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You took more than just a sample...

  • Liberty
  • 11/01/2017 08:47 AM
  • 27037 views
Astoria: The Holders of Power is a commercial RPG made by GoldenUnicornGaming, using RPG Maker VX Ace. Being a commercial game I will be judging it on a higher standard than I do most indie games.

The low-down is this: Astoria is a game fraught with issues that stop it from becoming a gem of a game. The biggest of these issues is the large amount of default assets in the game. Now, when I say assets, I do not mean the RTP graphics or sounds. Indeed, anyone who knows me knows that I like RTP and I encourage its use. Yes, even commercially.

So what do I mean when I say that the biggest issue is its use of default assets? Why, only the laziest of excercises when it comes to creating a game - the constant use of sample maps.

For those who do not know of what I speak, some of the engines in the RPG Maker series came with a series of maps pre-installed for examples of how to use the tiles. It was expected that people would learn through looking at these maps in a more kinetic way. Astoria makes use of these maps, albeit with some minor editing here and there, which is, in a word, lazy.

It's one of the biggest things that I look out for when it comes to making game pages and something I notice straight away when playing a game. And it's a pity that this game does this because, apart from that, it's a pretty decent game.

Is it worthy of 5 stars? Hell no. Is it an average RPG with basic controls, story and gameplay? Yes. Is it sad to see that what could have been a pretty good game fall to being lazy? Very yes.

But let's break this down a bit more, shall we?

Story-wise the game is pretty good. There's a few spelling and grammar errors here and there, but the writing is quite solid and tells the tale of a group of people who are trying to stop an evil from taking over the land... and the consequences of failing. The start was a bit rocky but it soon picked up and the characters and story did a good job of keeping me playing. There were some tropes, but a lot of thought and care obviously went in to crafting interesting characters involved in interesting goings-on.

The gameplay was a bit of a mixed bag. You won't find anything really revolutionary going on - it's pretty much a bog-standard jRPG in how it handles things. Battles aren't too different to the typical genre, nothing really stands out, but it also doesn't do a bad job of fitting the pieces together to make a fairly coherent whole that wasn't boring, at least.

Battles kept you on your toes most of the time, providing perhaps a bit too much challenge sometimes. Trash mobs didn't give you much in the way of experience and if they got lucky, could wipe your party easily, especially in some dungeons where the amount of enemies outweighed your ability to handle them. I found myself having to leave in order to stay at an inn and rest up fairly often, as well as replenish supplies a lot.

This led to some issues. See, one of the balancing issues in this game revolved around money - you couldn't get enough. You'd try to grind up some levels and gold in order to get enough money to gird your loins and rest at an inn, but when enemies are doing so much damage that you have to heal all the time, it gets to be troublesome. At one point I was going back to trash mobs from the area before just to get enough money to buy some healing items... and those mobs weren't giving much in the way of gold, but I had little choice as they were the only ones I could reliably kill without worry that I'd be getting a game over after a battle or two.

On top of that, there were some dungeons where you could get screwed over big time - you would get locked into the dungeons (with no logical reason) and be stuck with only the goods you brought in with you. One dungeon I had to do three times because I kept dying at a boss. Each do-over I would grind for more money on mobs that paid a pittance just to get another potion added to the stockpile, just so I could last a bit longer in the locked dungeon. It made no sense when it would have been easy to just allow you to leave and come back (even thought that's annoying in and of itself to have to do) but that was not an option.

The game was relatively bug free, thankfully, though at one point I remember getting a crash that puzzled me. I can't recall the details exactly, but it was around the time of the fist big town getting taken over and I got stuck in an event which when interacted with, crashed the game. I wish I'd taken a note so I could tell you more about it.

Sound... was there. It wasn't anything I could recall, really, and nothing was memorable. It existed.

Graphics was something I touched on before but will do so again. I will say that there was some effort made to try and make the sample maps used look a little more spiced up, however this presented another issue - the over-use of decoration tiles. Sometimes you couldn't see where you were going due to the sheer amount of decoration tiles used all over the place. A few times I got stuck in dungeons because I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to go... thanks to decoration tiles making the way forward impossible to discern. There were just too many.

