RPG Maker MV Switch Review – Create Your Own RPG

Were you a fan of the likes of Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, and the original Final Fantasy games? Did playing those game ever encourage you to want to create your very own? If so, now you can with ease! Originally released on Steam, RPG Maker MV is now making its debut onto the Nintendo Switch allowing you to create your very own RPG masterpiece and share it with the world. 

RPG Maker MV is a program that allows you to make a game without needing to know any coding or anything technical, giving you all the tools you could possibly need in a simplified and accessible way. Upon starting, you will be required to complete a short but necessary tutorial that won’t show you too much but just enough to get you started.  

Create your own narratives, characters, worlds, battles, music – you name it, you can change it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not an easy task – it will take many, many hours to get to grips with how everything works as the interface can be a little intimating purely because of the number of menus and settings to change. But the more you play and experiment, the easier it will become – and the more rewarding it will be.  

RPG Maker MV goes as in-depth as you would like it to. Essentially, you get what you put in to it. Customizing damage formulas in battle, changing from first-person to third-person, and even creating how various NPCs move around an area are all things that can be customized. But, it takes some digging around the menus to find out where and how to change these settings.

The events editor is an incredibly useful tool that will make your game come to life, giving you the ability to walk through doors, change party settings, trigger random battles, and many, many more. The possibilities of this program really are endless.

RPG Maker MV also includes the ability to share your creations with other people around the world. You can even play other people’s creations! Sadly, I was not able to test this feature out as there was nobody uploading at the time of this review, but I look forward to trying out other people’s games and getting some inspiration from them. It is worth noting that I don’t believe this has crossplay between consoles and PC, meaning you can only play games created on a Nintendo Switch.

One thing I did notice whilst playing RPG Maker MV was that it doesn’t run all that smoothly in handheld mode – which is primarily how I wanted to play it due to the touch screen controls. More often than not, it would take a good few seconds to load something I had clicked on or even register that I had clicked on it at all, causing me to double click and end up on a different option than I had originally hoped – very frustrating. It felt a little sluggish. I’m hoping there might be an update that can fix this in the future.

RPG Maker MV will set you back by $49.99 which I’m torn between saying it’s worth it or not. This can keep you occupied for hundreds, if not thousands of hours, and it’s not a lot to pay for a game creating software – but it’s not going to be for everyone.

It has a plethora of tools at your disposal, and as complicated as it may seem at first, it’s a hell of a lot simpler than coding your own game. There is nothing like this on the Nintendo Switch, and I think creative minds could really shine here.

RPG Maker MV Review provided by NintendoLink
Review also available on OpenCritic
Publisher: KADOKAWA CORPORATION
Developer: NIS America
Release Date: September 8th, 2020
Price: $49.99
Game Size: 2.6GB