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(V0.2 Demo) Stellar Ideas Stranded In Slowness

Another review, and all that I've sworn to defend, to win the honor of coming back to RMN... uhhhh. Something like that? So today, my lovelies, we're going to be trying something new (and, surprise surprise, another thing I've procrastinated on) -- I'm actually going to be covering a game demo!

Things will be handled somewhat different with this review compared to my usual format. A big portion of the gameplay for this demo seems to be its combat, and so it will have its own section between "The Pros" and "The Cons", covering both good and bad aspects of battles. But enough talk; let's have at it!


Story
In a pleasant surprise, there's actually an evented intro sequence with moving sprites! Your mysterious hooded character that you get to name crashes their rowboat into some rocks, and having washed ashore in a forested locale is given the advice to seek work if desired when they come to. Not much else to do with the new pad you're given, so why not? Otherwise, there's pretty much no story in this game from what I've seen.


Mechanics
The game has a very retro, and in some ways single-player MMORPG, vibe. You go on missions to obtain loot items from critters and natural goods you can pick up along the way. There seems to be a big emphasis on crafting items, and surprisingly you can get some raw materials from shops. However, the shop goods and manuals to learn crafting recipes are all super-expensive (which works for a soft-lock of sorts for a demo), so you'll be stuck with your basic gear till you can make new stuff.

Speaking of your basic gear, you actually get a beginning loadout: a dagger and light shield, a sword and heavy shield, or a spear and heavy shield. These give you a DPS, balanced, or Tank build respectively. At first I wondered why the dagger was described as high-damage compared to a spear, but found the stabby implement hits twice per turn, in exchange for its paired shield offering less Defense.

Lastly, you learn abilities based on Ability Points you accumulate alongside Experience Points at the end of each battle. When you level up, you also get bonus AP for that added boost to learn the basic skills. There's a good number of abilities to choose from, and a good number of them seem to be based on your initial weapon choice.


The Pros
There are a lot of good ideas that resonate with me. I mean, a lot. The graphics seem to be custom-made and quasi-retro (grayscale and seemingly based on MV's default assets), and look decent enough. You start with a canteen that can be refilled at a well in the town center, which restores all HP when used in a Dark-Souls-esque "Estus Flask" fashion... and even restores all HP when used!

As for other features? The creator also put in more simplified stats, instead of using all of MV's defaults. There's a bank where you can deposit your gold pieces, and which collects interest for extra money over time. There's also a practice grounds for fighting, and you need to craft practice weapons for it for once in seemingly all of RPG history. Apparently, you can even use a bulletin board sign in-town to fast-travel to different areas in the wilderness and dungeons!

Lastly, there is a journal that you can access in your pause menu, and you're even clued into a brief tutorial-esque note in your character's house. And heck, you can even upgrade the Canteen to hold more water over time. Lastly, the creator even knew how to integrate their own custom icon to the game window!


The Combat System
So the generic gist of the game seems to be its combat scenarios. Usually you can only get into fights by trudging through tall-ish grass, a la Pokemon; sometimes, you might encounter an enemy that serves as an on-screen encounter. While random AND evented mook encounters are usually not a good idea, the clear distinction between where you can and cannot fight random foes (and these regions being separate) works well.

I managed to get to my 2nd Level after two fights, but uh... quite an ordeal it felt like! There's no easy way around this -- in this current version, combat is pretty sluggish. There's a notable delay between you and your foe's turn announcement, and another after they move forward but before the attack animation itself. It's not dreadfully long, but a bit jarring and makes combat feel like it takes a while.

Normally this wouldn't be so bad. After all, the basic rat (your only adversary type in the tall grass at the start) drops pretty easy. And hey, the enemies I've encountered have three different moves that seem thought-out and strategic. The rat can bide time by trying to stun, and can boost its own critical hit rating.

But the main issue comes with your character's opening weaknesses. First, they start with no abilities other than a basic weapon attack, making your options a bit monotonous in an already-delayed battle format. But the biggest problem seems to be your character's SP. Like the default TP from RPG Maker MV, this system powers all of your non-item abilities in combat, and regenerates per turn as you take damage. Even your basic attack uses up SP, and at the start you can only make about 3~4 normal attacks before you run out and cannot attack.

This is mitigated, however, by your hero's version of the Guard command. Using it lowers the damage you take that round, while giving you back some HP and a decent chunk of SP with each use. My biggest gripe, however, is that this again makes battles feel longer than they need to be.

It's probably because I picked the "glass-cannon" equipment set at the start, but I was also pretty squishy against the rats I fought. Your canteen only holds one drink's worth of water at the start, and though it totally refreshes your HP, it's not much when you take a lot of damage from each attack. The rats became less of an issue when I hit Level 2, and this is just a personal complaint compounded by the fight pacing; I dig a high-risk, high-reward build, but I might stick with sword-and-board in later updates, and would recommend that loadout to people wanting to try this version of the demo.

Things got rough when I encountered the evented enemy. I'd hit Level 2 and ventured forth at full HP from the well (which also saves your game), and with my canteen filled. Due to a rat-shanking bout prior to reaching the woodland critter, my SP wasn't as high as it was when I left town. My first turn was spent defending to get SP back; the critter has a move that lowers my Defense and damages, and is plenty durable compared to the rat. I don't wanna spoil its other moves or what it is, but the on-screen-encounter creature's skills are a pretty good set-up/unleash combo if I do say so myself.

As it were, however, the creature beat me down pretty easy with my lowered Defense and its combo's beneficial effects. I managed to run away and survived (if barely) to chug my canteen and return to town. The encounter disappeared, and I'm not sure if it respawns or not as I didn't go back out that way during my play session. If you have trouble, reader, bear in mind that RMMV has you hit the Escape key to access the menu to try and flee during combat!