And this is the other issue - take away the decoration tiles and maps were bland empty rooms full of big space and nothingness. The decoration tiles were used as a bandaid fix to try and hide that mapping just wasn't all that great. It was serviceable enough and there were some areas that legitimately looked pretty good, but the overuse of certain tiles just made it into a jumble of colour instead of enhancing the map and guiding the players' eye as it should have done.

And let's not start on the complete mix and match of the various graphical styles used in the game. There are very few people who can do the old "I'll use this and this together and they'll look good because I'm editing them to fit each other" thing, and this game is not one of them.

Honestly, I do recommend people play the game, if only for the characters and plot. If people like a challenge in battles, they'll probably enjoy it, despite the balance issues when it comes to money and items. And it's a decent game... but that's all it is. Decent.

You did a good job, dev, but next time don't take the lazy route - you've made some of your own maps in this game, there was really no reason to use the sample ones too. After all, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Posts

author=Euphoniac
author=Solitayre
Euphoniac, insulting people's intelligence or saying girls don't like some games because they lack the required 'skill' is uncalled for and makes you look like a dingus. I'd knock it off if I were you.
This sort of warped assessment makes me think you don't deserve the positions you occupy here on rpgmaker.net, but I don't want to argue with a chosen one/content Nazi who is allowed to judge if other users' contributions are "worthy". Accepting Liberty's partial and vengeful review is a mistake you should be ashamed of, but hey, you probably know her for a long time, maybe you even have a crush on her, so it's okay, isn't it?


So... you're basically saying that people are warped for not being sexist. Am I reading this correctly?
You're wrong, SgtMettool, because I'm not a sexist. Since I'm a misanthrope, I discriminate without discrimination. Now let me tend to something more important: Writing 0.5 star reviews for Liberty's games, for Solitayre seems to accept reviews regardless of their contents.
User was warned for this post
StevieRayBones
I refuse to grind with monsters I've just met for money.
265
I refuse to grind with monsters I've just met for money. :O
@Liberty: On Steam, the dev took issue with your claim that he did this on multiple sites. I know about his multi-account violations on this site, but what other sites did this happen on?

I believe his claim that he merely copied the review text from legit Steam accounts, but I can't argue with the consequences of using multis in this manner and breaking RMN's trust, especially when he could and should have found more ethical ways to get reviews. Plus, Steam reviews cannot be easily transferred to RMN without the original reviewer's help because of the completely different rating system.

Also, I remember that a game, "Chronicles of a Dark Lord," had the dev use multis to review their own game and even downrate a competitor's game. However, unlike Astoria, the Dark Lord game was removed from the site. Is there a reason why Astoria's page is still up?

I agree with a lot of your points in your review, especially about money drops from enemies. As a personal preference, I'm not as strict when it comes to mapping and RTP use, though this is partially because I've never seen the sample maps before. On the other hand, I'm surprised that you consider the story the strong point, since I found the villains generically evil in personality and goals.

@Euphoniac: Your arguments seem to focus more on accusing the mods of being biased against commercial devs among other vices than making an actual defense for GoldenUnicorn. And no, the game's lack of attention is not a valid defense for transferring reviews in an unethical manner. Plus, when you're this aggressive against people giving low-scoring reviews for games you like, you make it harder for others to give constructive criticism due to potential flame wars from rabid fans.

@Whoever vets these reviews: I'm surprised the transferred reviews weren't immediately detected for IP matches or whatever you use to detect sock puppet accounts.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
Could we at least get its Buzz removed?
I really respect your hard-headed posting, Bugfragged, but once popped, I can't stop.

It's funny that you mention "Chronicles Of A Dark Lord, Episode 1", because I bought that game despite knowing about the developer's shenanigans beforehand. Guess what: It didn't suck just because the developer had acted inappropiately. Seeing how the Dark Lord franchise became a success nonetheless, I slowly but surely doubt that commercial developers can gain anything from being represented on rpgmaker.net, a community responsible for people thinking that RPG Maker games should always be for free.

By the way: I received a warning from Red_Nova, so try to provoke me, and when I snap, you get rid of me for sure.
Euph, stand down.
You're not even trying to make valid arguments anymore. You're just firing personal attacks. You're only doing GoldenUnicornGaming a disservice with this infantile display of yours in his defense. That's why he hid your post on the first page. Take that as a hint from the man himself.
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
@StevieRayBones, congratulations on your new tagline!

