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Null regrets playing this, but it has its problems.

UPDATE 1 pt. 1: Upon replaying certain areas there is more to say, both some retractions and also further frustrations with the game. See the very bottom of the review, the hidden writing, for more info.

Two people walk onto some rainy outdoor area at night. They exchange some dialogue. We don't know who they are, where they are, or why they're here (unless you read about the game's premise before playing it that is). All you know is, you're looking for something. You, the fellow in the business suit see some white light on a ledge, standing on it bringing a brief vision of a beautiful sunrise you remember. The other fellow, named literally "Glasses," is the nerdy science person-looking type. You're not sure what his function is but he mentions something about "shadow people" and if that's what he saw. Uh oh. Here we go with the foreshadowing, pun unintended. But for the time being, nope, no shadow people, continue.

Then, a coyote leaps out of a corner and nearly bites the labcoat/scientist guy, but he manages to trap it in time with a pentagram-looking energy force of some sort. So, so far we know there is some fantastical element going on here. What exactly is this all about anyway? See, the guy in the suit and tie has some traumatic memory involving the coyote. I won't say what it is but that it's not probably not what you're thinking. The guy in the science coat, not only is he your longtime friend, but he also specializes in going into people's minds and assisting them in eradicating troubling and traumatic memories from them. Some are more stubborn than others as we'll later find out. So in a way it's kind of like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind but with more monsters and shadow people. There are also apparently different "tiers" of memories to erase. He lies on a lower tier since his memories aren't considered as significant as some others' (first world problem tier?). Anyway, to erase this coyote memory, you have to fight it, and in doing so it will manifest as something else entirely, a more monstrous form, due to something or another about how the more repressed the memory is the more grotesque it'll look and more aggressive it'll push back. In this case we have what looks like Cerberus.

And as you'll quickly find out this isn't a battle where you just mash the attack button until you win. These guys actually put up a fight here. The combat is the star of the show in this game and it's actually somewhat interesting and requires some strategy on your part. There are no items or equipment upgrades in the game. After each boss battle you do gain addition abilities which do come in handy for the next boss fight to come. I don't know if you get these by default or if you actually can level up in the game (there are other monsters in the game after this you'll be able to fight, most of which I tried to skip) but from I've observed there doesn't seem to be, so I think everyone playing this will remain at pretty much the same level with the same stats all the way through. In some ways I consider this game to be like the game Quod, in that these are both short games revolving around three difficult tasks, but whereas in Quod they were puzzles, here they are boss battles. Yeah, only three (or... more if you count the last encounter, I have some words to say about that), but again, a very short game. You only have three particular memories you want to be rid of so it makes sense.


Memories of happier, less Cerberus-maiming times.

So, in combat, consisting of turn-based battles, you'll need to make good use of your various abilities and attacks. Mr. Suit (I don't recall his name, actually I think it might've been just 'Suit') can give a little willpower boost to someone for free from the start or analyze an enemy to see its life bar throughout the fight (definitely a handy thing to have to see how much progress you're making on whittling away an enemy's health). In addition, you have an ability that can grant someone an extra turn, attacks that bring down certain stats on an enemy for a number of turns or make them vulnerable to certain attacks, oh and your main weapon - a briefcase - includes an attack that hits all enemies on screen! Yeah, a briefcase! Don't fuck with this guy, he's a master in the art of suit-fu with his briefcase of pure steel.

Glasses' specialty is summoning "Constructs," which remind me of the magical entities you could summon in the game Middens during a battle, and like in Middens each of these things have their own characteristics though in this game they are far more specialized, and you can only pick two at a time (which uses up four of your energy, which so happens to be the maximum energy you have, so you summon one, you have to wait before you can summon another). Also like Middens if these things "die" you can re-summon them and they'll return anew with full health. Also Glasses has healing abilities (in addition to a Construct that also heals) and has an "Electroshock" attack which is deemed a "psychic" ability. It's useful since one of Suit's abilities is to make an enemy weak to psychic attacks, and the Electroshock can deal a damn good bit of damage in some instances combined with that.

About willpower, you start off every battle completely healed which is good since battles can take quite a toll on you, but at the same time all your willpower, and also diligence/construct (the two respective meters unique to Suit and Glasses respectively) completely reset, and seeing how this is what you need to use certain attacks or abilities of yours you need to make haste in getting this restored as much as possible! A little bit of WP is restored each turn but if you want to use some of the better attacks and abilities it's best to try to hurry along the process as much as you can (unfortunately there's nothing that seems to increase Suit's Diligence meter or Glasses' Construct meter).

So it's good that Suit's "Coffee Break" (the WP-boosting ability) is free to use because you might be using that a lot for yourself and your allies. Except for Constructs. That's another thing. Some of your boosts, buffers, heals and revivals that work for human party members do not work for Constructs, and vice versa. There is also a Construct that helps restore a bit of someone's WP, an ability of Glasses' to completely restore a Construct's WP (but not a human's) and also an ability that helps restore his Construct meter at twice the rate per two turns at the cost of some WP. Sound complicated? It really isn't, everything is well-organized, and you get to see what attack or ability does what very easily. You just have to think a bit, prioritize, when it's your turn, what to use when it's your turn. Another thing is that several enemies in this game are immune to certain attacks, so be careful about using up all your WP for that one powerful attack that ends up having literally "null effect" on them. This happened to me several times, don't let it happen to you!

So you finish the coyote (we almost forgot about him, didn't we?), then you warp immediately to your next memory, at your old school. Your target is a love that never was that you're unable to get over somehow (the game even asks if you want to read his sob story and poetic waxing or skip it entirely - by reading it you do get good insight that this dude is one big sadsack, but I suppose for some it might be relatable, those who have memories of "that one special moment with someone that you cherished so much but brings you pain to think about" or whatever). Lots of people have gone through that, dude. And they didn't need to travel inside a warped version of their memories, fighting shadow zombies crawling infinitely from the void to get to combat a god representing your memory. Oh yeah, the shadow zombies. This is the area where the "shadow people" previously mentioned by Glasses guy make their debut. And then disappear right after this level. So, great, then, I guess! They're not very hard fights but there are a lot of them and they come in different forms with different strengths, weaknesses and so on.

