ACRA'S PLAYTESTING TOPIC

Links to game sessions:
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Baclyae Revolution - [ 1 | 2 | F ]
Keeper of the Fog
Notes from Province - [ 1 | 2 | ...
Port Traventor - [ 1 ]
{ New game slot here . . . }

I've complained multiple times about how too many developers here keep their nose to the ground, only worrying about their own project(s), with no care for the rest. It's something I've most certainly been guilty of. And will probably continue to be guilty of from time-to-time. So this is my attempt to rectify that, at least a little.

I think what makes this different from other similar topics is that the main goal isn't about getting a review out of it. Those may or may not come out afterwards, down the line, but that's not my priority. It's to give my full mindset, step-by-step, as I play through the game. How my opinions and perceptions shift over time, and a more in-depth look at any given section of a game than a review would. I think the best descriptor would be to call it a Written Let's Play? I don't really like that moniker, but whatever.

When I'm not guts-deep in my own gamedev, I'd hope to put out a session a week (roughly an hour of gameplay, several more of editing my thoughts into something coherent), hopefully more, but I guarantee nothing. I'd also like to say that I'll probably juggle between multiple games at a time, which hopefully won't get confusing, but should loosen the glut of one big game clogging the system for months and months. I likewise make no promises to finish every given game. But I'll try.

Now, I'd like to say I'm taking all comers, but I know I can't realistically deal with every one that might cross my table. So I'll be upfront and say what traits I'll specifically favour when making decisions of what to play, probably in this order:

1.) A high degree of customization: classes, skill trees, interesting equipment choices, a choice in party members, that sort of thing.
2.) Nonlinearity. I realize that's a pretty rare request when taken at face-value, but I mean it in broader contexts, too. Things like branching dialogue and whatnot.
3.) Long; this might seem an odd specification, but I know other people tend to favour a breadth-first approach to make their Makerscore number go big fast, so I figure I'd specifically go the opposite direction and tackle lengthier games. This doesn't mean I won't do unfinished games or demos, just that I'm aware of the irony that the longer the game, the less likely it'll be played, and would like to do something to rectify that.
4.) Only RPGs, or at least still in the turn-based domain. It sounds like an absolutely idiotic thing to say, and yet I feel RPGs are under-represented on a place called RPGMaker.net, what with every other month's Featured Game being a platformer.
5.) Not Commercial. Obviously.

Doesn't mean I won't consider things that fail to meet these criteria, but that should at least give a general direction. I do at least somewhat know where my biases lie. You are also welcome to suggest a game that you didn't personally create... but I don't realistically see anyone doing that, and I'm primarily looking to help active developers gain an outsider's perspective on their projects, and another playtester, rather than being funny or interesting or anything.

So, suggest away!

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Bacylae Revolution: Session 2
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Had a brief talk with Marrend about Runes in the mean. PageUp/Down shift through characters, and all three of buying runes, equipping runes, and unequipping runes cost me, thus the act of removing Minotaur was nothing short as an act of self-sabotage. The game does tell me such cost, but I guess I overlooked it, trying to mash my way to selecting a different character. It probably won't be the last time I have button issues.

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Grinded for a bit, and realized the Medicines enemies drop are far more valuable than the gold they drop, so got the units to 13 or so. Didn't help a bit with the Plants/Bandits on Glikx, so I just snuck past the area without getting into any battles, hoping I'd find a shop on the other side. Instead, found some more allies.



Four of them, all Bandits. They're the first ones to get any actual attempt at characterization. Simple, but it's all it needs to be. I know Gail is the leader, Sevat is an asshole. As bandits, they benefit from weakening the nobility. They joined at level 11 and have better gear than I can buy, and the four combined have an attack-all, so I guess they're my entire new party now. Also, we've now got both a Karina and a Karuna. Also also, Gail means to say 'reins of government from', not 'reigns of government form'. ...I actually didn't even notice those typos earlier. Not even sure Reign/Rein is wrong, as you're reining in the reigning ruler. Anyway.



