Final Tear 3

Introduction:

Final Tear 3 is a very special and unique project. After 7 years of long and hard work, the game is finally finished.

Final Tear 3 offers a very long adventure. The game offers more than 80-90 hours of gameplay without side quests and above 130 with side quests. This means that the game offers more than twice the gameplay of professional RPG’s. Besides of that the game offers a lot of stuff and mini games/events to keep the player interested.

The game offers also very unique custom systems like:

• A book upgrade system
• a pray system
• a charge system
• a summon fuse system
• multiple stacking skills and abilities and mixed spells.
• a poker system
• an arts system
• a bullets customize system
• a custom exp system
• a tarot system
• a sermon(bible)system
• custom damage algorithms (delivering a broad range of possibilities like doing 9999+ damage, multiple spurs of damage and combination attacks)
• custom menu’s
• gun system
• orb magic and learning system
• roulette
• an online banking system
• a planetary traveling system.
And some more smaller ones

Story:

The story starts in space on an unknown planet in crisis. People are against the government and the world economy puffs it’s last breath. A world in the verge of extinction, calls upon the help of a man who claims to be the savior of mankind. An alien race headed towards your home planet living only for destruction. An important man and child that are the only survivors. An great plan that shapes the destiny of the universe.

A new world full of people. Time and space in twined trough different dimensions. A man without any knowledge of himself desperately seeks answers to his identity. Welcome to the world of Final Tear 3, where a man vowed to find the answers to his unknown life.
 

summary:

• One of the largest and complex Rpgmaker games in the world.
• A very complex multi layered story with a lot of plot twists
• You will be wondering the whole game what is going on until the climax at the end of the game that leaves you on the edge of your seat.
• One of the heaviest custom scripted rpgmaker2003 games.
• More than 20 unique custom systems
• 4 world maps and more than 100 places to visit.
• More than 40 different puzzles raging from very easy to incredibly hard.
• Around 6 to 8 times more ground to discover than your average rpgmaker game.

• All kinds of different environments like:
o forests
o swamp
o towers
o futuristic cities
o space ports
o ice caps
o ice mountains
o ice castles
o lava caves
o mines
o sky palaces
o pyramids
o grass caves
o mountains
o plains, beaches
o cliffs
o arena’s
o castle’s
o deserts
o sewers
o highways
o towns
o future’s
o pasts
o alien ships
o space ports
o different dimensions
o star systems etc etc.

• A lot of different vehicles to ride/fly:
o trains
o cars
o boats
o ships
o planes
o spaceships

• A very complex and extensive custom battle system, there are thousands of strategies and combination possible.

• A lot of different custom events like:
o Uncoupling trains
o A sneaking in event. Get in without being seen
o A very large sewer maze that automatically adjust itself every play trough
o Getting on the other side in a lava cave before getting overheated
o Climbing a very large ice mountain with keeping an eye on your body temperature and take care u not freeze to dead.
o Find al finish them of all
o Different kinds of quests to find items or stuff
o Destroy aliens in pairs (like FF8)
o An changing forest maze with changing statue’s
o Driving a car through a very big city with a shitload of other traffic.
o A very large desert where you need the stars not to get lost and find the way out
o Switching of different teams at different temples at the same time. Team work at its max.
o Monster arena
o Time traveling
o Planetary travel system and controlling a space ship.

• Different combination skills and abilities between characters.
• 6 Playable main characters that can be swapped later in the game.
• More than 50 important NPC that will meet trough the story.
• All characters can be trained in a several ways.
• Combination abilities and skills making every team possibility a complete new experience.
• High replay value due the different possibities to play the game and train your characters.
• Unique music selection for the most part of the game.
• Custom damage ranging from 1 digit damage to above 6 digit damage.
• 300+ Different monsters and enemies.
• More than 150 skills, spells and abilities.
• 2 Different endings

• A lot of side quests:
o Secret bosses
o Secret weapons
o Secret dungeons
o Monster arena
o Roulette
o Almost endless training
o Multiple endings
o Secret skills
o Secret upgrade points
o Mazes
o Secret summons

• Different extra points to upgrade and increase strength different kind of aspects in the game.

The game’s flaws:

I’m not going to lie, the game does have its flaws. Because the game is so huge and has so many different systems and events, the game will be a bit less on some other aspects. This will of course be fixed and improved as time passes. It is after all for the most part an 1 man’s project.

The game starts slow because of the nature of the story. Though this will be improved along the way. The game can be sometimes a bit buggy when using different custom systems at the same time, but that does not happen a lot especially later in the game. Of course I will try to do my best to improve that as well.

