What’s in a title? A game named The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time is obviously…not that. Or is it? The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time (hereafter: The RPG) is a narrative puzzle game wearing an RPG dress, with a good dose of meta commentary. It pokes good-hearted fun at both old-school RPG tropes as well as the modern-day game development processes. While playing, it’s important to remember that this is not the greatest RPG of all time. This is…just a tribute.
The RPG takes after the environmental storytelling and investigative puzzle structure of Tunic or Inscryption. In the first minute of The RPG, the player is dropped into a dungeon at the very end of The Greatest RPG of All Time (no, I did not mess up the name here, it’s the remake of the end of the – you know what, just keep reading; it’ll make sense eventually). The main character has maxed stats and an inventory full of some familiar objects, for example, health potions and small keys, and some other unexpected objects, like A Dream and some Lime Pies. There is no tutorial, which makes sense because, theoretically, you just played the game for several hours. And so you, the intrepid player, stride forward into the dungeon.
As the character walks through the environment, you will pass through audio logs with commentary from the developers, find videos with scenes from a documentary about the making of The RPG, and also pages from the official game guide for The Greatest RPG of All Time (again, I am indeed being very careful which name I use here, I promise). After setting the table with a solid RPG and some clear threads that we’re going to pull at, the game finally gets rolling for real.
Gameplay consists of battling enemies with the very cool six-move turn-based system, finding hidden passageways, releasing your imprisoned teammates, and answering riddles to progress through the dungeon. Whenever you get a little stuck, you can open up the game guide pages in your menu or review the audio commentary to get clues on how to proceed. And because it’s a meta game fully aware of itself, there’s a turning point in the first act of the story that busts the RPG wide open. In a way, it’s two games in one. Or like, two halves of the same coin? Two pages from the same book? Well, and also ther—wait, no, you’re not getting any more clues out of me. You’ll have to play the game to find out what it all means!
The visual style and music are also fantastic. The art team made a flawless rendition of SNES-style-but-updated-a-little-bit-for-fun pixel art, and their use of FMV recordings with soap-opera-level acting is just raw enough that they don’t get annoying or confusing, but there’s also just enough to them that you can nibble some popcorn while the footage rolls. The soundtrack is filled with bangers, from chiptune dungeon wandering tracks to moody piano solos during boss battles and “boss battles.” I loved all the sound effects and beep speech, and I appreciated that each narrative region had its own sonic personality. The whole thing meshes incredibly well together.
The different mechanics for all the different sections of the game are easy to pick up and use. As a bit of a warning without being a spoiler, though, there are a few interactions that are intentionally not user-friendly. Judging by some forums and Steam discussions, those areas seem to have confused and irritated some players. So, when you play the game, just remember that it might not be you; it might very well be the The RPG devs or The Greatest RPG of All Time devs pulling a sneaky on ya. On a related note, this is one of those games that has at least one intentional game-breaking glitch and at least one software crash. Do not panic when these happen. Understand why they happened and continue.
I particularly love The RPG for the puzzles, which encouraged me to think outside the box in the same way brainbenders like Patrick’s Parabox or Isle of Sea and Sky made me consider things on a broader or more meta level. There were a few head-scratcher moments that were solved by me bringing in a new person to help or just sleeping it off. When in doubt, keep looking and poking around until the penny drops. It’s a game that makes you feel clever whenever you figure out a new connection or clue. You don’t need a physical notebook, as the game does collate all your found clues for you, but I recommend also taking your own notes in case you have any random thoughts and threads that you want to follow up on later.
As is common in narrative-forward games, The RPG is separated into roughly three acts. As you play more of The Greatest RPG of All Time and understand more clues and lore about The RPG, the story weaves through themes of authorship and art, nostalgia, cringe, liveness versus fixed media, and what it means to be a gamer and a game developer. It made sure to tick all the boxes of both a role-playing game and a narrative puzzle game, and at every turn, it gives you a little wink and a nudge as it does so. I never thought it was preachy or obnoxiously tongue-in-cheek, though it certainly didn’t hold back. The RPG strikes a beautiful balance between getting out of my way so I can ponder puzzles in my own time, and then interjecting with its next story beat to move things along.
