RPG Maker With: Switch Review

Being unfamiliar with the RPG Maker series, I had no idea what to expect when I started RPG Maker WITH on the Nintendo Switch. I knew it had a long history—dating back to the late 1980s—but I didn’t realize just how much there was to learn.

The first major hurdle? There’s no proper tutorial to get you started. Instead of guiding you step-by-step, RPG Maker WITH throws you into its Maker Plaza, a little JRPG-style village where you can interact with various objects to learn the commands that created them. While this sounds neat, it’s hardly a replacement for an actual tutorial. Unless you’ve got a photographic memory, you’re going to struggle to remember everything, and I found myself feeling more confused than confident.

The game allows you to build environments using a variety of tiles, create characters, set up enemies, and even design events and dialogue. But without any prior experience with the series or game development in general, it was an uphill battle. I felt lost, and the tools didn’t seem intuitive to me. I managed to place a few objects and create some basic elements like treasure chests and dialogue, but when it came to more complex stuff—like combat encounters or trigger events—I was completely out of my depth.

One of my biggest gripes was the control scheme. RPG Maker WITH was clearly designed with a PC in mind, and playing it on the Switch, especially without a mouse and keyboard, made things feel clunky. While the visuals looked better on the big screen, it just didn’t feel right using a controller to try and create an intricate RPG world. If you’ve ever used a design tool, you know how much easier it is to click around with a mouse. That said, the Switch’s portability is a nice feature. You could theoretically work on your game while commuting, but I didn’t find that aspect useful considering the struggle with controls.

Another issue is the lack of variety in visual styles. RPG Maker WITH offers a decent number of tiles and character models, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that all your creations will look pretty similar. The fixed viewpoint and art style make everything feel like a rehash of the same JRPG worlds we’ve seen before. Sure, there’s DLC you can buy to mix things up, but it’s still limited compared to what you could achieve on a PC with other engines like Unity or Godot.

After a lot of trial and error, I finally created a waterfall scene with a treasure chest guarded by a pair of slimes. It took me ages to figure out how to get the slimes to move and how to trigger a combat encounter. When I finally got it working, I didn’t feel the satisfaction I was hoping for. The combat itself felt shallow, and the reward for opening the chest—a sparkly animation—didn’t make up for the hours of frustration I had endured.

As someone new to RPG development, I felt that RPG Maker WITH was not as beginner-friendly as it could be. There’s potential here for those willing to invest the time and effort, but without a proper tutorial or guidance, the learning curve is steep. If you’re already familiar with RPG Maker or have experience in game development, you might get more out of this. But for someone like me, it was more of a struggle than a fun creative process.

One cool feature is the ability to share your creations with other RPG Maker WITH players. Once you’ve made your game, others can download and play it, even if they don’t own the game themselves. This sharing feature adds a nice social aspect to the experience and might be the main draw for some players. Additionally, RPG Maker WITH introduces asset sharing, which means you can borrow maps, events, or other assets created by other players. This can save a lot of time and effort, especially for beginners who might not have the patience to figure everything out from scratch.

However, the limitations of the console version are hard to ignore. You can’t import custom art or sound assets, and the censorship of the text engine is quite strict. Simple words like “sex” or even soft expletives like “hell” or “damn” are censored, which can be a bit frustrating when trying to create a mature story.

For me, while I enjoyed the idea of making my own RPG, the execution on the Switch left much to be desired. If you’re patient and willing to learn, there’s a lot of potential here—but it’s definitely not the easiest tool for beginners.