This is where the game begins to get aesthetically interesting. There are areas of the school completely blacked out, because as Glasses explains areas you can't remember cannot manifest, and are thus are filled in place by voids. Suit guy wasn't much for school he says, sleeping through most of it, which is the explanation for why so much of it is blacked out. So you run around, trying to find janitor keys, while shadow things crawl from the darkness and sometimes try to jump you from lockers you walk past (I have to admit the image of a zombie or wraith hiding in a school locker waiting to pounce on anyone who walks by is actually kind of funny) and ohh! Another white spot! This is a shier one that tried to run away from you earlier to another, locked room but once you get the janitor keys (gotten from a closet with a skeleton that looks like it's about to start a fight once you pick the keys up but thankfully that isn't the case here) you'll be able to access the room it's in and MEMORY GET. Actually there are three of these total in the game, they represent "happy memories" once you interact with them. One per level, of course. I don't know if they do anything if you get all three (I only got two when I finished the game) but keep an eye out for these and see if anything special happens after the end credits.


I dunno about you guys but I'm having some nasty Corpse Party flashbacks in this room. Maybe I'll need the service offered in this game's story after all!

So once the second boss is defeated, which isn't that hard once you figure out that, Aegis, was it? one of the boss's "guardians" is immune to pretty much every single attack, and isn't really a threat anyway, and so two and two together means just ignore the fucker (it'll throw some "freeze" spells at you which I'm still unsure of what exactly they do - there's also a "sleep" spell you can get hit with but this doesn't seem to do anything either - the only two status attacks I've seen do anything to you in the game, two that come after this one, are blindness, which will make your attacks miss the target, and stun, which prevents you from performing any action your next turn). Just focus attacks on the boss proper and also the other two goons when they show up, who are both actually vulnerable to your attacks and are also genuine trobule-makers if you don't get rid of them quickly enough. After all that, the game then throws you into some dark territory if it hadn't already and gets more, shall we say, introspective too. Following this is a reddish, pulsating hell of an environment with intertwining walkways over an abyss. So far, so good!

Sadly though this is where the game kind of jumps the shark in sheer frustration. The area requires tightly navigating around tiny corners into slightly more open spaces where an enemy resides. Like I did the last level I mostly just ran past the enemy, no biggie, and like the last level there'd be a point where I ran into one I meant to dodge. So, OK, let's get this fight over with, and it's apparently with the generic blob monsters you see in every old JRPG. And they very much share similar attributes to blob monsters I've encountered in said JRPGs, with high defense that makes it so your attacks do little damage but, maybe they have low health so this'll be over and done with soo... wait, did they just revive 25 points of health on themselves? After I did only like 7 points of damage at most? No, really, the white blob monsters, they are pretty much impossible to kill. In addition to being immune to most attacks you won't be able to do enough damage to kill them because they heal like 3, 4 times as much health as damage you deal them every turn! So what's the solution? Escaping of course.

Unfortunately, the creator decided that escaping battle should be relegated to one of Suit's diligence abilities, which costs ten points to use. And you start every battle with 0 diligence. The white blobs I don't think attack or do much of anything besides heal, so it's all just a waiting game until your diligence maxes out and you can escape battle... unless you accidentally get right back into battle AGAIN. Because this game gives you zero leeway, not even a split second, to orient yourself and get away to where you originally were going. Like how a proper action-heavy arcade-like 2D shooter/brawler should give you brief invincibility time to recover after a hit, this should allow you some escape time like, for instance, the Mario RPG games did if I recall them correctly. Here, the the enemy will probably just charge back into you again the moment you get out and you'll have to wait roughly ten turns again before you can try escaping another time. This isn't fun. This isn't challenging. This is just pure, unadulterated bullshit meant to waste my time. What's the point? And then there are red blobs too, who also are immune to most of your attacks and the little damage you can do is undone by their main ability, which is to drain a bit of your health and add it to theirs. To this I say, no, just no.

One strange thing this game does is autosave before every battle. Whether it's a boss or a regular enemy, it autosaves in the first slot. So if you've been using slot 1 the entire time, it will be overwritten by your blob monster encounters. Thankfully I saved in a different slot after I successfully ran past an enemy. But my god, my F12 key might need to be fixed soon for all the times I hit it because a blob monster kept catching me (if you don't know, F12 brings you back to the title screen - in fact before the game begins, the game throws a bunch of key commands on the screen, making you instantly respond with "whoa what the hell how complicated is this game?" but then you stop to actually look at the screen and find these these are simply outlines of basic functions found in almost every RPG Maker game - like one F key to change from wide to full screen, another F key to check your FPS rate, etc.). There is also this weird eyeball creature who I never fought, and so don't know exactly how tough or not he is, but since he was assisted by a white blob and a red blob I'm like to HELL with this I'm getting out of here *mashes F12*.

Eventually you reach the area where you encounter the final boss, and you're like thank god that's over with but nope! We only got a whiff of the bullshit to come back there! Now's time to get thrown face-first into the pile! Let me just say... the last boss is hard. This is understating it, frankly. But yes, he will whip your ass multiple times, ripping off your skin and using it as a condom (that's a rather grotesque figure of speech there - that doesn't literally happen, but what a sight it would be if it did). He isn't impossible but I died so many, many times before I finally finished him off with almost none of my diligence and wp left and a lot of health gone, and everyone else KO'd. But that's OK, because the boss is finished! I finally beat the game! I finally wo... wait, are you serious, don't tell me, are these three more enemies I have to fight that I see before, all at once? I don't even get a break after this? What the fu... then my computer crashes. Or maybe the game did. Whatever's the thing that crashed, it rendered my desktop one blank page with all of my shortcuts and wallpaper having disappeared completely. I should have mentioned, this very thing also happened to me in the level before this one, with the second boss fight... after I had defeated it. Annoying, to put it lightly.

So I reset my computer. I decide I'm not going back into this game. Not yet. I needed to see if there was a manual or something that had some helpful information, maybe I'm doing something wrong and the answers are right here, some tips, I dunno... and as it turns out, YES, there was something! Unfortunately it's something of a cheat. There is a certain in-game "manual" which you must try to access five times (it'll normally give you an error message) where on the fifth try you are allowed a "boost." It asks if you would like to accept it. Well in this case of course I did. It was really astonishing to find how much easier it made this final round of bosses. It was night and day. I was being crushed before, but now I was stomping on them! And I also discovered, you have to fight fucking FOUR BOSSES IN A ROW. WITHOUT BREAKS. I AM NOT FUCKING KIDDING HERE. How is anyone supposed to do this without using this stats-boosting cheat? The first manifestation of the boss wears you out so badly and the second encounter, where you must fight three things at once (so I guess that technically means you're fighting six bosses total then), is pretty much instant death. I would love to know how much more difficult these last three bosses are compared to the first at full health, because if the difficulty increases or at least remains constant there is no chance, no hope without this stats cheat.

