that are calling him. Things aren't also going well with Kara, the girl he loves, anyway he will soon have other serious problems: for some unknown reason the police is going to arrest him for terrorism. Meanwhile Kara must escape from a burning building…

 

The Shadow of Life is a game with some good ideas, an many problems: sure there are lots of maps, puzzles, a hacking minigame and timed action sections, unfortunately the realization is a bit… mediocre. Maps are often big and almost empty, there are really too few savepoints, and too many dialogues with typos. Some situations also do not make sense (for example the protagonist is lost in a forest but suddenly he remembers there is an exit through a tree? How??).
Anyway you can make your own opinion playing the game:

 

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Random Fact: the game is set in two different time periods and there is an attempt to diversify them: the middle age section has charactersthat speak in a sort of archaic english language, unlike the parts set in the modern times that use modern slang. Oddly both timelines feature some popular rock and pop songs from the 80s-90s.

 

 

Love and War: Act I by Admiral Styles

This game starts with a mysterious opening about two strange characters, but after a short series of dramatic events we start playin ad Ryan Eramond,a young man of eighteen who has just graduated from high school, and has the rest of his life in front of him. The story begins light-heartedly enough, with situations based on the joys and trials of adolescence, involving Ryan and his best friends Armin and Henrik, the girls Marianne and Lavie, and his rival Juno. However, as the game progresses, we slowly begin to learn about political unrest in Terra, and by the end, our hero and his friends have all been touched by it.

Love and War is a complete game, even if the story is left open for a sequel. It's however a real charming and lighthearted game with lots of explorable maps, custom cutscenes and art, and interesting characters. We also have the opportunity to play ad Juno and Lavie (that surprisingly unlike other characters can gain levels by solving tests of agility or intelligence!) in some sections, and the game includes nice custom aspects, from the custom menus to the voiced dialogues (a really unique feature!) and Ryan's custom combat style that employs the use of both sword and gun.

A really fun experience, grab it here:

Official Site
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Random Fact: as an added bonus, from the official site or from this download link you can get C'est Lavie, a spin-off fifteen minutes funny cutscene made with Rpgmaker about Lavender "Lavie" Regale, Ryan's childhood friend.