So when I first glanced at the game, it looked amazing! It had this whole "Secret of Mana" vibe with a tinge of "Illusian of Gaia" with it's text, it's gameplay semi resembled games like Breath of Fire and Final Fantasy, or even Treasures of the Rudras.

That all caught my eye and it stood out amongst the other RPG maker games out there, so I did a little more research. I checked the official YouTube video to see it's ratings. Good amount of views and good ratings usually mean people generally like the game. I then checked Steam reviews, not for the reviews themself, but for the average amount of time people had put into this game. I didn't want to buy a game that had like 2 hours of gameplay alone, I was looking for something that had more like 20+ hours, especially for an RPG. This game DOES have that apparently, based on the average amount of hours involved.

So, I bought Ara Fell and immediately ran into a problem. The game launched in a window instead of fullscreen which most games do immediately. This is fine, just really odd. The problem I ran into was that my corded Xbox 360 controller wasn't recognized and my keyboard couldn't control any of the keys...

Not a good start for Ara Fell. I tried different USB slots thinking it could be the engine didn't detect USB 3.0 or something, nothing worked. I finally took to the game's steam forum and searched "controller" (which I shouldn't at all have to do, the game should work out of the box!) and found some work around with launching the game with new compatability settings (XP service pack 3).

So I finally launched the game and it worked fine with the controller, I was even able to set the game to fullscreen and stretch it's aspect ratio to fit my monitor; however, after playing a few minutes of the game, I immediately noticed input lag in some areas of the game. I have no idea what's causing this as my PC has updated hardware, enough to play higher-end games like Blizzard's "Overwatch" and Funcom's "Conan Exiles". My guess is the RPG Maker engine isn't optimized for "Windows 10 64-bit, or the code within RPG maker isn't optimized, and thus, the game just lags. It could also be me running the game under that forum poster's suggestion of running the game with Windows XP Service Pack 3 compatability.

Pros
+Beautiful music
+Stunning sprite work
+Lush thought-provoking story
+Non-linear exploriation
+Diverse crafting system
+Storydriven Cutscenes
+Rewarding Minigames

Cons
-Work arounds are required to use controller and fix lag...
-No diagional movement, can only move Up/Down/Left/Right.
-No battle music, boss music, or fanfare themes.
-Very laggy/almost not useable Crafting System.
-Convoluted, frustrating, and esoteric map system.
-No hotkeys for key features of the game, such as item menu, world map, or crafting menu.
-Cannot Shift+Tab to open steam menu

So when I first glanced at the game, it looked amazing! It had this whole "Secret of Mana" vibe with a tinge of "Illusian of Gaia" with it's text, it's gameplay semi resembled games like Breath of Fire and Final Fantasy, or even Treasures of the Rudras. That all caught my eye and it stood out amongst the other RPG maker games out there, so I did a little more research. I checked the official YouTube video to see it's ratings. Good amount of views and good ratings usually mean people generally like the game. I then checked Steam reviews, not for the reviews themself, but for the average amount of time people had put into this game. I didn't want to buy a game that had like 2 hours of gameplay alone, I was looking for something that had more like 20+ hours, especially for an RPG. This game DOES have that apparently, based on the average amount of hours involved. So, I bought Ara Fell and immediately ran into a problem. The game launched in a window instead of fullscreen which most games do immediately. This is fine, just really odd. The problem I ran into was that my corded Xbox 360 controller wasn't recognized and my keyboard couldn't control any of the keys... Not a good start for Ara Fell. I tried different USB slots thinking it could be the engine didn't detect USB 3.0 or something, nothing worked. I finally took to the game's steam forum and searched "controller" (which I shouldn't at all have to do, the game should work out of the box!) and found some work around with launching the game with new compatability settings (XP service pack 3). So I finally launched the game and it worked fine with the controller, I was even able to set the game to fullscreen and stretch it's aspect ratio to fit my monitor; however, after playing a few minutes of the game, I immediately noticed input lag in some areas of the game. I have no idea what's causing this as my PC has updated hardware, enough to play higher-end games like Blizzard's "Overwatch" and Funcom's "Conan Exiles". My guess is the RPG Maker engine isn't optimized for "Windows 10 64-bit, or the code within RPG maker isn't optimized, and thus, the game just lags. It could also be me running the game under that forum poster's suggestion of running the game with Windows XP Service Pack 3 compatability. Pros +Beautiful music +Stunning sprite work +Lush thought-provoking story +Non-linear exploriation +Diverse crafting system +Storydriven Cutscenes +Rewarding Minigames Cons -Work arounds are required to use controller and fix lag... -No diagional movement, can only move Up/Down/Left/Right. -No battle music, boss music, or fanfare themes. -Very laggy/almost not useable Crafting System. -Convoluted, frustrating, and esoteric map system. -No hotkeys for key features of the game, such as item menu, world map, or crafting menu. -Cannot Shift+Tab to open steam menu