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Colt: 3
I never got into the RPGMaker niche. While the games look neat in the vintage sense, gameplay is ancient. I think the biggest progression is the automatic battle, which is broken in this case. No map, no autosave, confusing level design with all sorts of bushes and plants and rocks to hinder exploration. Millennium looks nice enough, and it may feature lush environments and a stirring story or whatever, but I’ll never know. After I inadvertently spent all my money upgrading Speed of all things, and my fairy sidekick, the one living in my earring, started talking, I was done.

Zak: 6
Millennium: A New Hope, available through Big Fish Games, follows the typical path of a run of the mill role playing game. The gameplay is reminiscent of traditional 16-Bit Final Fantasy-type RPG. The player collects a team and defeats enemies as they wander through towns, forests, dungeons, etc. Where the game deviates from the run of the mill, is in the challenge and artistry. Most of the enemies in the demo were pretty easy to defeat, but don’t take on more than you can handle – you have to manually save your progress. A lot also rides on remembering dialogue, so grab a notepad (maybe). The cut-to and battle scenes exhibit some great artwork, coupled with the 16-bit over-world art, I actually felt like I was back playing my old SNES.

Ben: 5
Although it’s got some nice hand-drawn artwork and is fine from a technical standpoint, Millenium suffers from being painfully generic. Although it is probably meant to be homage to the isometric-view console RPG’s of yesteryear, it doesn’t have any new ideas of its own, and even takes a few steps back in some areas. Both the keyboard and mouse control schemes are awkward feeling, and playability really suffers from the lack of gamepad support. Plus, the small sampling of music in the demo is really weak.

Andrew: 7
Millennium is practically worth playing just for its soundtrack alone. Though it can be said that some of the tracks don’t exactly fit with the tone, the soundtrack includes smooth jazz, snappy pop, and heavy drum jams. The JRPG turn-based gameplay is relatively standard, though, and the story gets in the way far too often. At first the story seems pretty interesting, but conversations between characters tend to go on far longer than they have to, and soon any interest in the story gives way to a desire stop all the yapping and get to the point.