There is another game out there, it's called The Longing Ribbon. It is also an RPG Maker RPG with a quirky battle system. It's simpler than the one here, but not any less strategic. So many people hated the battles, found them too hard or whatever the game's creator put in a cheat for people to turn off the battles entirely and just play the parts of the game everyone liked. Personally I didn't see the problem. I found the battles neither intrusive nor difficult enough to want to do this. If you properly managed your stats in that game, you were good and set to go. Plus I actually enjoyed some of the fights, quick-paced and challenging in the right way. I mean, managing stats and fighting comprised like half the game and so I felt cutting that out would just neuter the experience.

Here though, I thought I'd never have to relent again to cheat to win a game, something I did like all the time as a kid (I was terrible with video games), but here, if I wanted to finish it, I just... had to. I soldiered on, went through the whole game without doing it (in part because I didn't even know you could do it, but if I did I ultimately found it unnecessary), but seeing that second final boss after beating the first one, which left me in such bad shape, clinging on for dear life, I had no choice. There was no other way. Personally, if you need to implement a cheat for players just to be able to win the game, then something went terribly wrong and you need to head back to the programming board. Four hard bosses in a row with no breaks and no mercy is insane. I know this is something a ton of arcade and NES action games did back in the day. I never got very far in those so I can't really compare, but it's a relic of game design that should've been left in the scrapyard long ago unless you can actually use those scraps and craft it into something that's more balanced and enjoyable and not goddamn near-if-not-actually-impossible.


An appropriately hellish pathway toward worse things to come, both for the game's characters and for the player.

But OK whatever, a developer-sanctioned cheat, I used it, wiped the floor with the bosses' ugly faces then the ending, which wraps everything up nice and neat, good. In all of this ranting and raving about how much I hate the last level, there's other aspects of the game to talk about:

OK, first the story. I think it is a clever idea for one, and the two seemingly nondescript characters do have some personality and entertaining exchanges. My main problem I guess is that such an amazing device like this that can penetrate your memories so thoroughly as to get straight to specific memories (Monsieur Glasses even says it's treated even for victims of abuse and PTSD) that the things that your character wants to see erased so badly seem a bit, I dunno, insignificant. He is a businessman based on appearances so he can probably afford a superfluous and likely highly expensive operation to remove perhaps sad but ultimately not traumatizing memories. This is a guy who I think could just get a shrink or something, might be less risky too, I mean, we're talking about rewiring someone's brain completely here, literally eliminating fragments of it so to prevent specific memories of life from ever coming bsck. All of the three things here, while troublesome to deal with I'm sure, I don't think would be worth the cost of getting such an invasive procedure.

It's a concept I think really could be made into a far more compelling story. It's a short game made for a contest I guess, maybe follow it up with a longer game dealing with far more horrible memories, or going into more depth about what this whole procedure actually is, how it functions, the ways it could go wrong, and the crises that may happen that you must avert or fix immediately. Here, most of the drama comes from the boss encounters, since they're so monstrous and tough to beat. In addition to the shadow people I guess and THOSE STUPID BLOBS I HATE THAT LAST LEVEL SO MUCH. Well you see what I mean.

Don't expect anything special from the graphics or sound/music front, or at least nothing custom. It looks to me like everything consists of RPG Maker VX Ace assets, from the environments, portraits, battles, effects, enemy sprites, etc. There is some clever use of the materials in the school section with the blacked-out hallways with shadowy creatures popping out, and the last level looks good (in spite of everything el-you know what, fuck it, I'm gonna drop it right now). Music all sounds very RPG Maker-y too, especially a lot of the battle music. Don't know about that dark ambient humming in school and the last level. Sound effects are things I've heard in pretty much every RPG Maker game ever made. So yeah, nothing new in terms of resources, but does a reasonable job with the materials available to him.

There are two music tracks outside the regular music folder for RPG Maker: a Chopin piece - I don't remember at which point the music started playing, but it's listed in the credits. The other is... *sigh* if anyone consistently reads my reviews, or maybe you've read a couple, you might know I'm not a particular fan of Satie's famous and popular Gymnopedie piano piece. Well, here it is, again! Only for the end credits though, thankfully. This is like the third RPG Maker game I've played in a span of two months that featured this composition, I don't know if I'm gonna continue to hear it it gsmes, but come on people, pick a different sad-sounding modern classical track for your game for Nut's sake! Except for Arvo Pärt's "Spiegel im Spiegel." Please, not that one. I like a lot of Pärt's stuff, but that one is overrated, overplayed, and just plain bad. How about Penderecki's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima"? Yeah that's not conventionally "sad"-sounding, a little harsher, but it's still pretty emotionally powerful, I'd rather hear that any day.

What's my conclusion? The battle system is what really holds the game up. It is interesting, varied, and actually requires you to think before you make a move. Maybe it doesn't quite reinvent the whole concept of JRPG battles (not that I really expect it to) but it does do things interesting and different with its mechanics than most JRPGs/JRPG-type games these days do to help it stand apart. If only there were fewer truly awful battles (the jellies, the idea of having four final bosses in a row after the first one shreds you apart, leaving you no hope of even getting a single shot at the second) it'd be all the better. Story has its moments but ultimately is fairly perfunctory outside its central concept and its character interactions, both whom felt convincingly like long-time friends. It's a game that makes decent use of RPG Maker assets from graphics to music, but it can look generic at times (maybe I'm spoiled by all the games with custom stuff), but the school has a good look and atmosphere to it and the last level has also a nicely ominous look and tone to it too. I like the use of third-party music if an original composer can't be found, copyright laws be damned, but I've had enough of Satie already. Can all future games I play not feature him, or at least feature a different piece he wrote, at the very least?

So, solid but problematic. Problematic but solid. Go with whatever, depending if you're a "glass half-empty" or "glass half-full" kind of person. I think it has enough going for it that I'll award it with a score of "good," but only because of the stat-boosting cheat that made the final fight possible. Unless you know a way to finish the final four bosses without this cheat, I'd love to see it. I wouldn't recommend the game otherwise, but since it's there if you need it, jump right in, you could do a hell of a lot worse with your hour's worth of time than this I'll tell you.

