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"The last? What do you mean? There'll be others after me... right?"


War has raged between the nations of Arilenn for time immemorial - the Greenlands against the Sea of Flames, the North against the Wasteland. You are Arianna Salucci, the leader of the Isles of Water, queen of the largest fleet in the world and hirable to whomever makes the highest bid. Though life in Arilenn may be far from easy, it is a profitable life if you know how to play the game right.

But the rules are being redefined as agents of chaos and order enter the stage and manipulate the game you thought you knew so well. Kings are being replaced by dictators, and magic by machines. Caught in the middle of a war that may be the largest that history has ever witnessed, you must gather your allies and weather the storm or disappear from the world forever.

Your actions define your fate. Your decisions decide whether your legacy will be washed away with the tide or endure as...






THE LAST PIRATE QUEEN is a traditionally styled RPG with a focus on characters and story while retaining a sense of immersive and interesting gameplay. With beautiful maps based on Celianna's tileset, custom artwork, and a strong sense of unifying design, this game hopes to please both visually and compositionally.



Latest Blog

Moving away from the JRPG in Gameplay



Hello and welcome to The Last Pirate Queen's very first blog entry. Today I bring you a short discussion on the state of gameplay - especially combat - in The Last Pirate Queen.

I'll be the first to admit that the combat in TLPQ is somewhat uninspired - it moves very little from default class skills and the skills that aren't part of the default set are usually just rehashes of existing ones with a different skin. Spells do the same damage regardless of their element, and few enemies have elemental strengths and weaknesses. Its only saving grace is the little-used combo system that isn't really introduced in game, and thus is only stumbled upon with luck.

Gameplay is important, though. Even if battles aren't a prime focus, if they're used even a little bit its best to make it interesting. There's many, many ways to do this, from crafting your own skills and effects to utilizing scripts to achieve effects outside of the bounds of the engine.

That's why in the upcoming re-release of Chapter 1 along with the release of Chapter 2 I've changed the flow and feel of combat. I'll break this list down further down the post, but just for the sake of being short, I've...

  • Fleshed out skills and made them unique and build off of each other
  • Replaced skill learning by level with a skill tree
  • Added randomly built troops while retaining on-map enemies
  • Added the ability to autobattle
  • Got rid of the somewhat buggy PCTB system


Explanations:


Skills in general suffered from Final Fantasy syndrome, having the same feel and formula that is used by every FF knockoff - Fire does X fire damage, Ice does X ice damage, etc. etc. To that end I gave skills unique flair to differentiate and give them different use in different situations. For example, Quick Shot has a high bonus to attack rate so most of the time the character casting it will attack first, allowing you to kill low-life enemies or finish them off quickly. Fire has a high element of randomness for it with a large damage range and a higher chance to critical strike. Certain healing spells will heal more as the number of states on a target increase. This also ties into the new skill tree system, allowing you to choose which skills may complement your play style the best.

The skill tree is probably one of the bigger undertakings I've taken on during this project, as it isn't using any of the commonly-used scripts for skill learning and has a custom look to fit with the graphical style of the game. You can see a video of it in action here:



I really wanted to have a way to randomly choose troops when you encountered an enemy, so it wasn't so "oh, 2 bats... oh, another 2 bats... oh, look, 2 bats and a hornet, how interesting!" It goes along with my desire for a bit more strategy to be used in battle, even with the little filler battles you'll be fighting throughout the dungeon. But, for those people who don't like that or having to deal with battles too much in general, there's a new feature for you with...

The ability to autobattle is a feature that I adored in Earthbound and other games. Obviously the AI has improved much since the SNES days, allowing more than just auto attack and heal when health goes critical, but I wanted to have the option there. Since I have made this a story-based game I do want the ability for people who are playing mostly for the story to have a way to not have to worry about battles too much. Also, sometimes you just don't feel like killing something for the tenth time or you don't want to mess with a boss that you've died to multiple times.



The PCTB system, as much as I loved the flow of it and the strategic part of it, had a few bugs - that may or may not have been my fault - that would cause crashes when the battle would end with the actors being uncontrollable in some way (such as confuse, stun, etc.) and sometimes for no reason at all. It was non-reproducible and frustrating when I would get reports and could do nothing to help.