The Cons
The music. The blasted music is droning and repetitive, and this is a huuuuge pain in the ass for me because of my audiophilia (not even kidding about that -- I need bearable background noise in games so bad that I can't get in the zone if it's muted).

Outside of the victory tune and a potential game over BGM, that boring track is all you get for the game's music. At the least, you have an Options menu to turn the tune off, and the SFX are fairly accurate to the quasi-retro vibe. But paired with the slow movement pace across the maps, areas that are a bit too big (and usually empty indoors), and the long-winded combat, this game needs a few tune-ups with its pacing.

Minor complaints include the fact that the Upgrade Shop and the Hunters' Guild signs are very similar, and that the NPCs that don't peddle goods or quests have one-line, generic dialogue. Also, there are only two enemy types that I've encountered in my session, but I feel they're well-built so I can't bitch-n'-moan about enemy choices too much.


Overall Thoughts
The game has a lot of potential, but just a half-hour of play felt twice as long. As much as pick-up-and-play games are a ton of fun, I don't think the design choices that were implemented are working well for this current build. Strandent seems to accentuate its fighting system, and when that is a sluggish slog-fest with little substance beyond, the whole experience seems to crumble.

There's nothing wrong with combat-based games, of course! Every creator should stick to their strong suits to succeed at making something they can be proud of. But as it stands right now, this demo was something of a chore to play through.

My biggest suggestions of things to fix in future builds are as follows:
  • The game NEEDS to have a more snappy fight system
  • Maybe the indoor maps can be spruced up with more objects, or at least made smaller so that the empty space isn't as bad
  • Maybe throw in an auto-dash option, if possible
  • Ye gods and sciences, better background music or more tracks


Though I don't think I should give a score to a demo, if this were a completed game I'd award it... a 3/5, but barely a 3? The game has plenty of cool ideas that I'd love to see come to fruition, and the finished product seems like it'd be a ton of fun. Even if I felt stranded in the world of Strandent thanks to the game's flow, I'd likely get lost in this game once these issues are fixed in later updates.

Posts

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Thanks for the review. Strandent is now at v0.4 and new updates are released on the 1st of each month so a lot of things will be changing up until it's complete. There is a long ways to go. In the latest update I changed how classes work. They are now tied to weapons and you can change classes at a Well as well as manage upgrades. You also upgrade your stats now in a menu.

Weapons also deal damage based on Weapon Scaling. Each weapon scales with your Strength and Dexterity with a letter rating. I've also added 50+ pieces of equipment. Since I've done these things though it messed up a lot of events so the island won't be available in the current build. Instead I changed the intro so there will be a story and you start off in prison.

I'm sorry about the music. I'll try to improve it as the game move further along. I'm doing my own music and art. I've been upgrading the art as I'm going along and there is some color added to the game. Once the game is finished it should have full color.

I'll also try in the future to add action sequences and hopefully that will speed up the combat some. I'm always open to suggestions. Thanks for playing!
AtiyaTheSeeker
In all fairness, bird shrapnel isn't as deadly as wood shrapnel
5424
author=FleshToDust
Thanks for the review. Strandent is now at v0.4 and new updates are released on the 1st of each month so a lot of things will be changing up until it's complete. There is a long ways to go. In the latest update I changed how classes work. They are now tied to weapons and you can change classes at a Well as well as manage upgrades. You also upgrade your stats now in a menu.

Weapons also deal damage based on Weapon Scaling. Each weapon scales with your Strength and Dexterity with a letter rating. I've also added 50+ pieces of equipment. Since I've done these things though it messed up a lot of events so the island won't be available in the current build. Instead I changed the intro so there will be a story and you start off in prison.

I'm sorry about the music. I'll try to improve it as the game move further along. I'm doing my own music and art. I've been upgrading the art as I'm going along and there is some color added to the game. Once the game is finished it should have full color.

I'll also try in the future to add action sequences and hopefully that will speed up the combat some. I'm always open to suggestions. Thanks for playing!

Hey, not a problem. Thank you for making the game so far, and for sticking with it in light of shortcomings. It's way too easy to give up at the first signs of trouble for some, especially with a bigger project in mind (*coughitmecough*).

The new game mechanics sound neat, and am excited to see the new graphical assets too. Don't worry so much about the current tracklist; my suggestion is to try and add more musical variety by throwing in more tunes. IMO, the combat action sequences are up to you -- my only problem was the literal pace due to the pauses between each animation.

Overall, would love to see what you've got in store! I'm probably gonna stick with sword-and-board for the v0.4 additions, for the sake of making those earlier fights easier, though I may also do a separate file for the dagger-and-shield style. ;)
Not sure what would be causing a delay.

I'm also not sure what you mean when you talk about shortcomings. If you mean the lack of story, that was a deliberate design choice. I don't like story heavy games. The games I'm inspired by also either have no story or their story is very light(ex: Dark Souls, Pokemon, Oblivion, Monster Hunter) so that's more along the lines of what this game is aiming for. By the end of it I'd like it to feel very meta and competitive.

I'm making the best game I can and always open to ways of improving it. A game with ideally infinite replayability. It's inspired a lot by the Souls games and also by Monster Hunter, Oblivion and even Pokemon. It's ideally going to be about exploring, doing quests, crafting gear and managing your build where there is no single best piece of equipment. They'll all have different bonuses that contribute to different playstyles. That's my goal. I like the competitive nature of Pokemon battles and hope players find the choices difficult to make. Strength build? Dex build? HP build? Build your character around certain bonuses? Lots of choice.

It's been in development for over a year and will probably take another few. I'm in this for the long haul so no worries about that.
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