UPDATE 1 pt. 2:
After writing this review and submitting it I thought it'd be over with, all hunky dory and time to move on maybe to another game. But reading the other review, with no mention of what I thought to be the ridiculousness of the final battles, I had to ask, did they actually... finish them off? WITHOUT cheating? So I asked in a thread and two people confirmed that yes, they killed at least one blob and finished the final fight without the boost as if it were nothing(!!!). Both provided what their own strategies were, one laying out a fairly lengthy one. I don't know if I'd be able to follow it to the T but OK. I still had the game on my hard drive so I needed to retry this shit, and try out some different strategies to see if it's really just me.

It apparently still is.

I have gotten farther than before without the boost trick but I still cannot get past the second iteration of the final battle. At first because of course it kept killing me, but then I figured out a way to keep it going without dying. Unfortunately for this all it did was needlessly prolong the battle. It was an endless loop of "use shroud on Guardian, use either the Construct-regenerating ability or the one Construct to refill one of the other Construct's WP gauges to full (if not revive them from the dead completely), have Guardian, well, guard the whole party, and Momentum, the other Construct recommended for me to use, do... whatever. It is useful for refilling WP or giving one of my guys an extra turn when possible. Attacks against us are evaded, nothing actually done to the enemies themselves. If I were to attack one of the enemies they'd just be healed eventually anyway. Plus I need preserve Suit guy's WP to shroud Guardian when he loses it the next turn or else we're, or the Guardian at least, is pretty much screwed. Eventually the loop will stop because someone important will run out of WP, diligence, Construct or whatever, and then we're open to get KO'd out of oblivion.

Buuuuut I THINK I found a way to prevent this, while finding out a way to get in attacks against who I think is the Healer guy (as usual for these three-party teams in RPGs there's the guy who attacks you, the guy who buffs everyone, and the guy who heals. The healer is the most annoying just above the fighter so I got to take him out first. The game doesn't make clear who is who but based on visual representation at least I'd assume the thing with swords is the fighter, the big dude the buffer, and the wizard-looking dude the healer. So I go for the healer, keep repeating my previous strategy for protecting the party (hint: Graveyard Shift is very useful for using Shroud while still having plenty of WP leftover to do other things). So I think I got the hang of it, sort of, at least the last time I tried when everyone healed Mr. Wizard's lifebar didn't get fully restored. Good news there! But this is just dragging on and on and on and I want it to be over with and then... the game exits out. Yeah, there's the second problem. Again, it's a bug brought up by the creator and wants us to report so yes, in my two feeble attempts to fight a boss that everyone else is able to blow past with no problems whatsoever, my game window exits out like saying "just give up already, you doofus, you know nothing will come of this, you suck, so I'm going to close you out early before things get worse." This happened twice btw. My theory it's a bug that happens as a result of fighting for far too long, because that's exactly what happened. Thankfully it didn't take the rest of my Desktop screen with it, though I'm playing on windowed mode this time so maybe that was the problem for my last playthroughs, who knows.

So, yes, I now have some idea as how to survive long enough to keep going in a loop forever and ever in the second battle and occasionally do damage, until the game closes out that is, but I'm not understanding how everyone else is able to get through these fights so quickly. They speak of it very casually too. Am I playing the same game? Did I get a random "Hard Mode" version of this game or do I just suck pathetically at this game? I'd like to see more people play/review this game and see how many other people have as much trouble as I do, if any. If everyone else just breezes through it then I may as well give up on my RPG-ing career for good (probably not but I will forever be confused and disheartened thanks to what I assumed would be a quaint little indie RPG title).

Oh, about the blobbies, well I went back and fought eyeball guy. I won that battle. I don't remember how I killed the white blob and the red blob but I somehow managed to do it. And eyeball monster, all he seems to do is cast blindness (lol, good one!) on one of your party members so he was no issue at all. Did I fight any more enemies, well of fucking course not, I'm wasting enough time as it is here, I'm only bringing myself closer and closer to death by doing this, and I can feel myself aging more rapidly trying to figure out this hidden secret to quickly clearing out the final boss the "fair" way and failing miserably every time. Unless everyone's just fucking with me. Yeah, I'll just go with that, while in the meantime I'll probably be returning to the final battle every so often to see how much progress I can make without dying or the game exiting out on me - so that means I have to be quick and dirty about it, somehow.

Have I rambled on long enough yet? Too bad then, because I'm done for now, you, person-who-likes-to-read-long-frustrated-ramblings.



...


OK here's one more for you:

UPDATE 2:
OK you know what, they're back to constantly killing me again, my strategy has fallen and the game doesn't need to close out on me anymore, because I'm doing it before the game gets the chance to. It's hopeless. This endless loop-dee-poop of shroud-on-guardian, cover-with-guardian, expedite-on-glasses, and do-what-the-fuck-ever-with-momentum, followed by maybe-get-over-time-just-to-use-coffee-break-then-use-shroud-again, have-glasses-defend-self-or-re-energize-a-construct-because-his-electroshock-is-fucking-useless-in-this-fight-without-daunting-glare, cover-with-guardian-again, do-something-with-momentum-maybe-energize-someone-or-give-an-extra-turn-idunfuckino. All the while I'm just sitting there watching the three assholes do their little circle jerk while I can't even make a single move to attack any of them without it either risking the whole party to getting killed or just having it wasted because they heal themselves like every other turn.

BUT eventually a gear has to come loose in this machine. The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy prevents anything from sustaining itself forever, so like an endless reel with a few frames and a few bits of sound on repeat and listening as they go more and more out of sync the longer it plays, the loop is undone - either Mr. Douche McSuit loses all his WP or doesn't have enough to Shroud Guardian, Guardian doesn't have enough WP to use Cover, Momentum can't help either of us because I had to use that bastard just to get Suit's Graveyard-Shifting ass back in proper order, And (Gl)asses (see what I did thur huh huh) isn't Expeditedededed enough to Overcharge anyone. Sometimes more than one of these will occur at once, maybe all of them! Game over man, game over!

Oh, yeah, I dealt what looked like a hefty amount of damage to the Healer guy like before but now I got to see the consequences long enough without the game closing out on me - when it came time to heal he recovered most of it. Not all of it, but enough that I knew by the time I'd get another chance to knock him back again he'd be healed in full, and the loop would continue. And what do you know, he did! And at a point where everyone in the party but one of the stupid, useless Constructs was dead! Fantastic!