Okay. Group battles. I got a bit excited for a second, but it doesn't look like it's a real reason to use multiple characters. It just tosses you to this kind of nothing screen, without any descriptor of anything, and no ability to choose the teams. As near as I can tell, all I can do is mash Enter and hope for the best, as there's no skills, targetting, enemy status, or anything. Those coloured 38/63 might be important, but I got no idea what that may be. Went for a while, and then the enemy archers started going ballistic and started doing 170+ damage on every action. So that didn't go great.

Re-try went better, mostly as the Orange team got a lot of early evades and crits, and Archer didn't later on. Realized what that enemy status screen was about; there's only two enemies, an Infantry and an Archer, with the Archer only coming up when Infantry is dead. Sucror's number is expected damage taken/dealt for them specifically. Tactic seems to be to use the Sucror team early, as they heal when not attacking. Still, we're typically eating 3x the damage we deal, which isn't a great look, but we outnumber them, so a winner is me. All in all, not terribly compelling, and certainly less so than a regular battle. Aaaaaand four more units arrive out of the ether.

Our next goal is Wal Pinnacle. Is THAT the mountain I've mistaken both the volcano and the range for? Are we really doing three mountians back-to-back-to-back? I know I keep bringing it up and it's super not a big deal, but it does strike me as a little silly. I suppose it's not even that fair as the volcano is fairly different, but I just, like, I've never seen a volcano be a location you visit in the first 30 minutes of a game.



It seems now that we've taken over the entire Imperial Capital, THIS is the real base. All the units I've recruited are wandering around. Their dialogue isn't anything amazing, but it at least passes the bar, and most character seem to have a whiff of a personality or background. Seems like Oharu lets you summon any encounter table on a whim.

That merchant from earlier is here. Of those four who joined when I took the castle, only one is playable, the other are other kinds of 'shopkeepers'. Someone lets me adjust the MWin's colours, something I could do from the start. I can just hear the strain to get 108 people here and have them have SOME purpose.

So now that I can see the pieces come together, for real this time, personal opinion time. This is what should've been happening at Natasha's old base, or at least partially. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that, at least our key units should wander that castle, at least while it's our base of operations. They can leave for the main castle when we get it. The vendors, yeah whatever, they can stay. Kinda think that Rune girl shouldn't be at Natasha's castle at all, as all I was able to do was harm myself with it at that point. If there isn't a 'better' Rune buy-list, maybe Rune editting should be available as soon as you get the main Imperial castle? And even if there is, maybe split the duties across multiple people, so your options expand with time? Maybe this already happens.

Skipped her earlier, but there's this Blackjack girl, Mae, at Natasha's old castle. Thing is, I'm, uh, not sure what the buttons actually are. I... can't find Stand. Enter and Space both seem to Hit, Esc and Delete are forfeit, thus absolutely useless. Are A/B/C programmable in the options? No? Hm. Z hits too. We're getting closer... Found it! It was Shift. Swear I tried that before... Aaaaand now I have infinite money, especially as Blackjack is a pretty easy game to win at, and Mae doesn't win in a draw. Personally, this is why I don't like the idea of gambling/minigames when save-anywhere is allowed, especially when I can bet millions every round; if the cap was in the hundreds, it'd be pretty inoffensive. That said, I won't abuse it if I don't have to. ....Prrretty sure I'll need to, though.



I had noticed the ability to distribute party XP before now, but I didn't think it would've amounted to all that much. Turns out, I've got more than enough to take Sarah from 15 to 50, more than tripling her stats. So I guess that fault's on me. Maybe explains the huge boost in enemy quality. While I'm probably going to regret not making one uber-character, it's enough split six-ways to get a group to mostly reach 21.

Now fighting Monks on the Pinnacle, Aurelie's Inevitable Blade does a whopping 300 to all enemies, even if it does half-kill her in the process. Far better than anyone else can do, even better than Rush. One board into here, and I've got five new characters, all combatants. Some are as high as level 27 and 35, probably making me splitting my experience a foolish endeavour. I've actually completely lost track of the number of characters I have now.

I've also finally bought new equipment here, but the upgrades in stats are relatively minimal, weapon-wise. Armour-wise, +2 across five different slots is a lot more noticeable, and honestly, less important right now. Enemies are were already only doing one-third of one character's life per attack, while soaking up all but the absolute strongest attacks for single-digit damage. Mild typo note; Poelyn is supposed to be Poleyn. Split Mail is probably supposed to be Splint Mail, but at least Split is a word, so, whatever.