Bugfragged
Also, I remember that a game, "Chronicles of a Dark Lord," had the dev use multis to review their own game and even downrate a competitor's game. However, unlike Astoria, the Dark Lord game was removed from the site. Is there a reason why Astoria's page is still up?


Oh! I can answer this one! Chronicles of a Dark Lord is gone because the dev ragequit. The mods here don't remove games unless they break a rule (usually if it can be called porn or if it's plagiarism; that's about the only thing that'll get a game taken down). Other than that, if a game's gone, it's because the dev took it down.
@pianotm: That makes sense. I was wondering because the page being up could potentially work against the dev and I was afraid he didn't have a say in that matter. Fortunately, that isn't the case.
The only time we remove a game is if it is itself breaking a site rule (say, lying about pornographic content, for example) or if it has been caught up in a theft claim (we hide the game until the claim is either proven or disproven. This is to protect the creator from any flames people might throw on them for something that is still unknown and based on hear-say).
There are some few cases when a game was accidentally let through the queue and had to be retroactively denied (I'll be the first to admit I've accidentally clicked the wrong button when approving/denying once or twice, but it's quickly rectified once it's noticed and the developer is let know what they need to fix.)

I don't remove games from the site because their developer is dumb about trying to promote their game by doing the wrong thing. People should make their own opinions on games and whether they want to play them or not.

The only reason I took a chance on Astoria when I don't usually buy RM games is because I saw it in the queue and thought it looked interesting and wanted to support a fellow RMNer. The reason I reviewed it was because it had issues I wanted to point out the dev that the then-reviews had missed. At the time I had no idea they were fake - only after someone asked about the discrepancy between my score and the other two scores did I even check to see if there was an issue. And, as we now know, there was. Hopefully the dev has learned a lesson from this, but we'll see.
I don't think it's fair to ban this Euphonius fellow just because of this little dispute. His statements were very polemic, but he didn't insult anyone. Everything he said was within his right of free speech, which you violated by banning him. Hopefully, I won't regret joining this community, since I evaluate a community based on how it treats its outsiders.
Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
Might be a bit of a rude assumption but

I suspect multi account ban evading here
author=Skahat
I don't think it's fair to ban this Euphonius fellow just because of this little dispute. His statements were very polemic, but he didn't insult anyone. Everything he said was within his right of free speech, which you violated by banning him. Hopefully, I won't regret joining this community, since I evaluate a community based on how it treats its outsiders.

I chatted with him on Steam and he is used to get banned.
Give him some time to cool down.
I missed all the good stuff... I need to be more active again.
Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
If you believe being banned from an internet community for being a jackass is a violation of your free speech, call a lawyer.

In fact, tell us all what they say.
Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
author=Solitaire
Did Skahat really get banned quite recently just because he had defended Euphoniac's right of free speech?


He got banned because he was a duplicate account and I suspect the same will probably happen to you soon aswell
No, your dupe accounts got banned because you're breaking the rules. Good riddance.
author=Liberty
I don't remove games from the site because their developer is dumb about trying to promote their game by doing the wrong thing. People should make their own opinions on games and whether they want to play them or not.

Final Fantasy Essence
^ ?

Final Fantasy Essence's case was a butthurt dev who couldn't handle any kind of criticism. If you told them a sprite was too tall or a tileset's colors too dark, they took offense. It was pulled on the dev's terms, not any admin's.
Linkis
Don't hate me cause I'm Cute :)
1025
Thank God I don't know how to make duplicate accounts or Link and Zelda might no longer be beloved by RMN :(

A quick inexperienced search by myself tells me this game maker has made this one game only and made approx. $1500 on kickstarter aside from anything he may have gotten from Steam.

I would think the maker might have done a little research before putting his game on a site like RMN and finding out how long RMN has been around and how knowledgeable the people running the show here might be.

Either he will give up making games or walk the straight and narrow knowing he screwed up and has learned an important lesson.

OK, gotta go buy some cat litter.
Have a good day everyone.....