AZURE DREAMS...SORT OF.

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Does anyone remember this game?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Dreams

Well, for the 12 people or so who's heard of this game, and all 5 of the people who own it (me included), let me tell those who don't (everyone else) about it. Basically, the setting of the game is this little town in the desert at the foot of this giant monster tower. Various monsters live in the tower, but they're 1. Relatively benign, so they're not out to destroy everyone 2. Have various uses, from curing insomnia to pets, to helping out humans. Okay so they're pretty much like Pokemon.

The town thrives from monster eggs they get from the tower, and those eggs are acquired via monster hunters; people who make a living off the shit (and eggs) they find in the tower. You, a novice monster hunter, are following in the footsteps of your father, who's famous for being the only one ever to make it to the top.

So basically that's the gist of the game. The point of this topic is, well, Azure Dreams was a pretty neat game and had a lot of neat concepts, but the execution of a lot of them, well, all of them were horribly flawed. Like it's a pretty fun game, but, I'd like to see it done justice, and I believe that one of us can definitely do it! So I guess this is sort of a 'sound off' topic to discuss game concepts like this one, what we can take away from a game like this, and maybe one of us will be inspired to give it a shot? Even if not, game concept discussion is never bad. So this topic is sort of unconventional but just roll with it!

So I guess I'll list some unique concepts that Azure Dreams had that maybe we can discuss on how they could have been done better and maybe like I said, we'll see a game that's like this one but a lot better from one of us! Also if you happen to have played the game please chip in!



-The familiar/monster system could use some work. A lot of the monsters were very 'samish', and since you could only take a few with you at a time, players just sort of stuck to using one reliable monster and that's it.

-The tower has this thing where once you enter, you can't leave unless you find a certain item. Also, if you 'die' while you're in the tower, you lose all of your shit. Forever. I always thought this was pretty fucked up.

-One of the things I didn't mention above is sort of a 'town building' feature. From your fortunes you get in the tower, you can invest in building new places in town or expanding existing ones. This feature was pretty cool, except that for a lot of places, it doesn't offer anything new. For example, I remember building this pimp ass temple that didn't do jack shit. Sure, there are new scenes and shit like that, but once you max out the town, that's it. You've seen everything there is to see.

-You can get girlfriends in the game via girls in town. New girls move into the city the more shit you build. Okay, well, the side quests to get the girls affection is a pretty nice distraction from the game. But once you're their boyfriend, well, that pretty much ends there. All they do at that point is wake you up at your house and leave. They serve no gameplay purpose and you don't get to bang 'em or anything!

-There doesn't seem to be any other monster hunters in the tower. Like, you're the only one, always. There's actually a guy you can meet on the second floor but that's it. Wouldn't it be interesting to be able to come across other hunters randomly?

-You can acquire personal wealth! As the game goes on you can go from a hut and bathing in a barrel to a giant mansion and a baller Scarface-esque bathtub. But it's only for show! Eventually you run out of uses for your money, and even then, you've been spending it on just for appearance stuff.

Basically post shit!
I owned the gameboy port of this game. It was identical in almost every way to the ps1 version, except they took out the town building and the dating sim aspect.

I don't know if this was in the ps1 version or not either, but apparently it was easy to run straight up to the top of the tower the very first time you enter it. Easier than at a higher level, or so I've heard.

I remember thinking to myself about how much better LOOKING the game was than pokémon, but I think that was just the quasi-animated opening cutscene which looked amazing for a gameboy color game, let me tell you.

I still have the game somewhere, it's been through hell and back.

Speaking of old GBC monster games, anyone remember Magi Nation? That was another sweet gem from the gbc era that I have fond memories of. I don't know where my cart went though :(
I don't know if this was in the ps1 version or not either, but apparently it was easy to run straight up to the top of the tower the very first time you enter it. Easier than at a higher level, or so I've heard.

Most definitely doesn't apply to the PS1 version. Sure, I guess it's POSSIBLE, like those challenges where people try to complete FF games without leveling up and whatnot, but by no means easy.
the "cannot exit unless finding __________" is far too much. Maybe have a couple of "exit items" used to teleport you back to the 1st floor?
I remember how one of the first games I tried to make was a variant of Azure Dreams, where I added a few stuff in terms of special floors. One of these would have you race against a monster and give you a prize item upon winning and another floor would suffer some catastrophic failure upon enter, leading to the floor crumbling in some way and you'd have to hurry to the next floor within a certain amount of time.

Had the gbc port to the game as well, after having found it in some remote shop.
I remember how it always bugged me that you were halfway forced to give up on trying to make your character stay useful on the trip down to the 99th basement floor, since he always returned to level 1, Meaning that you pretty much ended up relying on the familiars, unless you felt like redoing all the floors on the way down each time you entered and grind your way down.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
Personally, I would go at this a few different ways. This is just my personal preference in how I like to design/play/develop games, however, so feel free to criticize!

