Pax Romana: Romulus

A game where you can relive the tale of Romulus and Remus on their quest to found a city that will shape the history of the world to come through JRPG mechanics is a pretty interesting idea if I do say so myself. Walking along the paths to each town is a bit of a pain without a horse, carriage or any other form of fast travel besides the teleport stones, but I do love the concept of history and mythology intersecting with each other.

RPG Maker strikes again! Pax Romana: Romulus is abandoned Early Access... it's one of hundreds of low effort retro-pixel RPG Maker asset/construction kit flips spamming the Steam catalog, made with the RPG Maker video game construction kit... in their own words, "Our easy to use tools are simple enough for a child." Like all RPG Maker "games", this is essentially a bunch of low quality/canned assets from RPG Maker coupled with a cringeworthy high school anime club fan fiction. The game was abandoned roughly one year after launch and hasn't been updated in about 2 years. It blew past the developers commitment to complete the game without any notification or admission of failure from the developer. Notably the developer here couldn't work out how to use RPG Maker to make an RPG... and that's the only thing RPG Maker can do properly... except it's not even very good for making RPGs. Instead, we have an ultra dumbed down "farming sim" where you "harvest" things and use them to construct things to decorate your farm... that's really about all there is to it. Perhaps the developers were trying to use RPG Maker to make a ripoff of Stardew Valley... who knows? It failed. As with …

Didn't think I was going to actually like this. It honestly is like Harvest Moon but with less features. I'm sure they are working on getting more implemented into the game but for now it feels like all you do is just gather quests. Of course you can grow crops and feed animals but other than that farm isn't too much, it is mostly gather this item for this quest continue to next area.

While I can recommend the game for the price of $1 (as of 19/02/25 in Argentina), I don´t think I would buy it for more than that tho. With almost 4 hours of gameplay without grinding too much nor min/maxing I already finished the main story as far as is implemented, and I don´t see much sense in continuing exploring the map though I didn´t finish all secondary missions. Also, it does not look like the game is ever going to be finished (which is a pity), so I do not expect to ever come back to the game. The story felt pleasant, while it was not great. The game has very chill vibes and the OST is very good and mathces the game very well. The game can remind somewhat to Stardew Valley, it certanly has the same vibes, but definitly can not match it. All in all, I recomend this game ONLY if you want a chill game that provides around 4 hours of generally entertaining gameplay for the price of $1, and I would not buy it for more.

Unfortunately, this game could not hold my attention but I don't want to give a terrible review as I'm sure some heart went into this game. It felt a bit like a bland stardew valley with the game building off of mythology as its backbone but then doesn't feel like much story telling is used. I only made it as far as Portus Cale and maybe one day I'll return to this game to give it a second shot but for now I move on. 4/10

an awful and empty imitation...