There's something about Runes I gotta figure out, as while two of the new recruits are Water mages, what spells have have isn't the same. That's actually pretty interesting, but I don't know the full context yet. If I tried to put Fire on, say, Kerry, would she get four spells, or would perhaps she only have access to just one? Doesn't look like there's a Rune shop here, so I'll do it when I get back home.

Mina's Water did darn near 1000 to everyone. That's... yikes. Meanwhile, Best Friends, an attack that uses two characters' turns, is doing like 50, and Unicorn, which Paralyzes the user, is doing maybe 15. Later encounters with weaker enemies keep these general ratios. Female Monks seem immune to Light/Dark attacks, but even still, it looks like we're entering the age of mages only. I've always seen inklings of this, but if this is how things stay, this game's balance is completely busted. I didn't notice any earlier as spells were either prohibitively expensive before now, only produced meh results (Sarah's light arrow against the plants), and the Earth mage from the early game has like zero offensive spells. Mina's attack-all Water spell costs 2 MP. Maybe it's just Mina who's busted. Time will tell.

I wasn't sure I was done in Wal Pinnacle, but since I couldn't find anything else to do, went home, and yup, that was it. Time for another skirmish. Bleh. Sarah and Mina are now level 50, with 5 others being 30. Now that I'm here, I think I should investigate how Runes work.



Okay. It seems I was getting a little confused, because Sarah and Mina have 'better' versions of Light/Water Runes, so they have slightly different spells. They're not semi-unique lists per character. While, unique as that may be, it is a little disorienting, especially as Mina's got a spell for 2 MP that a normal water mage gets for 7 MP. Hold on. I'm editting Runes in the Castle, and... they're free to edit here?!? Yeah, at the old castle, when you click Attach, that part of the menu changes to show prices. No such thing happens at the Imperial Palace. And backing out of the menu, can confirm it's free. This NEEDS to be made consistent. It might be a different story if getting free Rune changes at the Imperial Palace was a reward, but you're handed her for free (or virtually free; she might've joined when Momo the librarian did, or something like that, but that's still like a two-minute walk).

Coupled with the self-harm I did early game, I would personally just introduce Runes either after Glikx Range, or just before Glikx Range, and the reason I got bodied there was because I wasn't utilizing the new mechanic. But that comes to an issue I don't have enough foresight on; I'm REALLY worried physical users are going to turn out worthless for the remainder of this game. Lord knows I've never seen Unicorn/Minotaur break 30 damage, against enemies with 500+ HP. If I'm just in a 'physicals suck right now' rut of the game, that's totally fine.



I found a book girl in that fort in the forest, and she runs this library, host to this screen. It gives a description of every character (and also location/event). This is, again, far more description and detail than 90% of these characters have ever gotten. It was a great find, but all the same, makes me a little sad, because you see none of this in-game. It tells me that Marrend had some foresight in character planning, but I think a lot of it got left in his head and never makes in into the game. Something I think happens with a lot of people, myself included, really. Oh yeah, and not that I ever used her, but Sylvia in my party is misspelled as Slyvia here.

There's also the baths on the bottom floor (random aside; is it weird this castle, and the others so far, for that matter, is 75% underground? Aren't castles, like, literally towering structures?) where pre-determined (those with Unities, I think) sets of characters have brief conversations with each other. Also, it looks like I've got 46/108 characters, and have all around seen about 45% of this game so far in a bit over 2 hours.

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Bacylae Revolution: Session Final
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Starting off with another skirmish. Still not great. Took 3 attempts. Pretty sure it's all luck. Character level appears to affect nothing here.

While I'm sure this is supposed to emulate some aspect of Suikoden, in its current state, it just isn't very good. My personal thought, (and this is a very 'me' answer, because it's exactly what I do in Draug's Resurrection), would be each of the 3+ teams splits off and fights their own individual battle(s). Lose any one, and either you lose the whole event (simply have the other team leaders say they're getting overwhelmed and then the gameover cutscene), or, the more complex version, another team has to cover that front and re-fight those enemies. It gives some reason to use more characters. Though, I noticed several armies consist largely of NPCs (Natasha, Feroz, Hans, Zoe, other people I don't think I recognize), so some team makeups would have to change. Such a functionality of multiple teams might still happen later in the game, though, dunno.