-You start with ~five characters alongside the MC. As you expand the town in certain ways, new recruits will join the guild. You can take four other characters with you into the tower.
-Each character has access to two "skill pools." As a character levels, you can pick new skills for them to learn from their pools. There would be about twenty characters and 10-15 skill pools. These skills would include OOB activities, like lockpicking and "curing insomnia."
-When a character "dies," they cannot be used for two weeks due to recovery. If the MC dies, the game fast-forwards two weeks and you are auto-ejected out of the tower.
-You must pay off your father's secret giant debt a little bit every week. The goal of the game is to reach the top of the tower and repay your father's secret giant debt.
-Each day you can choose to rest (do nothing, but get a day-long stat boost if you enter the tower the next day), enter the tower, or explore the town.
-You can choose your gender and romance any of the possible male or female candidates. Each set of candidates (one male, one female) provides a unique bonus once you are engaged (sets are in place so you're not cheated out a particular bonus if you don't want to go gay)
post=140484
-Each day you can choose to rest (do nothing, but get a day-long stat boost if you enter the tower the next day), enter the tower, or explore the town.


I'm not finding any reason to not go rest->tower every time you want to enter the tower. Why even have the option?
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
post=140494
post=140484
-Each day you can choose to rest (do nothing, but get a day-long stat boost if you enter the tower the next day), enter the tower, or explore the town.
I'm not finding any reason to not go rest->tower every time you want to enter the tower. Why even have the option?

Money. It uses up a day in the week, and you have to pay off part of the debt each week. A day resting is a day not getting more money. Yes, resting will let you go farther, but probably not double the distance - it's more for "shit I know I'm going to want to deal with that big boss next, better be in tip-top shape."

Buying new bathtubs could enhance the power of Rest!
Well this is sounding like a Crazegame alright.
Hexatona
JESEUS MIMLLION SPOLERS
3702
This was one of the three reasons I bought a ps1, and I loved it from the second I heard the intro song.

I got the gb port as well, but while it expands a lot on the tower aspect, I still miss the town stuff, oh well.

post=140462
I don't know if this was in the ps1 version or not either, but apparently it was easy to run straight up to the top of the tower the very first time you enter it. Easier than at a higher level, or so I've heard.
Most definitely doesn't apply to the PS1 version. Sure, I guess it's POSSIBLE, like those challenges where people try to complete FF games without leveling up and whatnot, but by no means easy.


Where this rumor comes from is the fact that while you cannot retain your level on subsequent journeys to the tower, the level of your equipment can remain. Equip a gold sword, and keep powering it up, and rust traps will mean nothing to you.

I found that you could actually get higher in the tower if you didn't bring out your monsters AT ALL - you need the EXP. if you beat every monster you can, and don't leave a floor until it forces you to, your level basically stays the same, or above, that of the level you're on. That, plus the equipment bonuses, can take you absurdly high into the tower. The only time you need your monsters is when you're in a bind, or need healing - so you can just keep them in your bag until you get high enough in the tower that you can level them quickly.
Hexatona
JESEUS MIMLLION SPOLERS
3702
that, however, kinda takes the monster fun out of the game. I mostly ran up the tower, leveling up kewne, finding eggs, filling up my inventory, then going home for fun and profit. and the ladies.

Mmmm, Selfi
Hexatona
JESEUS MIMLLION SPOLERS
3702
Anyway, to complete my post trifcta:

About your game mechanics, and how they could be changed for the better. You mentioned that it really sucked that the object you needed to escape was in the tower itself. You could make it so that when you level up the town enough, or get the shop girl to like you enough, they could start selling items from the tower to you, like the wind crystals, or acid balls. IMO though, I'm sure their rarity was intentional to keep you running around the floors frantically.

The dungeon could also be expanded upon by having more events happen within the tower. The PS1 version only had a few, and mostly it was just finding a specific object on a floor. The GBC had you meeting up with all sorts of people, although they usually just gave you an item or something.

However, I think the hardest thing about making an AZ fangame would be the action-rpg side of it. I mean, some of the monsters had some pretty interesting abilities! One could keep splitting in half, one could put obstacles in your way, one could swim under the ground! One spits out random items when you feed it, one steals your stuff AND gets two turns for your one. To say nothing of the monster AI, and the random dungeon generation - I think making such a fangame would have to be severely stripped of features, or be an otherwise daunting undertaking.
Great thread! This was always a really interesting game to me, because it did so much so well, yet had so many annoying flaws keeping it from greatness. If they'd had one or two more sequels to fine-tune the formula they would have eventually made a bona fide classic in my opinion. So anyway, here goes.

I hated the five-item limit for entering the tower, and how monsters counted as items. Since you basically NEED* to take a weapon, shield and wind crystal (escape item) with you every time you go in, it meant you could never really go in with more than two monsters. I think that really hurt the system - in Pokemon half the strategy was picking the right monster for the right situation, but when two monsters have to last you the whole 40 floors you lose the flexibility. I would probably make it so the monsters don't count towards the five-item limit, and the player can take, say, 10 if he wants.

