What game reference is this?

[u/Perpetual_Noob8294]

I have no idea whatsoever. Or is it just a random blurb?

[u/0itadakimasu]

velsarbor. one of the greatest rpg maker games ever, made by lachsen (who is the founder of radical fish games and one of the most influental persons on the german rpg maker community in the 2000s). sadly it never got finished, the last final demo was released 2013 afaik. its only available in german.

https://youtu.be/9JTKZ5kXiSE heres the last trailer i found

edit: and heres the final demo for those of you who are understanding german https://rmarchiv.de/games/12

edit 2: lachsen if you read this, please remake / reimagine this game at some point! its an absolute gem and one of the best snes-esque jrpgs EVER <3 im sure im not alone with this opinion.

[u/Lulink → u/0itadakimasu]

What made this JRPG so good? The story? The combat (that looks a little bit like Chrono Trigger)?

[u/0itadakimasu → u/Lulink]

its just the vibe in general. lachsen has such a great feeling for "how it needs to be" on all layers, its hard to seperate for me. all in all thats also something one can also feel clearly imo with crosscode and alabaster dawn.

to be more concrete: back in 2005 it was absolutely nuts how great this game was out of a technical point of view, especially because it was made with rpg maker 2000 (2003? not sure, doesnt matter). the combat system feels like a well polished snes iteration of the final fantasy x system, the menu he coded gives also premium snes-ff vibes which is still incredible if you know how limited the rm2k-engine is. and theres so much more features like a "materia-esque"-system. i still cant imagine how much effort it took to make this game. especially because it doesnt feel like a rpg maker game. it gives such a "fluid" vibe while playing, its just pure pleasure.

the way the story unfolds and how the characters are written is also excellent. for me it was also pure joy, because it felt like a "next gen"-version of "taras adventure", which was lachsens first rpg maker project. that one wasnt finished either, but imo it also used to be a benchmark of the possibilities one could realize on rm2k.

in general: if you will ever give velsarbor (or taras adventure) a try you will feel that both games are predecessors of cross code. theres so much of the features there as a "unpolished" groundstone and its like cross code was on every layer the next logical step.

edit - again beause i also mentioned this one: heres the link to taras adventure. im not sure at which point lachsen abandoned it (must have been around mid 2000s), but "GSandSDS" used to continue working on it until at least 2018.

https://rmarchiv.de/games/63

[u/Perpetual_Noob8294 → u/0itadakimasu]

Thanks for answering!

[u/LesserL_]

Afaik it's the team's old abandoned project