1990

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[h3][b][i]1990[/i][/b][/h3]

"1990" is a poorly made RPG Maker asset flip with your usual high school anime club dropout fanfiction writing, clumsy use of RPG Maker's map editor, flipped tilesets, and zero reason to ever want to play this even for free. RPG Maker is a terrible construction kit that never results in products of any value to gamers. This features really godawful, lazy pixelcrap "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks bad because of that decision, and that's a major deterrent to gamers. Games like Terraria and Stardew Valley succeeded [i]despite[/i] the bad graphics, not because of them. This is "free" enough, at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 2 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. Bearing…

For a turn-based RPG, 1990 has surprisingly little to work towards on Steam. There are no Steam achievements or Trading Cards, despite all the obvious milestones that could have been used, such as progressing through the story, defeating bosses, collecting equipment and completing the different areas. The combat and RPG systems are also extremely basic, making the whole experience feel more like a small RPG Maker project than a fully developed RPG. It's free, so it's easy enough to try, but there isn't much here to keep you playing once the novelty wears off.

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1990 is an adventure game / RPG that appears to be a passion project of either a solo developer or a very small team. My first playthrough which included reading all of the text and accessing any areas that seemed accessible took about 2 and a half hours. I didn't have to reload from a save at any point for any reason. It's 2D and does not scroll. Everything occurs on a single screen with a brief loading period between screens. Combat is turn-based and what you'd expect for a classic turn-based RPG. Graphics / Sound This game has very, very basic graphics. Similar to something you'd expect from 30 years ago but most of the environments repeat too often. It wasn't uncommon for me to have to think about if I was going the correct way through the game simply because many of the screens repeat. The characters and enemies look better both in the environment and the battle screens, but none of them are exceptional. The music is forgetable. Neither the music or sound effects are great, but at least they didn't annoy me. (6/10) Story / Lore / Character Building I didn't catch any grammatical errors or horrific translations. The story at least makes sense, even if it is quite cheesy an…