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Millennium 5: The Battle of the Millennium
PC (Steam)
Wrapping Up
3/5 stars
“Millennium 5: The Battle of the Millennium” is the fifth and final part of Aldorlea’s episodic “RPG Maker” creation. There is actually very little worth mentioning that is different from the first 4 episodes, so instead of rehashing the aspects that have remained the same, I will direct anyone who is interested in this series of games to read my reviews of “Millennium: A New Hope,” “Millennium 2: Take Me Higher,” “Millennium3 : Cry Wolf,” and “Millennium 4: Beyond Sunset” before proceeding.
Presentation
“Millennium 5” actually has a bit more effort and style behind its cutscenes. While there are still an unfortunate number of black screens with a string of pop-up dialog boxes in front of them, there are also several game-engine created backgrounds and a couple of hand-drawn still image backgrounds during major cutscenes. The hand-drawn backgrounds are very well done and evoke the scenes they represent perfectly, which left me wondering why they weren’t used more often throughout the 5 episodes of the ‘Millennium’ series.
Story
After returning with her team of not-quite martial artists and registering for the Mystrock Martial Law tournament at the last possible second, spunky heroine Marine and her crew of 12 have a single week to make use of The Bear’s martial arts expertise to turn themselves into competent fighters capable of defeating the Mystrock government’s own team of 13 martial artists. After a bit of cajoling and her trademark persistence, Marine convinces The Bear to take the crew to a special place where he once went to train when he was young and inexperienced.
On their way to The Bear’s secret training grounds, disaster strikes as The Bear is stricken by an insect bite, to which he proves allergic, and ends up in a coma for the vast majority of the game. This portion of the game also involves Marine and co., with the help of a new temporary character, the buxom Blondie, searching for the ingredients needed to brew an antidote for The Bear’s illness. Of course, the whole team needs to divide into several smaller parties to search for ingredients simultaneously, and thus many members are able to work out some of their inter-personal issues while working together to help The Bear.
The final showdown with Mystrock was not what I was expecting, as instead of a small number of one-on-one or group fights, it’s actually a string of 169 separate battles spread out over a number of rounds (with the opportunity to save between rounds, thankfully). There are two major sticking points with the finale: 1. It is the first time across the span of 5 episodes that the vast majority of the villains have appeared and received any form of personality or development, and 2. In order to not receive a simple BAD END GAME OVER, the player must purposefully lose the showdown by a margin of 1-4 matches. How in the world is anyone supposed to figure that out without consulting a guide?
Ultimately, “Millennium 5” has just as many annoying points of no return and as much linear railroading as “Millennium 4,” with the added fun of not really having a say in which party members work together most of the time. It is the longest episode by far, at around 25 hours, which is partially due to the 5 extra hours of optional (read: mandatory) grinding required to get characters up to level 99. It doesn’t even have a particularly interesting or satisfying ending. Sure, the writing in “Millennium 5” has a few moments of greatness, but is still overwhelmingly inconsistent.
What is really interesting about “Millennium 5” (and actually “Millennium 3” and “Millennium 4,” but I didn’t find out about it until after the fact) is that Aldorlea provides a strategy guide… for a price. I ended up with this guide more or less by accident because the “Millennium 5 Strategist Edition” was cheaper on Steam than the version without the guide. But in looking over this guide, it becomes clear and obvious that Aldorlea intentionally started doing annoying things with points of no return, secrets with no visual indication of their presence, and hiding the True Ending behind counter-intuitive behavior for the EXPRESS PURPOSE OF SELLING GUIDES. I do not approve of this type of game design. Sure, the old NES ‘Dragon Quest’ games came with books and maps and equipment lists (which were way more thorough than Aldorlea’s ‘Millennium’ guides), but those were sorely limited by the NES hardware’s capabilities. Modern games that make themselves intentionally obtuse have no such excuses.
Gameplay
“Millennium 5” provides the player with the opportunity to import a save from “Millennium 4.” Again, gameplay balance seems to expect the player to come into the episode with a good amount of imported supplies in order to avoid some tedious gameplay early on. Fist Levels from “Millennium 4” are back, and fortunately existing hits made by characters (and the Fist Levels gained from those hits) are retained by importing.
Like “Millennium 4,” “Millennium 5” loves to randomly jack around with party composition, but doesn’t bother to de-equip characters that temporarily leave. This isn’t as big a deal as it was in “Millennium 4,” as the party is provided plenty of Kimonos to go around. The main issue is that rare, powerful accessories can easily disappear for a couple hours while the player is in control of another party. Splinter parties that don’t contain Marine must also deal with the fact that they have no access to the large amount of expendable healing items the player has been hoarding since “Millennium 1.”
Perhaps the biggest annoyance in “Millennium 5” is the fact that the final battle doesn’t really allow the player to bring any of their previous efforts into it, aside from character and Fist level grinding. Through the entirety of “Millennium 4” and “Millennium 5,” characters discuss which gear they can and cannot use for the final showdown… but it all turns into lies, as characters are forcefully stripped of all gear except Bare Hands and Kimonos for the finale. Gone are all the rare and amazing hats, off-hand items, and accessories that made the fairly generic turn-based combat of the series into something more interesting. Even worse, all player decisions on how to promote characters through specializations are wiped away, with every character becoming a Champion for the final battle.
The final battle itself doesn’t even follow the same rules as general combat and normal boss battles in “Millennium 5.” It introduces a new Trick mechanic for a number of characters that relies almost entirely on tedious trial and error gameplay to see whose tricks work on which enemies (or you can just buy the “Millennium 5 Strategy Guide!”).
Overall
‘Millennium’ is an example of why I don’t really care for episodic games. While the series got off to a great start, the whole thing peaked in Episode 2 before turning into a rushed and disjointed mess. “Millennium 5” is an improvement over “Millennium 4’s” low point, but it still isn’t enough to let the series live up to its potential.
Presentation: 4/5
Story: 3.5/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
Series Summary:
Across 5 episodes and over 100 hours, ‘Millennium’ disappoints with its story pacing (in spite of a great, original premise), lack of character development (especially for the villains), and bland, long-winded cutscenes that don’t really contribute to the narrative or anyone’s character development besides Marine. The constant de-leveling and money-stripping between episodes is obnoxious, as is the inconsistency of character abilities between the episodes. The series’ trademarks of sidequests, hidden rooms, and secret bosses would be a lot of fun if they weren’t so obtusely handled, with side-quests requiring perfect timing to complete them before they are blocked behind a point of no return, and hidden rooms that don’t even have the slightest visual indication that something is odd.
‘Millennium’ isn’t ‘bad’ (it is built on the same core gameplay as ‘Dragon Quest,’ after all), but it just doesn’t have the pizazz it needs to become a role-playing classic. I can’t foresee a reason why I would ever want to re-play ‘Millennium,’ where I would love to replay my favorite RPGs if time (and backlog) permitted.
I’ll give Aldorlea credit for undertaking such an ambitious project with such a small team (mainly Indinera Falls), but sometimes it’s better to really nail a few smaller-scale projects before undertaking a huge one. And I feel that drive to undertake a huge project by dividing it into chunks is the main mistake Aldorlea made with ‘Millennium’ as a series. If the 5 episodes were stitched together into a single, longer game with none of the annoying between-episode ‘adjustments,’ and a more unified world, I feel like the entire experience could have been better.
Presentation: 3.5/5
Story: 3/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
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