Soon a new version (3.04) will be released with a lot of improvements. The biggest issues will be solved and a lot of smaller ones as well. Even though this is great news, I’m still open for new suggestions. You can post these suggestions in this topic and I will look if I can arrange something.

The changes that are already implemented are mentioned below:
Improvements:

Notice!
Before you read this list, there is a very random bug that sometimes decreases the orb damage on the same enemy in certain turns. If this happens please document this.

What include the following in your report:

The monster(s) you used the spell on.
The character you used the spell with.
The spell used.
The normal damage done and the bugged damage done.
How many times did it happen in that fight.

You can either post it on the forums http://finaltear3.freeforums.org
Or send an e-mail to finaltear3@live.nl


Characters can finally run now.
A change that a lot of people wanted, there will be a button to switch between walking and running, bear in mind that encounters will come faster if u run and that each save point will revert to walking speed. Keep in mind that new bugs may appear due this change. If so, they will be removed in a later version. Also there are some dungeons that running is disabled because they won't work otherwise. Running can be done by pressing the 4 button.

Vulgarity toned down.
A change that a lot of people wanted, there was a lot of swearing in the game this is toned a lot, there can still be some left. If that is the case please report it so that I can remove that as well.

Dialogue further improved
There are still some errors in the dialogue, these are further improved.

Text speed maximized
A change a lot of people wanted too, I think that all know what this change does ;)

Orb and summon tutorial can be redone in the whole game.
Because you will get a lot of tutorials in the beginning it might be hard to remember all the things told in there. Therefore the player gets an tutorial item. If the player uses that item he can redo the orb and summon tutorial.

Teleporter added when traversing back after dies to skip the Petunia plains
People didn’t like the long back track over the large plains, though you only needed to traverse around 25% of the way back due the jump of the cliff, it still is a long way. So now you can be teleported back :)

Added a shop before the pyramid
Because lots a people screw up big time when it comes to items.

Enemies flash better now when they attack and the attack will be longer visible
This change comes with the newest Dynpatch.

Removed auto battle
Because auto battle uses the wrong battle system it's removed now.

Added a summon upgrade tutorial at Sanaria forest.

Increased the club meter from 50 to 100 in roulette and removed the 0 as a betting possibility.
This makes the roulette more worthwhile to play. The casino has no advantage anymore and the club meter has been doubled.

Roulette voices can be turned off
This change takes care that if you turn of the voice acting, the roulette voices will stop also.

Increased the speed of the roulette wheel.
Rounds can almost be played twice as fast because the spinning of the wheel will be doubled.

Balance:

Reduced HP most monsters and most bosses in the game.
This is a change that makes fights faster. This change includes almost all monsters except the ones in the first dungeon, the ones in the monster arena, the secret ones and the ones in the last dungeon.
Almost all bosses, except the first one, the ones in the 4rth dimension and some others I cannot tell because of spoilers.

Buffed magic influence from Lance to the summons.
This is a big buff to the damage that the summon does. In conjunction with the WP buffs summons become a lot better in the game. They might be even overpowered now, if that is the case this change will be reverted in the next version

Increased orb magic resistance on every monster in the game.
Beause orb magic is overshadowing the other attacks in the game it has been nerfed a bit. This change will take care that monsters have a slightly better defense against magic. The stronger the monster the better the magic defense increase will be. In average orb magic will do 10 to 11% less damage.

Severely buffed attack
Normal attacking has been buffed quite a lot, characters will do 25% more damage with attacking in average. Because the orb magic is nerfed, attack becomes a valid option again.

Nerfed the sentinels and the main boss on a certain boss in exendia.
This boss is insanely hard that some players would rip their own hairs out. Even though its a small nerf, it will make the fight a bit more doable.

Reduced the HP of the Spinx with 10,000 HP. And attack of sword of Spinx reduced slightly
The sphinx fight took insanely long, also the attack of the cut of legend was a bit too devastating.

Buffed monsters in the pyramid in attack and magic.
Pyramid monsters are slightly underpowered with this buff they get a bit better.

Lance can now equip the magic rings
This change takes care that the magic power can be increased on Lance. In a previous version this was removed.


Neutral changes.
Removed the meter game before the final boss
Some people complained about this mini game and I decided to fix it.

Made the Dimirtri puzzle easier
The Dimitri puzzle is one of the hardest in the game it’s made a bit clearer.

Added a blocking of running in the following sections.

• Breaking in event
• Demonic sewers
• Lave cove of pirates
• Ice mountain
• World map after third test
• Several parts of the pyramid
• Exendian desert

Added some extra signs on the world map
Removed the walk speed reset on all save points.