Hm. Even the game seems to be aware how mad OP Mina. Going to the Duke's keep in the north. At his castle, recruiting his goons (7 of them) before even talking to him.

Oh. This duel of a few elite units against the Duke is... another army skirmish fight. Isn't this literally the opposite of what we were asked to do? Thankfully, there's no crit-happy Archer Unit this time, so it only took one go-around.

Beating him gave another four characters. Of those 11 new units in the past 5 minutes, 8 are combatants, most of them being classed as Thieves. Including the Duke himself, oddly. They're all level 44-46. So, it's official then, we were indeed supposed to jump straight from level 20 to 50 in the span of about one area.

Sounds like an incoming invasion from the Mainland. So I guess we really are on an itty-bitty island, after all. Back to Wal, get 4 more allies; all combatants. A reminder that that's a solid dozen new characters joining without a single battle in between them (especially since I can use Okiku to warp around for free).

Um, so I'm going through the Timberlands, and, as per usual, Mina dominates, other spells are doing about a third of her, and attempts at physicals doing about a tenth of that. Enemies do about 1 damage (except to Kerry, who is still level 35, who takes about 80, or 1 damage if blocking). Cockatrices and Ogres drop about 7000 xp (really low); Werewolves drop 200,000 xp. Why did recruiting Noel bring like seven other people? The game was getting better at at least having recruits exist on the map as individual units. Not that many of them got enough dialogue to make them feel like they had sufficient reason to join. Then again, we control 2/3rds of the island, maybe they're just afraid of us.



Okay, now, this doesn't really matter, but here's some enemies with WAAAY too wide sprites being stuck on top of each other. Battles are pretty much a haze. Actually, I think in this section, things are getting a bit better. Balance is still odd, but I'm used to it by now. Enemies are starting to use magic, so they can sometimes do meaningful damage again. What is fun is Sarah having a passive Silence rune on her head, and having her mass-Silence the enemies via Best Friends. Which, yeah, I think that's what should be noted about Unities; they can be completely stuffed if one of the members dies first. So it makes sense for them to be slow, but high-reward if nobody dies.

Random aside; it only now occurs to me now we haven't fought a single boss. And also, honestly, I'd hesistate to call any of these locales 'dungeons'.

One more awful Skirmish, and Hillary, the would-be main villain joins with very little fanfare. Sitting on 106/108 characters. After a while of wandering, there's someone I missed on Wal Pinnacle. They want money to join, so I guess it's time for excess Blackjack. 100,000 GP later (which, by the way, I started with about 10k GP after selling all the excess equipment/runes I've had piling up, so getting them is NOT feasible without Blackjack abuse), I've got everybody.



Oh yeah, so here's what the equip screen looks like now. As you can see, that's a fairly stupid number of characters. And I'm sure that's not even the full list. I'm not even sure it's half the list. So, the question is, what separates any one character or class from another? Fairly little. Class determines what equipment they can use, and characters within a class can have pretty random stat distribution. So I'd say it's classes being the same that's the bigger issue, as equipment means fairly little. I'm sure I could come up with some very rough ideas to make them more distinct, but I don't know if there's much point in changing things at this point. The game isn't really designed around battles, so it'd be a lot of effort for very little payoff.

The grand finale consists of yet another skirmish battle (which I dominated because most teams have Rest now), then the game's sole boss, who couldn't even hurt me through Canopy Defense. About eight Final Flames later (which was doing ~1700 from Sarah/Mina/Olivia, while Luxaren Allure was doing maybe 150), a few more words are said, and it then whisks through all 108 characters at quite a pace. I could definitely see it being too fast for some people to read.



It then lets you save, but trying to reload the save just boots you to the title sceen. Odd. Might be standard VXAce protocol. Not that important.
Total time was 4:04:53.

