LET'S PLAY UPDATES (MARCH)

Well, I finally got around to working on some RPG Maker projects for March.

Mini Dungeon

A short project I found on Gamejolt that was supposedly going to get a sequel but never did. The actual game is pretty weak narratively with the hero visiting a tower containing a supposedly legendary treasure, but only did so in order to beat up a bunch of monsters.

Unfortunately the game runs for a lot longer then it should in my opinion with it taking me around 90 minutes to beat it. This is a bit too long in my opinion since the game really doesn't have any narrative hooks to help give the player a reason to push through to the end. As a result the sheer amount of time you need to spending on grinding in this game just feels obscene. So much so that I wish it wasn't necessary at all. Especially since the developer openly admitted that the game was put together in a hurry.

Admittedly I can point to other games with issues caused by attempts at rather quick builds like "WWF vs WWF", but that game was created as part of a five hour challenge and is at least easy if you save a few chairs so the game doesn't feel like it's making you waste large amounts of your time.

And I'm someone whose dumped hundred of hours of my life into grinding in stuff like "Disgaea: Hour of Darkness". So I'm no stranger to grinding, but a short RPG Maker project really shouldn't require you to spend over 60 minutes on grinding.

After all, it's not like beating the final boss in this game is going to feel like a major accomplishment.

7K: Ancient Adversaries (Scenario 19 - Seven Forts for Seven Generals)

I tried to break away from standard tactics somewhat and actually spent this run on building a massive market barrier around my starting location to keep the AI out of my way. Oddly enough this lead to the AI mostly attacking each other since I never really put in any effort into building up any sort of notable military force until I basically had the scenario beat. And even then my war factories were behind my market barriers and thus unreachable for any units that didn't have long range attacks. So the AI basically ignored them in favor of harassing each other some more.

In a way it made it pretty easy for me to reach an overall score of 1,000 on my economy alone for the most part. Albeit, it took a while to properly build up my economy with so much of my revenue tied up in maintenance fees.