I also disliked the fact that monsters lost MP (or whatever it was) constantly while active, even just walking around. It made you not want to use them except in emergencies, but if you summoned them while surrounded by enemies, it was a waste of a turn that could be used to attack, so you didn't really want to use the monster there either. Like Hexatona said, you actually did far better if you avoided using them. I don't know why a monster-taming game made it so inconvenient to use monsters; if I were making a sequel, I would let the player use monsters all the time - why not?

I mostly liked the town aspect. Some of the stuff you ended up building was lame though (Anyone remember the badly translated stand-up comedy? Sheesh...) and it was a shame that it was basically running through a shopping list of predetermined stuff. In your house you got to decorate some of the rooms, but in the town all you did was hand out cheques as far as I remember. It would have been cool to have a bit more choice, maybe bring in some light sim elements. And letting the player choose a girlfriend would have been fun, rather than just having them all crowd around his bed like he's living in a deodorant advert.





* Okay, you don't need those three things... you could take more monsters and find the other items in the tower, but because your character has to start at level 1 every time, the best way to get to the top was to keep one sword and one shield and upgrade the hell out of them.
Ah, Azure Dreams. I never really got to finish the game, but it's pretty fun (and flawed as you said) and overall, I really like this series.

Personally, I find the monster concept the most interesting in the game. Sure the first few monsters might turn you off, but the latter ones are pretty cool.

So here are things I like to nitpick about the series:
1. Eggs. Yeah, I have been trying for ages to get that MAXIMUM egg. But that floor is pretty much the end game, so the MAXIMUMS there are damn deadly. Not to mention getting eggs depends most on luck and I think you can't use reload feature if the floor doesn't have the egg (the save data is erased if you die/quit I think) since if you want specific monster egg, there is a specific floor it spawned. I find this annoying.

2. I don't mind getting level down when you exit, but sometimes (especially in the beginning), getting that wind crystal just in time before you die and get all your items trashed is not an easy thing to do. Sometimes you just CAN'T find it until higher level, in which case your survival rate is slim. Good luck getting out of the trap (floor?) which lead to you surrounded by monsters.

3. Monster fusion and Arts (fire sword, bubble sword?, etc) are cool. I once combine the tall golem (block??) with something and get a gold coloured one. Am I dreaming this? Because I don't really think there is any color change in the game.

4. The monster concept in general is a pretty cool idea. This coupled with having played SMT Devil Summoner : Raidou Kuzunoha I&II, lead me to designing a summoner based game.

How about a way to let you skip levels you already completed a million times? I wouldn't make it standard, perse (have it cost something or whatever), but I think it would have been a good idea to allow the player to skip to a few floors below the last one he was on. I don't mind the concept of not being able to start where I left off if I get knocked or or escape from the tower, but having to work my way up from the shit easy first 10 floors when I'm currently working my way through the 30-40th floors is well, irritating.
I like that. Maybe you could have it so you find magic keys on the levels, and depending on which key you use at the front gate you can go to a different floor. Later on you could build and upgrade a keymakers' shop in town and buy pre-made keys for a heavy markup.

Also I think the tower should have looked more like a tower and less like a screensaver. I really think they just set up the random corridor generator, made a few basic floor tiles and then ran out of money, so just slapped a half-arsed wallpaper in the background.

I also agree that eggs were a real pain in the ass to get. You'd find one about half the time, if that, and you never knew if it was worth a damn until you got back to the town, unless you found the identification spell. It was just a contrived way to make the game longer and more tedious. Making it easy to get monsters was another thing Pokemon did right.
Hexatona
JESEUS MIMLLION SPOLERS
3702
After reading this topic, I started playing the gameboy version again, because I like to have something to do on the can at work.

One thing I remember always annoyed the crap out of my about the games was the limit of monsters you could hold - You had to upgrade your basement or house so you could keep more familiars.

Well, in the gameboy version, you start with a grand total of 4 freakin' spots. on my last expedition to the tower I came back with 6 eggs! Now my vault is half full...

On the plus side, in the game boy version, eggs and wind crystals are way more common, as well as some other rare items - and there's a 100 floor post-game to keep you interested.
This game had some pretty serious design issues, but unlike many of the SaGa games, I think the concepts had merit.

Certainly worth exploring, anyway.
post=141075
but unlike many of the SaGa games

I'LL PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE

Really a lot of the concepts in SaGa are already successful in other games, but just executed badly.
I played this game back on the day, when Konami started releasing really cool RPG out of the blue. Vandal Hearts and Suikoden 1-2 were favorites of mine alongside this classic. I don't remember it very well because it's been a lot of years since I lost the game.

It was pretty challenging for me, because I had little experience back then. I remember getting strong equipment only to lose it with a stupid mistake. And there were those monster's den attack, where a lot of beasts suddenly rained from above and you went "oh shit!"

It really had tension especially on upper levels. I was always torn between getting out with the stuff collected or going up just another level. Pretty addictive and fun, good music. It's a good game concept for adapting to an rpgmaker. Just one town, an huge dungeon and a single playable character.
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