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It's fairly clear there's a LOT of little things wrong with numbers, ratios, scaling, and balancing. Magic damage needs to be reduced, Weapon Runes need to be improved, enemies probably need to be more HP, less defense (so weak units can contribute). Offensive equipment needs to do more, and there should maybe probably be a shop update sometime before claiming the Imperial Palace. The good news is, I think the majority of this can be made much better with relatively little effort.

What's more complicated is finding a good levelling curve, because right now, the fact I can (and sure seems like should) get a character from 30 to 50 in about 2 battles via Party XP is absolutely ridiculous and stupid. I don't think, in theory, Party XP is a bad idea, but could you softcap it so you can only raise a character up the the party's single highest level? Which is to say, if Aurelie is level 34, anybody else could use XP to reach 34, but no higher, and Aurelie herself cannot use Party XP until someone else surpasses her. I don't think there's a lot to do about the torrent of characters. Taking them out feels silly at this point, but all the same, they're genuinely clogging down some menus with the sheer mass of flesh under my command.

...And that's kind of the big thing. There's no sane way a four-hour game can properly sustain even 20 playable characters. What's here is the framework, if that, for a much bigger game. Battles and regions pass in the blink of an eye, once you understand how to exploit the battle system's holes. It's conceivable you could re-work each section of the game to be much, much longer, the battle system more fleshed out and balanced, areas to have their own gimmicks (such as something like slashing/thrusting weapons not being allowed on Wal Pinnacle, a home for monks), making characters/classes having their own virtues/flaws, but, by that point, it might as well be a completely different game.

Notes from Province sounds like it's right up my alley. I'll see if I can't get a part done by the end of the week.

...Is what I'd say, if I weren't having the exact same .exe issue I had with Keeper of the Fog. I'll definitely need to look a lot further into this, as it seems like it's gonna be a recurring issue. If I ever get it to work, though, I'll absolutely play it. Looking around a little, I've found a fair few other people complaining about this 'extract failed' issue... back in 2016, and it doesn't look like they came up with much of a solution, either. If it wouldn't be too much of a hassle, could you make a .zip for your game, as well?

Atiya, the password puzzle is fine. At least, once that book name-drops Celephais, it's really easy to backtrace the collection it's from. It is, after all, the driving point of about 80% of the game, so I don't think you can hand it out too easily.

I personally did think the cussing was a bit overkill, especially towards the end, but I didn't feel too much like bringing it to attention. Dana is justifiably angry at the end, so angry = sweary is reasonable enough. It's, also, well, it's very easy to call out a mechanical shortcoming as it's pretty much an objective affair, but in spite of / because of my rambling nature, I don't consider myself a particularly good writer, so I don't feel qualified to call out dialogue quibbles unless it's really obviously bad.

I definitely don't want to give the impression that Princess Pri was bad, just that I had aggressively nothing at all to say about it, which was kind of a problem for me when I hoped to do both a review and some fanart for last year's Secret Santa. In all honesty, it was a bit tricky to say as much as I did about Keeper of the Fog without it feeling like a play-by-play of every room, which would feel kinda self-defeating for a short game, I'd think.

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Notes from Province: Session 1
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This first part is going to be a bit scattered, since I generally don't feel I have much worthwhile to say just yet, as it'd mostly amount to walking into stores and finding out what they do. They're certainly written fine, and the adventurer's shop in particular stands out as pretty funny when I tried to go into his kitchen, but I just don't see that as very interesting or insightful to anyone at all. I'm simply wandering around town and learning stuff, not really making active decisions in the process. And that's perfectly fine.

First though, lemme back up to the very start. Two presumable party members, Sita and Cyl, make quite poor first impressions in the first couple minutes of the game, the former attacking you with less than no reason and the latter being a homeless woman sleeping in your house. Very shortly after that, you're given free-roam of the town.

And from that, what comes to mind from wandering around the town for about half an hour is Harvest Moon / Rune Factory. Or maybe Animal Crossing is more apt, as Mr. Rooftop seems like a pretty on-point evil Tom Nook meme wannabe.



I'm not sure how complicated it all is to set up in RPGMaker VX Ace, but the house mechanics appear to be quite impressive to me. Although, being an RPG, I suspect I'll ignore the house-decorating as much as possible to save money to buy better equipment early.