I am now officially done with this game, it's being deleted from my hard drive so not to tempt me to failure again, and everyone who says that they've beaten this boss either without boosts or done so so easily and quickly is an effing liar. There, I said it. I don't think you're all liars because I don't necessarily believe you beat the game. No, it's that you thought it was so easy-peasy, when by any criteria, though technically subjective, is, as objectively as possible without being so, extremely difficult to being near-impossible. If you could at least admit that you went through trials and tribulations beating this thing I'd believe you. I believe people have beaten Battletoads without cheating or needing to import the nerfed Japanese import to do so, after all. I can't do it, but I've seen people do it. They admit the game is a tough bastard. I'm seeing none of that from anyone who's played the final fight of this game. Upload a video of yourself doing it and maybe then I'll give this a reconsideration.


I am not in a particularly good mood right now.

UPDATE 3:V. 1.01 has just been released, rather unceremoniously at that (STS, Y U NO TELL ME yes I just me'me'd right there I apologize for that, truly) with apparently some significant changes, particularly to the boss fights. I'm going to try this one out and report back if it's improved anything. If so I will amend my review of the game as necessary. Right now I'm going to take my score down since this was based on an impression of an earlier version whereas the new one looks to have lots of not only fixes but updates and changes. I will re-score after playing through the updated version. Thanks to STS for listening to criticisms and technical problems and continuing to try and address them!

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Greetings. I'm afraid I'm short on time so I'll have to only skim your review for now.

I'm terribly sorry that you experienced the crash bug on multiple occasions. I noted it in the "Known Issues and Bugs" section of the game description but I never expected it to be as widespread as it turned out to be, considering my playtesters never experienced it. However, the fight is entirely beatable without the cheat — while it is difficult, both my playtesters and I have gotten through it without issue. Indeed, the cheat was a last-minute addition as a failsafe against the crash bug. I have been attempting to fix it in my spare time ever since release, but I have still not made much leeway. I'll update the game posthaste once a fix is ready.

author=Above
Here, the the enemy will probably just charge back into you again the moment you get out and you'll have to wait roughly ten turns again before you can try escaping another time.

There is a 2-second wait before the blobs start moving again, but I'll probably modify escapes to work better in the coming update regardless.

Thank you very much for your review — I'll be sure to give it a more thorough look soon.
Thanks for dropping by. I'm REALLY starting to think the crashes have something to do with how long you remain in battle. The times the game crashes for me were when I was sticking out for a long time (well it's always a long time but potentially longer than others). I'd like to know how long it took the playtesters to beat who I now call "the three assholes" in the final fight let alone the entire battle in general if you can get that information, thanks.
The easiest way to fix this would probably be to split the battle up. Make a cut somewhere and it'd be fine - I always get to the last part.
Oh btw never mind the raging in Update Zwei. Just when I thought I was getting better I fell back down several steps behind again. The bug crashing the game isn't what is irritating me so, really. I'd much rather it be that the game crashes while I'm on a good streak than me gradually meeting my defeat and the game remaining open as if to say "take it all in, and suck it, bitch!" If any major updates are made, someone makes a video fighting and defeating the final boss, or at least one other person can confess to struggling for a long time with this boss, I mean ffs, come on now, I may give it another go, but for the time being, I'm done with this game. As far as I care, I've already beaten the game, whether it could be considered cheating or not, via the booster, so... yeah, that. Urrrghhhh...
author=zoviet_francis
Thanks for dropping by. I'm REALLY starting to think the crashes have something to do with how long you remain in battle. The times the game crashes for me were when I was sticking out for a long time (well it's always a long time but potentially longer than others). I'd like to know how long it took the playtesters to beat who I now call "the three assholes" in the final fight let alone the entire battle in general if you can get that information, thanks.

The propensity for the bug to happen after extended time in battle has been noted on multiple occasions, so it will be the focus on the fixes to come. My main playtester did mention that the second form of the final battle was the most obtuse of them to get through, but he was able to get through it without any help on my part. While none of them have given me specific times as to how long the entire fight took for them, I estimate that they found Form 1 moderately challenging, Form 2 the most difficult, and Form 3 superfluous (it's the kind of thing you'd want to just kill as soon as possible rather than prolong).

author=Kylaila
The easiest way to fix this would probably be to split the battle up. Make a cut somewhere and it'd be fine - I always get to the last part.

As I have been unable to discern the cause of the bug over the last two days, I've switched over to this plan. This may require re-tuning of the final battle, however, because I'm unsure if I can make certain buffs carry over.

author=zoviet_francis
Oh btw never mind the raging in Update Zwei. Just when I thought I was getting better I fell back down several steps behind again. The bug crashing the game isn't what is irritating me so, really. I'd much rather it be that the game crashes while I'm on a good streak than me gradually meeting my defeat and the game remaining open as if to say "take it all in, and suck it, bitch!" If any major updates are made, someone makes a video fighting and defeating the final boss, or at least one other person can confess to struggling for a long time with this boss, I mean ffs, come on now, I may give it another go, but for the time being, I'm done with this game. As far as I care, I've already beaten the game, whether it could be considered cheating or not, via the booster, so... yeah, that. Urrrghhhh...

I should point out that the fourth, final form of the final boss is intended to have no difficulty to it, so if you got through the first three you can absolutely say you completed all the challenges in the game.

I'm also sorry that you consider the game so frustrating. I always found challenge in most turn-based RPGs lacking, including some of the ones people hold up as the pinnacle of difficulty like the Shin Megami Tensei and Etrian Odyssey series, so with this game I set out to create a system in which every action legitimately felt like it mattered.
I found the last fight challenging, but very fair. The only problem is that the other battles weren't that much of a challenge before it spiked, and that I dested any and all random encounters, since your system takes far too long to get anywhere.

Etrian Odyssey has never been difficult (only if your setup sucks), and SMT usually just has the right one (although the more recent SMT IV, Strange Journey and the second Devil Survivor have been a little bit lacking should you have played them), you do get the hang of it rather quickly, though.
author=zoviet_francis
There is another game out there, it's called The Longing Ribbon. It is also an RPG Maker RPG with a quirky battle system. It's simpler than the one here, but not any less strategic. So many people hated the battles, found them too hard or whatever the game's creator put in a cheat for people to turn off the battles entirely and just play the parts of the game everyone liked. Personally I didn't see the problem. I found the battles neither intrusive nor difficult enough to want to do this. If you properly managed your stats in that game, you were good and set to go. Plus I actually enjoyed some of the fights, quick-paced and challenging in the right way. I mean, managing stats and fighting comprised like half the game and so I felt cutting that out would just neuter the experience.


