Classic: The Way

By: Paul Eres

On: June 5th, 2009

The Way by Lun is an episodic jRPG-style game in six parts, created in RPGMaker. The first episode was released in 2002, and the entire series took three and a half years to develop. Although very popular within that community, it’s lesser-known elsewhere.

The game involves a long search for a missing person, having many adventures on the way. It uses a few twists on the standard RPG formula, with a custom battle system and equipping auras (acquired from defeating bosses) instead of weapons and armor, and it has an interesting ability upgrade system. Interestingly, apparently the player can elect not to play the battles at all, and just go through the game for the story and exploration.

As Malefact goes into in his Let’s Play, if you don’t like the first episode very much, don’t be put off, since it’s widely considered the worst of the six: it gets better as it goes on. Unfortunately the game always uses mostly unoriginal graphics and music, which can distract from the game — this is the bane of most RPGMaker games. But if you can ignore that, this is one of the best games made in that engine.