What drew us into the original game was the sense that the creators of the
Pen and Paper series actually loved old-school tabletop RPG gaming and wanted to bring some semblance of it into more modern media. The slow pace, storytelling, and humor of a D&D or other paper RPG session makes it something special, quite different than the way we experience most video games today. There's a debt that modern RPG series like
Final Fantasy owe to the older role-playing gameplay, which mostly comes down to character creation, determining chance, and event-based story progression. All that comes through here, and while you're reliving the memory of playing with friends around the table, you're actually playing out a game, which has a nice meta touch to it. There's a major storyline along with many side missions and new characters to unlock, so while
Galaxy of Pen and Paper doesn't feel quite as epic as the average tabletop session, it offers quite a bit of depth.
The early hours of the game are spent just building up your characters and unlocking enough of their abilities to really understand how the game works. The story missions move you through the structure parts of the game, but you can always dial in your own missions or create battles with enemies. These help raise your party's level, and there are also some random encounters as you move through the world. Galaxy of Pen and Paper gives you some choices that are based in character attributes and generally lets you play your party with some sense of alignment. The depth of a full-blown paper game isn't here, and the focus is on battling enemies and exploring the star system, but there are plenty of missions, conversation, and items that serve as inside jokes for veteran role-players.