I know I've read this paragraph before somewhere, probably in one of your previous reviews. The Deja Vu is killing me, though q_q

At any rate, I'm confused as to how some people consider the battles "fair" and others see no opportunity for victory. Since there's no choices that affect character strength...how can that be? It seems like ZF has put forth the effort to learn the system, so I don't think it's just that.
author=STS
I'm also sorry that you consider the game so frustrating. I always found challenge in most turn-based RPGs lacking, including some of the ones people hold up as the pinnacle of difficulty like the Shin Megami Tensei and Etrian Odyssey series, so with this game I set out to create a system in which every action legitimately felt like it mattered.

For SMT, does this include Nocturne? I have heard of that being one of the most difficult ones in the series. Probably the very earliest titles on the Famicom are too. Don't know about about the recent ones, from what I gather they would seem more accessible. I don't know anything about Etrian Odyssey other than that its name is thrown around a lot among "prominent modern RPGs that exist."

Out of curiosity, what would you consider to be some legitimately challenging RPGs? I know The 7th Saga is infamous for its seething hatred of the player. Probably some very old CRPGs and dungeon crawlers are really hard, like the early Wizardry titles. But anyway, I replayed this so many times (is this a testament to your game that I cared enough to retry it this much? Maybe, ha) that the first part of the final fight has become much less a problem for me. The strategy, the "loop" I was talking about, actually works since he never heals, just attacks and boosts his aggression. If I could only kill the healer in the second round, but I just...can't...do it. Is there a pattern to when they heal? I know they never heal two rounds in a row, not that I've seen. Is it after two rounds? Is it random? Taking out the fighter guy first might be a good idea too, since he's really the cause of all the party's misery. If all we have left is a buffer and a healer I can just repeatedly wallop them until they're down. But, I don't have this game on my computer anymore, so I'll wait on that for a bit.

author=Sviel
author=zoviet_francis
There is another game out there, it's called The Longing Ribbon. It is also an RPG Maker RPG with a quirky battle system. It's simpler than the one here, but not any less strategic. So many people hated the battles, found them too hard or whatever the game's creator put in a cheat for people to turn off the battles entirely and just play the parts of the game everyone liked. Personally I didn't see the problem. I found the battles neither intrusive nor difficult enough to want to do this. If you properly managed your stats in that game, you were good and set to go. Plus I actually enjoyed some of the fights, quick-paced and challenging in the right way. I mean, managing stats and fighting comprised like half the game and so I felt cutting that out would just neuter the experience.
I know I've read this paragraph before somewhere, probably in one of your previous reviews. The Deja Vu is killing me, though q_q


Most likely you can find a similar comment in my actual review of that very game. ;)
Yes, SMT does include Nocturne. It's a great game and certainly one of the more difficult ones, but not that difficult, either. As for the whole series, it's difficult and challenging, but not unfair which is what many seem to confuse. So it's hard to say whether "difficult" games need to have you fail at them for long periods of them for them to be labelled so.

I'd definitely agree with some old dungeoncrawler, most of the SMTs definitely are (not on the frustrating side, though). Sure, Soul games are as we all know. Monster Hunter, obviously. But that's action RPGs again.
A couple of roguelikes are as well.
But especially for RPGs how you play comes into it strongly (at least when you can avoid encounters), Radiant Historia was fairly challenging, but I was quite underleveled. You can avoid grinding in the first Devil Survivor entirely (except skill cracking once), and still succeed - some had trouble 10-20 level over me very early in the game. Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume was challenging. Although I didn't like it too much.

But there really aren't that many games that I can remember being really challanging, but then again, I usually have a fairly easy time and appear to be not that bad at RPG tactics.
author=zoviet_francis
For SMT, does this include Nocturne? I have heard of that being one of the most difficult ones in the series. Probably the very earliest titles on the Famicom are too. Don't know about about the recent ones, from what I gather they would seem more accessible. I don't know anything about Etrian Odyssey other than that its name is thrown around a lot among "prominent modern RPGs that exist."

Out of curiosity, what would you consider to be some legitimately challenging RPGs? I know The 7th Saga is infamous for its seething hatred of the player. Probably some very old CRPGs and dungeon crawlers are really hard, like the early Wizardry titles.

I played Nocturne on hard, and while I certainly did die a lot, I never really felt like it was a "difficult" game because I wasn't really switching up my strategies for every boss battle. It was almost always buff, debuff, attack weakness if possible, heal if necessary. It was more a game of preparations — fusing the perfect demon for every situation and ingesting the right Magatama — rather than thinking in the heat of battle, at least to me. Nonetheless, it's still one of my favorite RPGs because I enjoyed the atmosphere of exploring a world alone with the help of demons who are far too outlandish to relate to as "allies". It's a very isolated type of feeling that not many RPGs try to capture (the Fallout series is the only other that comes to mind, but I've only played the original one).

Early Famicom RPGs can certainly be considered quite difficult too — Dragon Quest II vaguely comes to mind — though back in those days I hardly believe the majority of them could be considered "fair" difficulty, as in the kind you could get past with tactics other than grinding or the occasional exploit of some odd stat glitch. It's been a while since I played an RPG from those days though, so maybe I'm mistaken.

I haven't played 7th Saga, but I do know quite a bit about it from gleaning various sources. It's an interesting game because the only reason it is difficult is due to its localization botching up the code in some manner; I forget the exact details, but it had something to do with stats not scaling as well as it did in the original Japanese release — something unintentional. Even disregarding that, it also seemed like a very milquetoast RPG that again relied on preparation, this time of stat-boosting items, and the variety of actions in battle didn't seem to allow much complexity either. I probably wouldn't enjoy it.

Wizardry, on the other hand, I have muddled memories of trying a while back but being unable to get into it. I don't remember the specifics, unfortunately, but I guess something must have frustrated me because I do quite enjoy games where I create my own party.

