“Perfect Future, Furthest Past”
Developer: Kelikan
Genre: RPG
Platform: RM2K3
Status: Demo
Length: One hour gameplay and dialogue
Best Feature: Graphics
Worst Feature: Sheer inanity
Recommended: No

A lot of things came to mind when I played “Perfect Future, Furthest Past”. Most of those thoughts began with “This”, and ended with “Sucks”, with little in between, save for the occasional “Really” for good measure. Now, that said, PFFP is an awful work, mostly plagiarized from Chrono Trigger in manners beyond obscene. Let’s put on some heavy gloves and take a closer look.

STORY: 1/20
A good solid “1” is appropriate here, as there really is no story to game. It begins with Flare, whoever that is, going to rescue his friend Mari from the evil ECHO Corporation. ECHO imprisoned her for owning a firearm, so I think there’s supposed to be some implication of injustice or something like that- I wasn’t really paying attention. The rest of the game is absent-minded in every sense of the word, as the game goes from some sort of Chrono Trigger time-traveling epic to medieval vagrancy as the characters randomly decide that being in middle ages means that they must break things at a nearby castle… Or something. The demo ends (blissfully), while the characters are trying to defile the castle, when all of the sudden a mysterious woman appears, only to say “Oh, I must be in a time where we haven’t met” and then disappears. Honest. It’s that bad!

CHARACTERS: 1/15
Once again, blatant rip-offs of Chrono Trigger characters. Flare is Chrono, with a queer name and the ability to speak. Mari is Lucca in every sense, as she’s a scientific genius who uses firearms and a hammer, and, according to one part in the game, “knows the lord of underworld”. Truly confusing. But the inanity did not stop there! That’s right, it gets worse. How? The next character you meet, and thankfully the last, is Toad. Not a similar character, but Chrono Trigger’s Toad. Character set, skills, name, everything. Thankfully, there are no more characters, save for some sort of villains, but we never get the chance to even decide if they’re actually villainous.

POLITICS: 1/10
Per usual, politics are lacking from this game. The stereotypical “Evil government/corporation/kingdom with sinister motives” plays the sole role of government in the world.

MUSIC AND SOUND: 3/10
Dozens of tracks we’ve already heard before. Lots of tracks from other RPGs, especially, fancy that, Chrono Trigger! As though it weren’t bad enough, it even has the audacity to throw in a few tracks off the RTP. However, I can’t punish the game to my full capacity, as the music wasn’t a chore to listen to; it’s just nothing at all new. Allow me to take a moment to point out that there are other places on the internet to get MIDIs than from VG Music.

GRAPHICS: 4/8
This is the games “Best Feature” much in the sense that insanity is the best feature of syphilis. The graphics are not atrocious like the rest of the game, and the battle animations actually do show a bit of work, although once again, they were stolen from Chrono Trigger. The game also features a specialized message system, which seems to be for no other purpose than aesthetics, but it does what it’s supposed to. While nothing is particularly eye catching, there’s nothing ugly either, so that’s a start. Too bad it’s also the end.

SYSTEMS: 2/9
Wow! Another custom menu system that’s required to go through before accessing the main menu. How woefully inconvenient! Not only is it annoying, the custom menu also has to be the most useless one I’ve come across yet- All it does is access a page telling you what skills you’ve learnt and what you will learn. I fail to see how that couldn’t simply be implemented through an item in your inventory. The game also features a short lock picking mini-annoyance. I would call it a game, but it’s not. You simply hit “Up” several times for three tumblers and then you win… if you can call it winning.

GAMEPLAY: 3/15
You would be hard pressed to find another RM2K game that cuts your work out for you more that PFFP, because it is not humanly impossible to make a mistake or otherwise lose the game. The dungeons are almost completely linear lines, your enemies do an average of five damage at most while you cleave them down with one hit, and even the story holds your hand all the way through… Namely because it doesn’t stay with one concept long enough for you to lose track of it. Anyways, there’s nothing remotely stimulating about the gamplay, it’s just “there” for lack of a better term. The developer also did nothing with the battle system. While the game is RM2K3, the battles were slightly more interesting than RM2K, but proportionally it was a difference of note.

(SUB-CATEGORY: DIFFICULTY: 1/5
As stated above, the game is so easy that it single-handedly proves the existence of God and that Flare and his friends are his chosen warriors against… whatever it is that’s evil. I honestly can’t recall ever playing a game this simplistically undemanding. On the plus side, were you ever required to beat this game for the safe return of a loved one, you could expect to have your family back in an afternoon.

(SUB-CATEGORY: FUN: 1/5
I do believe it would be safe to say that everyone would have more fun bronzing their genitals than playing PFFP, as at least with the prior you walk away with shiny junk, rather than a forcefully emptied stomach.

OVERALL: 17/97 (18%):
To say that “Perfect Future, Furthest Past” is the worst game I’ve ever played would be wrong; because that would mean that it’s a game. In reality, it’s little more than an insult to our intelligence, as though the clearly devious Kelikan believes that his writing prowess can cover up his blatant Chrono Trigger rip-off. But much like everything else he tried, it fails, and horribly at that.