Bugs:

• Removed the bug that the treasure chest in the secret shack can be reopened.
• Removed the bug that the captain in sunken tooth blocks the way when he’s gone.
• Removed the bug in roulette that you can get infinitive coins on the streets.
• Removed a bug that dark flare is learned sooner
• Removed a bug that frag does not look to the ice level

Okay, so I'm just gonna note down the things I noticed during my 5 hours.

- The characters were not too bad, all things considered. The plot moves them along, I guess. I got a pretty good idea of Jessie's character, not so much of Lances and some from Dies. Those three are the basic main characters at the moment. Well, Dies is more a main NPC, but at least he has character. The rest of the cast are rather boring. Then again, I didn't really get to meet many more cast members.


This is intentional; you will not know Lance better for a very long time. This has to do with the plot.

- The story itself (from what I've seen so far) seems your typical 'outsider/insider world-saver' plot, but the way it's presented leaves a lot to be desired. There are a few scenes I thought worked okay - the main one being the 'flash' in the church where the dead bodies suddenly appeared. That interested me. I wanted to know more. I'm thinking there may be a touch of time travel here mixed in with the planetary travelling. The story didn't really drive me much. It was pretty straightforward, though I did get lost at one point, wondering where to go from the church. I soon found out, so that was okay. I also liked the small scene with the dwarf and the small flashback to that when talking to Dies.

It’s good to hear that you do like some of the parts of the story. That the story seems simple in the beginning is intentional. If you see the whole picture at the end you understand why this is. Sorry cannot tell anymore because of spoilers. I don't know how I can improve this in the beginning because a small chance might ruin the story later on...but I will look for something to improve it

- I think the way he uses RM to accomplish things is very unwieldy. The CMSs are mostly maps, the interaction with pushing a gravestone is really strangely done (Hold enter, then press, press, press the direction) and the battle monster targeting/skill usage/damage algorithm/summons skill are overly complicated when they don't need to be. Messing with the targeting is silly when there's no difference between it and the default. Same goes with the damage numbers and skill usage. Summons skills are broken or at least very had to get to work. I never got to use a summon at all.

The grave is fixed in 3.03 you only have to walk now to move it.

You’re absolutely right about the targeting system. The problem however is, that I cannot use the DBS for that even if I wanted to. All the damage is done variables and there is no way to check which monster is targetted with spells that do damage from variables. This is a limitation of rpgmaker. It only works if you use spells against every monster, but you cannot target a single monster without this own made targeting system.

In the beginning I thought even that making the orb system would be impossible. I happily managed to solve it this way (was very hard to make for sure). It’s not perfect but you will get used to the system eventually. All people who came far did get used to it and liked it in the end, no kidding!

I would have love to see it otherwise as well. But rpgmaker has it's limits. And I wouldn't have done this if there was no other way.

I don’t understand why you think the summon system is broken. But I will look for a way for a better tutorial to make it easier understandable.

- That said, the added content was pretty nice. I like the ideas of having these kind of boosts to the battles and thought they were cool - until I actually had to use them. I liked the idea of upgrading orb spells by using the skills to level. I wish the end of battle results were displayed in a way that was faster/easier on the eyes. I liked the idea of quoting the holy book to cast buffing skills, though I thought it could have been implemented better with the default skill commands. I liked levelling up your Summon. I liked the summon Aura skill. I liked books and increasing your base statistics by upgrading them. I liked the spells, I liked the skills, I liked a lot of the systems added. I didn't like the ways they were implemented or explained.

The orb level up menu is sped up in v3.03, I don’t use the default skill system the whole system is based on variables (with the exception of Jessie support magic and Selene's en Vincents white magic) Like said because of limitations of rpgmaker some of the system needed to be this way.

I would like to hear from you how some of those other systems can be better so that I can improve those.

- Tutorials could be broken up to when they become relevant. Given in a block at the beginning is really not a good way to teach the player. Also, having them skipable with perhaps some sort of note book item to peruse when you get confused would be a great idea. Not everyone has awesome memory skills and remember all that they're told.


Good idea, I will certainly do this in 3.04

- Music is well done, except in a few instances where the looping is off a lot or it cuts out strangely in the loop.

- There was nothing to engage you whilst exploring. Sure there were a few treasure chests scattered here and there, but that was it. No cliffs to climb, no real interaction or anything like that. Just walk through a map and reach the end, grabbing a chest here or there. It would have been nice to be able to interact with the environments a bit more. A lot of technical stuff went into the battle system, but nothing into the rest of the gameplay. It feels off-balance. Even the log bridge could have been turned into a small jumping game with a few paths. It's very linear, really. The exploration wasn't fun, thanks in part to both large maps and slow walking speed.

