There’s a point in the game where you get turned into a mouse, and to be completely honest, I wished the entire game was like that. A game about a knight mouse fighting normal monsters and humans sounds cool as few other things do.

I remember when I was young (like, primary school young), I would draw at any given opportunity, be it during recess or even in the middle of a class if I had the chance, and create stories and characters based on every series I watched and every game I played, with my weird-ass original characters throwed in from time to time. Even if my drawing and storytelling skills were equivalent to those of a dying rat and I now-a-days I’m much more comfortable with expressing my ideas in other forms like writing, I still look back at those memories with a certain fondness, days of just imagining stuff in my head and encapsulating those thoughts in a small dumb comic strip, and day dreaming about how, one day, I would create my own story, bet it comic, animated series or videogame, for everyone else to play or enjoy. I was very much not alone in this dream, even in my own class a ton of kids had similar aspirations, and tens of thousands of youngsters across the world did the exact same things as I, hell, maybe you reading this right now did; and those small moments of young creativeness are the ones which RPG Time: The Legend of Wright encapsulates perfectly, and it’s perhaps the strongest and most compelling thing about the entire experience.

The whole set-up couldn’t be more perfect: the entire thing takes place at merely at Kenta’s desk, the creator of the quote unquote ‘’game’’, and let me tell ya something, I don’t know if this kid has the skills to be a game developer, but his craftsmanship is on a whole other fucking level; every single piece and component of The Legend of Wright is made by either drawings or contraptions and handicrafts by Kenta, be it the main notebook where all the sections of the game are divided by pages, the scribbles on the desk with every single stat and hud you could imagine, and the little machines and sections made up entirely from common utensils… the charm is present not the moment you start the game or the tutorial, but the precise instance you boot up the game itself. And this is very much a fantastic thing, ‘cause this creativeness extrapolates pretty much innately to the gameplay itself; You never know what will surprise you next, what creative new craft will spice up a section and propose a puzzle, what new spin will be introduced in the next combat, or what may just happen outside the game itself and interfere with it. If The Legend of Wright does something, is not letting its concept go to waste, even if sacrifices a bit of the RPG in RPG Time… tho that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Look, I know a ton of people were kinda disappointed that this game didn’t go into the full potential of being a full-fledge RPG with such an unique aesthetic, and initially I was one of those people, but it didn’t take long enough for that perception to turn around the moment I realized what this game truly was. It is in a way a ode to the now grown-up kids that spent their time doing stuff like this on a smaller scale, yes, but it is also very much an experience intended for not gorwn-up kids; The Lengend of Wirght is an introduction, but not only to the RPG genre, but to games in genera: it has a ton of point and click elements throwed in, like slower movement and even a ‘’Where’s Waldo’’ type of minigame, that and the more linear progression, both in advancing the levels and leveling up, the combat feeling more like puzzles that actual RPG battles and the explanation of very basic gaming stuff and even some minor teachings related to science to stuff, and RPG Time turns out to be a perfect game for beginners, one that introduces a ton of concepts in a very compact game, while also not being afraid to experiment with mechanics to make no challenge equal, even if it’s never really that hard. RPG Time does what it seeks EXTREMELY well… but it’s not without its ‘’buts’’.

Even if many of these things are done in favor of being beginner friendly, the game does feel really slow and maybe a bit too stream-lined for its own sake; the first chapters drag-on a ton, making you do stuff that only feels like it’s constantly interrupting your pace, and even if it does get better as it goes on, specially at chapter 3 and 4, it only ends up making the overall experience feeling kind of uneven, and some chapters feel cluttered in comparison to others. It also doesn’t help that some changes of gameplay aren’t always winners, some are good, yes, but other minigames REAAAAAAAALLY feel like pure padding, and some combats felt a tad too simple, like the boss fight of the previously mentioned chapter 3. Healing items feel more like a collectable than actual items, some parts are more of an after thought and don’t really add to the overall experience, the plot feels a bit all over the place, and the table top game part had me 15 FREACKING MINUTES TRIYING TO GET A7 OH MY GOD I HATED THAT SO MUCH HOLY HELL…

… these little things pile up, sadly, and they begin to really hamper the overall experience… but in a weird way, it’s kinda fitting that it has this kinds of flaws. It’s a game made by a kid, with drawings and random stuff no less, and even tho I’m not defending its negatives, in a way it’s easy to put them into perspective in context.

The Legend of Wright is charming and lovely to no end, it’s in several ways a perfect starting point into the whole videogame realm, and even if it’s flawed and some parts were REALLY tiring, it’s still a game that makes me so happy at so many levels, like looking back at a fond memory, a cool adventure with many surprised that, if anything else, it’s charismatic like few others.