I hope that you've found this in some way interesting, and I hope to post more updates in the next few weeks to let people know how it's going! If you have any questions/comments feel free to leave a comment or send me a message - I don't bite!
  • Production
  • 1 of 5 episodes complete
  • flarify
  • RPG Maker VX Ace
  • RPG
  • 10/18/2013 11:52 PM
  • 01/12/2019 01:08 AM
  • 06/30/2014
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Pages: 1
If you've been hungering for a solid RPG, TLPQ comes with my recommendation. It has well written dialogue, compelling characters, interesting dungeon design and kept my interest until the end of the demo.
In the desert area where the professor wants help finding artifacts...He always says heres a bonus...but unless I missed it, you never see what the bonus is. Also if you go to the far upper left you can walk off into the brown water area.
author=Roy
In the desert area where the professor wants help finding artifacts...He always says heres a bonus...but unless I missed it, you never see what the bonus is. Also if you go to the far upper left you can walk off into the brown water area.


The bonus is extra gold (you get 250 for 4+ artifacts, and 150 for 3). I didn't know about that passability issue, though - I'll go take care of it. Thanks for the report, and hope you're enjoying the game, despite those bugs!

author=Ocedic
If you've been hungering for a solid RPG, TLPQ comes with my recommendation. It has well written dialogue, compelling characters, interesting dungeon design and kept my interest until the end of the demo.


Thanks for the kind review, Ocedic!
The Castle Inventer (?)...when given the chance to continue in English or some other language...you have to pick Italian in order to continue in English.
I have gone tto the left through the gate and up to the roof and both ways lead to the dungeon, but I dont see from that point what to do other than try to find a key. I have looked everywhere I can think of although its possible I missed something....so I am stuck for the moment.
The Save Point v2 is a delicate and still unbalanced object. They're still working out the bugs with it.

You'll want to check the scattered papers next to the desk in his bedroom. I'll see if I can find a way to make that a bit more obvious.
Linkis
Don't hate me cause I'm Cute :)
1025
OK, here's my problem.....

I downloaded the game and started playing.
Was not able to make myself shut it down till 3am this morning.

Either cancel the game...
OR FINISH IT REALLY REALLY FAST SO I DON'T HAVE TO WAIT MONTHS BETWEEN EPISODES :)

This is a game you can not simply stop playing.
You want to keep going to see what happens next.
Please hurry with the next episode, but also make it as good as this one :)
Thank you
I'm so glad you liked it a lot Linkis! Your comment made me super super happy. Chapter 2 has unfortunately been delayed somewhat due to limited time and energy, but I'm hoping to get a lot of progress done in the next few weeks! I won't say it'll get released this year, but I'm holding out to get a solid bug-free release of the updated Chapter 1 (final version) and Chapter 2 together in one package by the end of January. So you'll have to wait a bit, but hopefully not toooo long.
First off, this game should be getting much more attention than it is. I only came across it because I was browsing through the full game list. You certainly have a knack for story telling.

I just wanted to point out two bugs. First, all journal entries are viewable from the beginning of the game. Second, you can walk through the scarecrow in The Witch's garden.

EDIT: I just wanted to add that I subscribed after playing the demo for about ten minutes.
my game keeps crashing, i am in the desert -started to read the sign - game crashed- started again- this time when I went to kill a scorpion - it did it again - help please
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
I hope this is still a WIP, as it would be a shame to see it uncompleted.
shayoko
We do not condone harassing other members by PM.
515
Ver 1.2
Random thoughts includes spoilers
The start was interesting

choices! :D

i may hate this story if it ends with the P-queens crew killing her

after leaving the castle/prison Arianna keeps referring to "We" like someones with her. but you only battle with her.
Cyril does not fight sadly unless the game somehow glitched


You can skip going to green harbor and go west to Sernas pass. thus missing potential important content

the fish mini game was amusing :3 would be better if there was a special fish you could catch to be rewarded with a special item

i bet the queen forgot that she let the leader of the pirates go XD

if you go back to the queen. shouldn't you be able to question her about the bag?

the dialog between you and the spirits at sernas does not change. where is this orb? why cant we cross the river? is this the end of the demo?


General
This was interesting. its a shame we have not got a update in so long.
also the skill tree is not apparent in this and the battles do not have those sexy sprites but instead normal ones. and the battle is not side to side but horizontal with you on the bottom looking up. heck you don't even have access to some of those locations.(unless im failing to find something to continue)
so the pictures are currently false advertisement.

Overall
mixed feelings about its worth mostly because of it not being completed. and if it ever will.
Short RPG. 2 towns and about 5 dungeons. Game itself has very little to do with piracy or pirate themed gameplay, aside from the main character being a pirate. Dungeon maps are large and sprawling, but there's not much to do in them aside from getting treasure chests. But there are a few minigames, notably the fishing minigame. Though I have no idea what to do with the fish. This game is quite easy to get thru, I only died once to the boss at the end because I didnt heal as much, and I got bamboozled when Revive items didnt work in this game, so yeah. There appears to be 2 endings. Pretty straightforward RPG.

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