Sorry, the game is meant to be linear of the biggest part. There are a lot of events and mini games some later in the game so I think the interaction is not bad. Though I will add something in the plains in 3.04 to make things more interesting. The slow walk speed will be addresses in 3.04 as well ;)

- No chance to escape from monsters, which is annoying as you'll be fighting a lot, thanks to the slow walk speed and high encounter rates.

You can escape, the command is below items.

- One dungeon took me 1 1/2 hours to get through. It was one map long. We have to travel all the way back through it thanks to the story. This dungeon was set right after another and the trip to and back through has no place to rest or recover.

In version 3.04 there will be a teleporter that teleports u to the foot of the plains after dies.

That you cannot recover is not true, there are 3 save points in the plains on all which you can recover. Besides of that there is a merchant on the foot of the plains. Maybe you played an older version in which the merchant was not there.

- The mapping is odd. At points it's not that bad, but at others it's pretty terrible. Most maps are overlarge. I remember this one spot in the forest where you're going over a log bridge and there are tree tops sticking out of the water. No trunks or anything, just the tops. It looked pretty bad. The maps are large, bare and lack details and things to make them look alive. I will admit I thought the plains weren't too badly mapped but they took far too long to get through. There are also a LOT of mapping errors.

If you can specifically address those mapping errors I will fix them in 3.04

- I liked the very start of the introduction where the characters in the town are all talking to each other about things. It soon deteriorated.

- Battles are strange. They're both balanced but boring. It's so odd. The monster health suffers an absurd jump from boss to boss. The first boss had about 10x the health of the monsters in the same area, while your character does about .075% damage with their strongest attack - meaning a lot of turns. A lot, a lot of turns. Seriously, I was doing 15 damage tops to a monster that had 200 HP. This was the first boss, in a forest filled with monsters with around 5-15 HP.

You can easily kill bosses faster with using aura’s, sermons, summons pray etc. Also in version 3.03 HP is reduced for all the monsters in the game.

- There's a lot of grammatical and spelling errors. A hell of a lot. They're littered through the dialogue. There's also a lot of unnecessary swearing (and you guys know how much I swear!) and just odd terminology. Also a few sentences that run off the message box.

Swearing will be toned down in 3.04, dialogue is improved in 3.03 and a bit more in 3.04

- I like the idea of using books to upgrade your stats. I really like it. But the menu used to do so needs reworking. It's just awkward to have to teleport to another map and choosing the character doesn't look good. Even a simple choice command would be fine, instead of the pseudo targeting thing that is currently used.

This is nearly impossible to do with a choice menu because later in the game you can have different members in your team. It would be programmable wise very insufficient to make a choice menu for every possible team combination. So I’m not going to change this sorry.

- Most of the custom menus are pretty ugly and difficult to use. Using proper CMS' would be a great idea. As is, it's pretty annoying to use them. The information is pretty hard to find straight up and they look a mess with only one character. I can't imagine when we get others.


I would really like to hear what I can do to improve that.

- The voices at the start and end of battles are so bad. I don't mind the small noises so much, like 'Ha!' and 'Ya!' but things like: "Oh my God! What the FUCK is that?!" is just...


Those are improved in 3.03, you can turn them of with the 5 button. Though it is in the manual of the game it is never mentioned in the game itself. So I will add that notification in 3.04.

- The best thing about battles is that you can use the Guard command to restore a small bit of health and skill points. By small I mean, 2 SP for Lance, 1 SP for Jessie. It takes a looong time to restore all SP. Even if one or two more points were added it'd be worth using more often.

The guard command is a percentage of your max MP/HP it will increase as you become stronger. Increasing it will make it too good. It is already on the brink of being a bit too good.

 

- Graphics are a hodge-podge of different styles, rips and customs. I've been told that at one point Flare's original graphics from Romancing Walker were used as summons. Personally I frown on this a lot. Rips, not so much, though they really didn't mix well with the other sets used - Mack, Chrono Cross, Mana series, Breath of Fire, Theodore are all used willy-nilly. I mean, I don't mind a bit of cross over style-wise, but the light hearted Mack and Mana chips should never be used with Theodore. That said, the world map chipset is pretty damn sweet. Wonder where it came from? XP

I got most of my resources from charas.net. Probably also Flare's one but I can change that if I know which summon it is.

So far there's a lot of faults in the game. It's not the worst game I've ever played, but it is far from the best. It really needs a lot of work. Even if it is only the 'first five hours of an epic game!', those first five are the most important ones of them all. These are the hours that will either grab the player and make them continue or push them into ALT+F4. It has promise, but...

Thank you, I will do my best to improve it ^^