As for what RPGs I've found legitimately challenging, the most recent that come to mind are Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 and 4, played entirely on Insane difficulty. Now, quite frankly, I find the series lacking in every other factor (especially because I'm not a fan of Penny Arcade), but the battles are amazing; I felt like I got through each of them by the skin of my teeth and I loved it. Of course, it also helped that there was essentially no way to grind in that game, so you actually had to rethink your strategies both before and during battle on a regular basis. It really respected players' time and intelligence.

Kylaila
Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume was challenging. Although I didn't like it too much.

Thanks for reminding me, I enjoyed Covenant of the Plume a lot as well and consider it very underappreciated.

zoviet_francis
But anyway, I replayed this so many times (is this a testament to your game that I cared enough to retry it this much? Maybe, ha) that the first part of the final fight has become much less a problem for me. The strategy, the "loop" I was talking about, actually works since he never heals, just attacks and boosts his aggression. If I could only kill the healer in the second round, but I just...can't...do it. Is there a pattern to when they heal? I know they never heal two rounds in a row, not that I've seen. Is it after two rounds? Is it random? Taking out the fighter guy first might be a good idea too, since he's really the cause of all the party's misery. If all we have left is a buffer and a healer I can just repeatedly wallop them until they're down. But, I don't have this game on my computer anymore, so I'll wait on that for a bit.

Constancy is programmed to do two actions: Heal and debuff Aggression, switching between the two each turn. I designed this game to have skills that "combo" with each other, and through a certain combination of skills it's possible to have Suit buffed to have 3 turns and +50% Aggression indefinitely. With that in mind, I kinda just rush down the guy immediately.

The strategy is subject to change now, however, as the update has actually progressed quite substantially since I stopped caring about fixing the bug directly. I must admit I was hesitant to split the final battle into parts because I really enjoyed the way they flowed together, but allowing players to actually finish the game legitimately is, of course, the priority. Anyway, expect the update within the next few days (or maybe even tonight!). Thank you all for your continued interest!
Juuuuust finished v. 1.01! Yay! I don't know if I should feel accomplished or not - a good litmus test for how hard a game is would be if I was able to beat it or not. If I did, then it's an easy game. At least this is what I've come to condition myself to believe after years of playing games, some hard, some not, and reading and hearing about other people's experiences with these same games. But it's over and done with, booster-free, so that's what matters!

I saw you took my really major complaints to heart. When escaping from battles, the ease of running away, and the battle with Duplicity, Ignorance, and Annoying Healing Guy What-Was-His-Name-Began-With-A-C... On the one hand I ought to be grateful for these changes, on the other, I was the only one really complaining about these (and REALLY complaining). Just saying, I want you be OK with the decisions you made (I looked at the stats, I mean, a drop in 10 HP is pretty significant, not to mention the other "nerfed" stats!) and not just "to shut up that guy being all whiny about how he sucks at RPGs" and possibly ruining the game for other more "hardcore" players. :P I mean let's admit it, this is a relatively new game, a very small one, that few know about, and among those few is a loudmouth, and it's usually the loudest voice in the room that is listened to, whether what they're saying is worth listening to or not and whether that voice even represents the majority view (which didn't seem to be the case with this).

Don't get me wrong, not saying I'm not appreciative, but I just hope that you feel you made the right decision without feeling that you compromised what you were aiming to make all because of one guy, which would be significant for a small upstart game like this. Seeing how extremely harsh some of my wording was in regards to that, I definitely plan on taking some of that back.

So, for those all tl;dr about the above I'm basically feeling guilty that I was able to finish a game that I couldn't before because of updates made. Yeah.

One thing I will say is I went with an altogether different party set-up... well just one was different really. Instead of Momentum I used Fury. I felt getting through this much faster would need an extra offensive player, especially one with as powerful a combo attack as Ignite mixed with the attack the does double damage. 20+ points of damage at once is nothing to sneeze at. It definitely was that little guy that made short work of the Three Suckateers (I think that's a better name for them now than "the three assholes" wouldn't you say? (;). A couple things in that fight I found out I didn't know - the Buffer guy also attacks you - I did lose a match, slaying the fighter and the healer, leaving big, fat ignorant Ignorance behind. Most of my party was KO'ed save for Suit but i thought, that's OK because all this guy does is bu... what did he just hit me with three attacks at once? Dead. So THAT'S where that attack came from! I also didn't know that that was the only guy you had to kill to move on - was it like that with the previous version of the game? Because I decided to just arbitrarily focus on killing him, and, when I did, then I got to meet the Reaper, or, actually, what was his name again? Did it begin with a "V"? I'm bad with names, in general, let alone with RPGs where I'm barely focused on the enemy names.

Anyway that guy put up a pretty good fight, my game did close out on me in the middle of one of my fights with him though (oh, another thing, this seems to extend to battles in general - one incident I forgot to mention was when I ran into the battle with the three red jellies, I mad a concerted effort to try to beat them - I had managed to do so with the white ones, but the red ones were much more stubborn - after a while the game closed out - so I'm thinking it's less to do with specific battles and more to do with something in the battle system in general - maybe you've already considered that, but just wanted to bring that up). A couple other times I did die too. That's why after I finished him off and got to the fourth battle, which I knew was part of the same fight, so if it crashed I'd have to fight the third boss all over again. This is where I got in a panic throwing everything I had at the little bastard. He was certainly non-threatening but he had a surprisingly long health bar. It eventually came down to just blind and quick mashing, trying to beat him, paranoid that the game would shut down on me any moment, haha. I can't imagine what it'd be like if I got that far in the original iteration of the game (without boosters of course).

Anyway a VERY heavy rewrite of my review is in the works, not just for these changes but other things I discovered, some small, some large. Like, in the review I mentioned I had no idea what Freeze or Sleep did (the former doubles the WP cost of attacks and abilities, some to the point of being impossible to use, the latter makes it so your next turn only regenerates 1 WP instead of 2 - did I get that right?), where now I do. I also didn't know there were two endings until I read nhubi's review. Then I figured it had something to do with the 3 happy memories. First time I finished it with the boost trick, I only had 2 of them. Finishing them with 3, I... wow, must say that's a really good ending and changed my perspective of the main character and why he's doing all this. I suppose I should have suspected something like this, but his journey feels all the more justified now. Never seeing this ending in v.1.0 is this pretty much the same ending or were there changes/rewrites made? The further details of the past coyote incident turned things on its head I must say.

I didn't catch whatever the pun that you added in was though. (???)

