The Deep, as described on the project page, is created by an old-school Dungeon Master (ala Dungeons & Dragons). Even if this wasn't stated upfront, it would be totally obvious after playing for just a couple minutes.
The game starts out just like a new D&D campaign typically does. You are some random dude with a personality based off of a single trait, gruff in this case, and you find yourself shipwrecked and stranded on an island. Fortunately, there's a small village nearby and the first person you meet is like, "Hey, I'll join up with you" and you go to a nearby cave to defeat the creature that's been terrorizing the village. The Deep is very standard, default and straight to the point.
Now it may sound like I'm bashing the game but I'm not. I'm also an old-ish-school D&D player and sometime Dungeon Master as well as an old-school JRPG fan. The Deep is a first project by the developer yet it avoids making the mistakes that many do when starting out. It's not trying throw in a crap-ton of extra systems and plug-ins. It's using RPG Maker out of the box and utilizing it for what it does best. Oddly, that actually makes this game stand out to some degree because almost no one seems to make the type of game that you can make with the default engine anymore. I too am guilty of this.
So yeah, you're not going to be awestruck by the graphics or mapping. The game play isn't groundbreaking. The story and character development is pretty sparse. But it's fun and playable and doesn't have any overly glaring flaws.
This game is much better than you'll find from most first projects. I'm definitely going to keep tabs on this dev because when he has time to learn the RPG Maker engine more thoroughly, I have a feeling that some really cool games will come.
Great job!