Speaking of maybe-not-that-impressive-but-I-think-is-neat, all the interactables in the environment have little ellipses above them. Very handy to tell what you can look at and what you can't. And as this screen mentions, day and night seem like a pretty huge deal, which further cements the Rune Factory analogy.



I also must note that the game has quite an impressive amount of progress logs and checklists and overall a very player-friendly interface. I do think if there's anything missing from the base menu, it's time of day. Maybe it's just something I don't have yet, like getting the ability to run on the field from Rio. Actually, since I later found a clock in the Hot Springs/Inn, I'm almost certain I'll find one sooner or later, so probably disregard this.



Further on this, even in-battle, the game is generous enough to supply you with ample information, even down to each enemy's individual tactics, like the hornet multi-attacking and being super-weak to Counter as a result. It's neat and definitely makes them feel distinct, possibly at the cost of immediately defanging themselves. Low-key feels like something you'd either get from a scholar-type party member scanning them or from defeating enough of them, but I'm getting distracted. It's good.

There's a surprising number of fights in-town, not the least of which are the wandering hornets. Somehow, they don't bother anybody else. Anyway, they seem to work fairly well as intros to Kyme's various skills, who I initially pegged as the party's tank due to his moveset, even before I found shields for him. That said, Recovery seems incredibly good for being absolutely free. Maybe I'm just used to MP being a resource you have to spend with care, but having an easy way to recover it gives you a lot more options in battle a lot more frequently.

Lemme append my earlier statement about not making active decisions. I suppose I did make a conscientious decision to keep wandering town after finding the route to Frost Falls and to keep wandering around town after finding the medicine thief. It's currently shortly past midnight (Hot Springs clock), and I hope I don't suddenly faint when 1 AM comes around, and I hope James and Lily's mom doesn't die from me ignoring that sidequest for so long. I don't think the latter will happen, but definitely curious about the former, especially with how big a deal your house is made to be.



Having had my fill of town (lots of doors are locked if it isn't evening, and I guess I mostly squandered that time-window, as evidently like 2 AM doesn't qualify as night), finally getting around to finishing with the medicine, where my first party member, Ezekiel joins, even though I was absolutely stomping that assassin anyway. Next, getting around to Frost Falls, and Ezekiel leaves, after being in the party for all of 30 seconds. I was kinda wondering about how it'd handle getting party members 'early'. I wonder if they'd have just stood aside while the bandits went at me. I kind of assume they would. I later found that I probably could've gotten Sita incredibly early, too (I guess I either missed her house or it was locked by time-of-day), but the thing about Counter is, it's a busted ability when alone, but wholly unreliable when in a team, so ironically, I think finding other people might actually be making me weaker short-term.



Frost Falls is an extremely short area, and basically re-affirms that Cyl is basically wholly unstable. Doing the area started a new day, which I guess put an end to my hypothetical goal of never sleeping. This seems like a thematically appropriate place to call it a session, even though I don't feel like I personally accomplished much. I actually recruited Sita in her house before deciding to call it quits, but nevermind that. Next session, I think I'll start by looking at the arena Ryoma mentioned up north.

Bugs / Oversights / Typos:
- When first entering the Dance Studio, Rio was doing his inputs off-center from his D-Pad. I think it's due to him wandering around a bit, so it's not a guarantee he'll be in the center when movement starts.
- Buff tutorial text vs. Zack has some text go offscreen.
- Ryoma softlocked the game after giving me three shields. I was in his spot when he tried to sit down. The dancer kept dancing, but I couldn't move or open the menu. I initiated conversation from his left, closer to the piano.
- 'C' wasn't assigned to the C key initially. It's the input that Shift/Spacebar is, but. I fixed it by using F1, but I had to start a new save for a minute to re-find that bit of info. Maybe this was changed from another RPGMaker game? It seemed like it affects all save files once changes. Maybe I changed it by accident when mashing buttons to try and find a run button at some point. Definitely hazy on this, and I'm probably straight-up wrong here, but maybe you should take a look, just in case.
- Cyl referred to herself as 'a women' after defeating the first Snow Urchin. Cyl seems like nothing short of a lunatic though, so maybe referring to herself simultaneously in first-and-third-person is on brand.