And so ends another overlong piece of babbling for yours truly. Once my headspace is cleared I will come back to this one, go over it and fix it up. If it requires starting from scratch altogether (which I hope not) then so be it. All the best, z_f
author=zoviet_francis
Don't get me wrong, not saying I'm not appreciative, but I just hope that you feel you made the right decision without feeling that you compromised what you were aiming to make all because of one guy, which would be significant for a small upstart game like this. Seeing how extremely harsh some of my wording was in regards to that, I definitely plan on taking some of that back.

Haha, don't worry about it. I modified the bosses' stats primarily because I felt I had to take resetting of party status into account. Outside feedback was also important, of course, but in no way do I feel like I took steps that compromised my vision. In my personal tests for the update, Form 2 became rather tedious with their original stats — especially since they only have a 2 to 3 turn cycle for their movesets (gets rather boring to see over and over) and Suit no longer retains an Aggression buff — so I nerfed them. Conversely, I upped Form 3's stats and skillset because in my personal tests I would usually blow right through that part.

Honestly, player feedback particularly came into play with the modification to the Stage 2 Boss. Several players told me that they would spend around a half-hour on this boss, an effort which also tended to lead to a crash. This was a slog I did not want people to think was intentional, so the game now punishes them with an unavoidable party wipe for stalling too long. For the record, when I told one of said players about this new turn limit he was quite flabbergasted.

author=zoviet_francis
One thing I will say is I went with an altogether different party set-up... well just one was different really. Instead of Momentum I used Fury. I felt getting through this much faster would need an extra offensive player, especially one with as powerful a combo attack as Ignite mixed with the attack the does double damage. 20+ points of damage at once is nothing to sneeze at. It definitely was that little guy that made short work of the Three Suckateers (I think that's a better name for them now than "the three assholes" wouldn't you say? (;).

I also must admit I didn't really test out alternative Construct loadouts much. I intended Boss 2 to be cleared by using Fury and Momentum and every form of the Final Boss can be done using Guardian and Momentum, which I generally did for testing. I did want to make Health more useful, particularly for Form 3, but I was afraid of players using Health to stall the battle out, potentially leading to a crash. Anyway, if you happened to find an alternate party that worked for you, that's great!

author=zoviet_francis
I also didn't know that that was the only guy you had to kill to move on - was it like that with the previous version of the game? Because I decided to just arbitrarily focus on killing him, and, when I did, then I got to meet the Reaper, or, actually, what was his name again? Did it begin with a "V"? I'm bad with names, in general, let alone with RPGs where I'm barely focused on the enemy names.

Bosses with minions have always died upon killing the "main part", though I never bothered testing out strategies focused on that. Along with that, the "Reaper" is called 'Quietus', but quite frankly the names in this game (both for enemies and allies) really don't matter at all. As I mentioned in my response to nhubi's review, they're only there for ease of battle targeting.

author=zoviet_francis
Anyway that guy put up a pretty good fight, my game did close out on me in the middle of one of my fights with him though (oh, another thing, this seems to extend to battles in general - one incident I forgot to mention was when I ran into the battle with the three red jellies, I mad a concerted effort to try to beat them - I had managed to do so with the white ones, but the red ones were much more stubborn - after a while the game closed out - so I'm thinking it's less to do with specific battles and more to do with something in the battle system in general - maybe you've already considered that, but just wanted to bring that up).

This actually happened to me for the first time while I was testing the update. As you can imagine, this bug is quite irritating to completely fix.

author=zoviet_francis
That's why after I finished him off and got to the fourth battle, which I knew was part of the same fight, so if it crashed I'd have to fight the third boss all over again. This is where I got in a panic throwing everything I had at the little bastard. He was certainly non-threatening but he had a surprisingly long health bar. It eventually came down to just blind and quick mashing, trying to beat him, paranoid that the game would shut down on me any moment, haha. I can't imagine what it'd be like if I got that far in the original iteration of the game (without boosters of course).

I did have my concerns with keeping the 4th Form's LF as is, since it can certainly take a while to defeat it. This is probably ridiculous to say, but I designed it like that so that the song in the background would have time to play a good portion out. If I hear reports of people crashing on that last part specifically because of how long it takes I may lower his health in another minor update.

author=zoviet_francis
Anyway a VERY heavy rewrite of my review is in the works, not just for these changes but other things I discovered, some small, some large.

To turn what you said earlier around, I certainly hope my correspondence hasn't compromised your own thoughts on the game too heavily. I greatly respect the integrity of reviewers and only wish to see their honest opinions.

author=zoviet_francis
Like, in the review I mentioned I had no idea what Freeze or Sleep did (the former doubles the WP cost of attacks and abilities, some to the point of being impossible to use, the latter makes it so your next turn only regenerates 1 WP instead of 2 - did I get that right?)

Correct.

author=zoviet_francis
I also didn't know there were two endings until I read nhubi's review. Then I figured it had something to do with the 3 happy memories. First time I finished it with the boost trick, I only had 2 of them. Finishing them with 3, I... wow, must say that's a really good ending and changed my perspective of the main character and why he's doing all this. I suppose I should have suspected something like this, but his journey feels all the more justified now. Never seeing this ending in v.1.0 is this pretty much the same ending or were there changes/rewrites made? The further details of the past coyote incident turned things on its head I must say.

Here are the "major" changes to the game's dialogue. Before, the "shadows" in the second stage were basically there for no reason other than giving the area a sense of tension. I rewrote the dialogue upon encountering the first shadow to make them a symptom of people who routinely experience violent thoughts, adding more foreshadowing to Suit's secret dilemma.

The ending itself is basically the same, except now Suit mentions that his distrust for getting help from strangers — even if they are professionals — stems from a fear that they would use his secrets against him somehow. This idea could probably use further expansion but I didn't want to revise too much for what was supposed to be a bugfixing update.


author=zoviet_francis
I didn't catch whatever the pun that you added in was though. (???)

Malice's single-target normal attack, 'Sickle', was renamed to 'Vile Lance'.


author=zoviet_francis
And so ends another overlong piece of babbling for yours truly. Once my headspace is cleared I will come back to this one, go over it and fix it up. If it requires starting from scratch altogether (which I hope not) then so be it. All the best, z_f

Don't stress over updating the review — I'm just happy to hear that you could finish the game without insurmountable crashing. Thanks again for your thoughts!
Just a sidenote, now that I know what was changed storywise, the added detailed for the ending was the only one that stood out as not making too much sense. But hey, not distracting, either.
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