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There's also a wide range of items that can be made, whether as weapons, armor, accessories, perishables, or story-related treasures. Like skills, there's a multitude of effects they can possess, as well as any stat boosts they might provide. Equipment can be limited to be used only by certain characters, while items like healing herbs can be single use, unlimited, and everything in between. These can be given to players through events, or sold in the various shop types, with the ability to vary their prices from store to store, letting the player play traveling merchant for some extra cash if you desire.
Events are the heart of RPGM3. Without them, you would have a world where nothing really happens outside of the occasional random brawl, which might be a little too much like real life. While not quite as easy to use as the storyteller module, creating or editing even a complicated event is usually a matter of moments, choosing the proper action from a series of lists and setting the appropriate values. Changing the season, warping the player to a new location, creating elaborate puzzles, setting a variable or two...Things can get a bit complicated here, especially when each event can have a number of pages that are kicked off depending on a number of factors, but this toolkit would be far too limiting any other way. Which brings me to its inescapable downside.
The sky is the limit...until you come crashing down.
All of this comes at a cost, and that's a certain lack of flexibility. In RPGM2, if you were really determined, you could do nearly anything, but in RPGM3 there are strict rules in what you can and can not do, while the options just aren't as robust as the previous incarnation. You have exactly four color choices for every character model and most monsters, which you have no ability to alter. There are six portraits for each person, but some of these don't even match the model they're paired with, and even worse come with only one expression. This makes the already limited storyteller module much harder to put to good use. Honestly, I think it would have been better to drop 2D portraits all together and work on adding expressions to the existing 3D models. Then maybe you could have a little camera control in cut-scenes.
After the freeform nature of both landscape and dungeon editors, it was surprising that towns come with a few pre-determined layouts that can't be changed. You can put buildings wherever you want, but forget making your own paths or roads, or even raising the ground a little. You can also forget about customizing the interiors of those buildings to any great degree. Most come with pre-placed objects that you can't move, delete, or place other objects on top of. What's the point of making my own RPG if it's going to look like everyone else's? It's hard enough to get someone else to try out your RPG masterpiece, not only forcing both of you to buy a save file uploading/downloading device, but also for them to purchase the full version of RPG Maker 3. A cheap play only version of RPGM3 would allow people with no interest in the making side of things to experience these games more easily, and might even encourage them to pick up the toolkit for themselves.
RPGM3 is game making for the fast food generation. Aside from a few minor rough spots, everything is as quick and as easy as it could possibly be on a console. The problem is that in streamlining this toolkit they reduced the number of possibilities, limiting how unique and cinematic games made with it can be. That alone makes it difficult to score. For people whose dreams fit snuggly within these boundaries RPG Maker 3 will occupy their waking hours and even infiltrate their dreams, while others will be frustrated by their inability to shape this virtual world according to their whims.
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