OFF, by Mortis Ghost, is a foundational indie RPG and a cornerstone of RPG Maker culture. It was originally released in 2008, but was blessed by a fan translation in 2011. It’s not immediately obvious how it popped off in 2013, but well, the stars aligned. OFF was a beloved game for years, everyone loves to beat OFF. Personally, the game represented the good parts of high school for me.

And then everyone was surprised in December of last year when an old specter rose from the grave: OFF was to get an official commercial re-release, published by Fangamer.

I had plans, but I had to throw those away when the remaster came out a few days ago. It’s not every day you see an old friend again, so I was happy to get OFF.

OFF tells the story of the Batter, a terse man as blunt as the blows he delivers. You are the Puppeteer that guides him around on his quest to purify the world of specters. The Batter travels across Zones helmed by Guardians blessed by a Queen, and his holy mission calls on their purifications. The friendly feline guide the Judge and salesman Zacharie are the only other ones aware of your guiding hand as the Puppeteer, urging the Batter along on his quest…

But is this quest a good thing?

OFF’s narrative is a mystery that’s been a well of discussion for years, inviting speculation like Silent Hill 2, one of the game’s inspirations. For one thing, what exactly are the specters? Zone 1’s Guardian Dedan believes that the Batter brought the specters, Japhet of Zone 2 believes he controls the specters, while Enoch just lets the specters hang around as an incidental part of Zone 3. Enoch sees the specters as the living dead, which confuses the Batter – in which case, what does the Batter see the specters as?

And does he see what comes after the specters as a preferable alternative?

A definitive truth of the world of OFF is that it’s a miserable world. Outside of the Guardians and few friendly faces, the world is filled with a species of office workers called Elsen. OFF is a world that recovered from… something, and the Zones are troubled by the forms of recovery. Zone 1 produces the world’s resources, but its people are stressed and miserable – and by god, after some jobs after high school, I understand their agony better now. Zone 2’s Elsen are perfectly safe – so safe that any inconvenience causes things to fall apart. Zone 3 tries to walk a middle line, producing stuff that keeps Elsen happy – and you can probably guess something goes wrong with that.

How did the world get that way? And what is the nature of this world? And is the Batter’s quest for the world a good thing?

There’s already a lot of speculation for players to read into. OFF’s remaster throws a little extra winkle in things, though, as there’s new secret bonus bosses that adds to the world’s mythos.

Ah yes, bonus bosses. We gotta talk about gameplay.

Now in original OFF, combat felt like window dressing. You can beat OFF really easily. Battles were incredibly easy, the last bosses were just walls of HP, and you can probably set the game on Auto with no issue. It’s generally agreed that combat was the worst part of beating OFF, and it feels like it contributed to big RPG Maker games treating RPG combat like nothing until LISA the Painful.

The remaster, however, significantly reworks things. Enemies generally hit harder and Health and Competence points don’t increase as much as they used to, which may mean having to scramble for healing resources in the middle of a fight – something that I don’t remember having to do in the original OFF. beyond the start of the game. Additionally, enemies love to throw around status effects and debuffs that’ll slow you down – more literally in the case of a new debuff that decreases speed. All in all, fights actually feel like threats now. I was happy that the bosses actually felt like climactic slugfests instead of just big damage sponges.

A neat new mechanic is how critical hits work. A character or enemy get a highlighted, flaming indicator, promising that the next hit they do will be critical. If you got Epsilon, get it buffing the attack power of that charged character to make the next hit land even harder. If an enemy is telegraphed to have a critical, you could see it as an opportunity to defend; defending was also buffed to heal some Competence, so there’s nothing wrong with being cautious.

I really appreciated the reworked combat for OFF. Now, the difficulty does plateau by the time you get Epsilon since you have more hands on deck to recover from setbacks, but the last bosses still feel climactic. Well, if you aren’t heavily investing in endgame equipment that is – they’re kinda too good. Overall though, the combat ain’t too special if you regularly play RPGs, but compared to how OFF used to be? It’s a welcome change.

Besides, I gotta talk about the most controversial part of the remaster: the soundtrack. OFF’s original soundtrack, made by Alias Conrad Coldwood, couldn’t be used for the remaster, so the remaster had to use a whole new soundtrack by a variety of composers.

My favorite songs in the remaster are the battle themes. Sure, the normal battle theme isn’t Pepper Steak, but I think the new normal battle theme is good. There’s a variant for each Zone to reflect its vibes, and I actually like the variant for Zone 3 as much as Pepper Steak. I also enjoyed the boss themes, because while they’re undeniably different, they follow the same sensibilities as the original songs. As for the bonus bosses, they have completely new songs and I love them. Though, I can’t help but feel that a part of my appreciation for them was that because there’s no predecessor to compare them to, I can only judge them on their own merits – which was hard to do for the rest of the soundtrack.

On that note, I’m extremely mixed on the environmental songs. Some songs feel fitting, but there are a few that go in a different direction. For example, the song for the first puzzle area of Zone 3. The original version was Some Rudiments of Propriety, an unnerving song with heavy breathing, reflecting the state of the Elsens in the Zone. The remake instead uses PRODUCTIVE PRIVACY, which moreso feels like a reflection of the Zone’s enthusastic work culture.

It’s not a bad song! In fact, after relistening to a bunch of stuff, I don’t think any of the songs in the remaster are bad. But some of the songs target different sensibilities from the atmosphere the original OFF has. Are the sensibilites some of the new songs establish ill-fitting for the setting?

And honestly, I don’t know. As I said before, OFF was something that stuck with me since high school, more than ten years ago. The original OST was one of my favorite soundtracks for years. The original soundtrack and the moods it establishes is just inseparable from OFF for me. Because of this, I desperately want to hear hot takes from somebody that’s only played the remaster and never touched the original.

One of the contributing musicians, Toby Fox , openly acknowledged that the original music is irreplacable and to just consider his contributions as fan music. And you know, if the guy famed for indie game music is saying that, it’s serious. Instead of being a weird asshole about the new soundtrack like a lot of people, just consider it as an extra instead of a replacement.

On art, there isn’t a lot of new stuff. The most notable art is the art you can set around the game screen, which looks neat. Otherwise, there’s just small flourishes like dust clouds trailing behind the Batter when he walks, a defeated sprite for Dedan, etc. Some might be disappointed, but honestly? OFF’s original art style already works. The world is a simple minimalist dream – a child’s idea of an ideal world, you may say. The battle sprites being more complicated pencil drawings makes the specters feel alien, as whatever they truly are, they are an otherworldly threat. It’d be interesting if the art was more in the vein of Mortis Ghost’s other stuff like Dr. Cataclysm, but that’d be a more glaring change than the soundtrack.

Overall? It was nice to get OFF again. It felt like seeing an old friend. Maybe that old friend has some changes you disagree with, but those changes aren’t friendship ruining. If you didn’t get OFF before, maybe you’ll have a different perspective on the remaster and its soundtrack since you may not have the Pepper Steak brainworms. Beating OFF didn’t take too long, but it might be an experience that sticks to you.