Review for Dojo Master by LockeCole88
The story begins when you approach an abandoned dojo and take control of it. The place has been unattended for quite some time, yet there is an old man who seems to live there. He acts as your tutorial guide while you go through the basics of the game: managing time, doing (menial) tasks and, of course, combat.
You can completely customize your character (using SumRandomDde's Character Creator plugins) which adds to the immersion somewhat. A preset character would have been nice to have, though.
There is a lot of customization found all around the game. You can (and probably should) tend to the dojo be clearing weeds, breaking rocks and repairing the walls. Your first quest seems to be finding some copper ore from the nearby mountains. However the chances to find that ore aren't that high, and you can encounter wildlife while doing this. My original character died when a wasp attacked and poisoned me, but he was succeeded by a punk named Panko who acted as a tutorial battle in the beginning. I like this feature, it allows for some leeway when you're learning the game to not have your progress completely reset when you ultimately die.
The combat seems to consist of three different actions. You can attack, which opens a minigame of sort where you need to hit a certain area of a circle with a stick that rolls around. Where you hit determines how you strike your enemy, but I honestly did not find much of a difference in the three colored areas (granted, I did not manage to play for that long). You can also block by hitting the action button at the right time when the enemy is striking you. However, I'm not sure if it's because of my 144Hz monitor but this margin of error seems to be too little. I only managed to block once after the tutorial, maybe this can be fixed by using the Synch FPS plugin by Yanfly, I'm not sure. Still, something to look into. Finally, you can use skills, which seem to require you to press designated buttons quickly. The first time I managed this, but the next time I failed, ultimately leading to my doom. Of course, there's an option to use items and escape, but since those are default options, I'm not describing them.
I liked the fact that you are able to name your character (and the dojo) without the clunky RPG Maker MV name input screen that most projects use. Now, if you only could change the font on those screens to the same one you use elsewhere, that would be perfect. Also the picture about keyboard command layout at the beginning of the game was a welcome addition. Most projects tent to approach players as people who already have knowledge on how to play RPG Maker games in general, and this might not always be the case.
The graphics and music were composed of (mostly) RTP assets, which wasn't that bad. The mapping was pretty good, too. However, there was a passability error with the larger tree tiles, allowing you to walk through them.
I sadly encountered a game-breaking bug on my second game. When entering the graveyard, I noticed that the grave of my first character was there. When I went to check it out, well... Let's just say the game wasn't that happy.
Overall, a pretty good entry that gave me enjoyment for a while. I might return to this some day, and I think I'll keep an eye on how the game develops further.