Road To Paradise - The Dragon

EDIT: When you 'Edit' an existing download on RMN there's apparently this FUNNY!, FUNNY!, FUNNY! little bug where it says it's a link to the new download but is actually a link to the fucking old one. It's like a machine for compounding your embarrassment when you upload a bugged game. Workaround: Delete old download, Add new one, do not use Edit command.

author=Dyluck
I got a "RGSS player stopped working" error twice, and both times it happened in battle while I was choosing skills for the dragon (fire).

First off, thank you for playing, kinda flattered that you took an interest, not gonna lie.

Anyway, I have no idea why that happened. I completed four or so playthroughs as Flame Dragon Izuno without once encountering that error with the exact same combination of scripts that are in the project now. In this case, I don't know what the RGSS Player's problem is, so to speak. :\

The exposition dump by the Time Dragon is intentional. An overwhelming number of unknown proper nouns is thrown at the player, yes, for sure, but I thought it was balanced by the fact that they then immediately recruit party members that put those proper nouns in context through more natural dialogue, at least the ones that matter. I wanted to give the impression of entering a complicated fantasy world in media res without the typical "and this is the story of the world so far" expository crawl by a detached narrator.

@Kumada:

Yes, there is a known bug where enemies that die to any form of DoT (Entropy is the most conspicuous, certainly, but also On Fire!!, Poison, and Acid Arrow) visually remain on the battlefield after they are dead. I will look into it, but I was aware of it upon release and considered it moderately low priority, since it's purely aesthetic: the enemies are dying exactly when they're supposed to, when damage over time is processed at end of turn, but they're not disappearing.

author=kumada
Longbow deals damage based on "STR + DEX", but there's no STR stat. I'm guessing it's attack + dex?

Yes, it's a holdover from when Attack was called Strength because D&D. I'll fix.

author=kumada
Man, I was not expecting it to be canonical that the people in this world have chibi anatomical proportions. That is mindbendingly horrifying, that everyone on the high-fantasy side of the setting has these balloon heads and tiny bodies and everyone thinks it's normal.

in this case your nightmare fuel is my XD

I think the catty exchange between O'Hara and Lydia about this is my single favorite piece of dialogue in the game so far (although the last two lines of dialogue before the Boss of Episode is a close second). I definitely knew from the beginning that I had to lampshade the difference in graphical styles immediately, and that way it could be a gag and people would not assume that I was blind and did not see that different graphical styles existed and actively clashed.

author=kumada
-So, if you try to parlay and you were in dragonform originally, you end up in battle in your humanform without your equipment.

Yes but I think the game makes it explicitly clear that's a risk you're taking with the way the choices are phrased.

author=kumada
Having an in-combat transformation would help with things like this. It would also make Izuno a little more mechanically interesting and versatile, if there's a way to code it.

It's totally doable (for me), he's just not old enough yet. It was an ability I was planning on giving him when he hits oh somewhere around Level 15-20 in the second episode. Around Level 20-25 (2nd or 3rd episode) I plan on giving him a passive that lets him (whilst in dragonform) absorb the element that he's initially resistant to (Flame Dragon would be healed by fire attacks, etc.).

Anyway, yes, in this case, even though "naked" Izuno is no slouch as a human Sorcerer (especially if Teos throws a Haste on him and he's throwing around Acid Arrows and Force Darts like nobody's business), I did think some players would probably parlay the first time, lose the battle, reload the save, and say fuck it and charge in as a dragon the second time. Which is fine.

author=kumada
-Ah. Can't return to town once you're in the tower. I wish I knew that going in, as I would've bought only healing potions instead of this 20% exp ring. It also makes the gold you pick up in the tower a little less than useful.

There are a fair amount of healing potions to find in the tower on top of the ten you get starting out, and the save point at the entry gives a full heal. I was wondering earlier how you found the Golden Serpent ring in the tower so early on. I completely forgot you could even afford one in Veridian City. The gold is certainly useful this episode but if all goes according to plan (HA! HA!) you'll get to keep it to spend it in Episode 2.

Anyway, on the topic of healing, Teos' Regeneration is surprisingly powerful once you get it going. One good strategy is to have him Haste himself and then he can pass out two Regens a turn.

author=kumada
-Final boss wasn't too tough, but I think it helped that I stun-locked him for a couple of rounds early in the fight. I'm not sure how the mechanics work for everything behind the scenes, but the feeling I got while playing is that everything was broken, and thus everything was balanced. Like, I can give Izuno haste and more or less confirm lockdown on a single enemy by turn 2, but if that enemy is a dodgemonster, or has an automatic counter, or any number of other things, or if I whiff a round of tailwhips, then all bets are off. The level of challenge felt solid throughout the game, and all abilities felt circumstantially useful, and most equipment was side-grades. This is a style of game design that I really like.

Well firstly, thank you very much and thank you also for the super-detailed feedback. : )

Anyway, you're basically right. A lot of player and enemy abilities are what would be considered "broken" in a super traditional jRPG, but they're actually all just really powerful yet roughly in balance. And some of the less overtly broken abilities have niche uses (casting 'Slow' is not often a good use of Teos' turn)

You lucked out if you stunlocked the Lord of the Tower though.



He has 75% resistance to Stun so you essentially rolled a 4 on 1d4 twice in a row there.

I don't think you ever mentioned, what kind of dragon were you? I'm guessing Sky Dragon because you mentioned stunning enemies frequently, and Lightning Breath is a guaranteed Stun on most enemies whereas Tailwhip is just a weak physical attack with a relatively small chance of inflicting Stun, but I dunno.

Only Forest and Flame dragons get AoE breath. Frost and Sky dragons get harder hitting but single-target breath (this is like in D&D where some dragons breathe a cone and some dragons breathe a line, but it's not really analogous to it because my dragons don't correspond to D&D dragons; alignment-from-birth is stupid racist BS).

I have never tried a playthrough where I made heavy use of Tailslap, I generally only used it when Claw, Claw, Bite and breath were both on cooldown. On the other hand I had Teos cast Entropy whenever I had the chance. It's almost as efficient at taking out a dangerous enemy quickly off the board as Reave Soul as it hits for -25% HP every turn for three turns. That means by the time it's run its course, the enemy is down to a quarter of its HP, although I never had an enemy that was Aging survive the three turns it lasts, because they took damage from other sources.

But good games (IMO) have a wealth of different strategies, including some you might not anticipate, so that's why it's great to have playtesters who will try strategies you never even thought of. : )

I'll mull over the blind choice of dragon.

I took all your old sprites from what you described as a cancelled project (I think it was Shattered Wings) that you posted to the resource museum thread a few years back. I shouted out a yoink when I took them and said it was awesome you'd donated them to the public, but if you weren't following resource museum, yeah you'd not of noticed that.

If you want me to remove you from the gamepage it's no problem, though. It just seemed like a fairly significant contribution to the game, even if it wasn't specifically for the game. (Also, the 'Other' field wasn't large enough to type in something like "Sprites I Took From A Cancelled Version Of Shattered Wings" IIRC.)

But yeah let me know and it's no problem to remove you from the page, and I can keep you in the credits.

(Oh, "Earthling" means that your sprite style is used for all human beings born on Earth. All characters born on Rhyntparthea, the fantasy world in the game, use the RTP sprite style. On the other half of the gamepage, I'd just give you credit for "sprites" seeing as they're used for most of the game. But again, if you don't want to be on the game page, it is not a problem to remove you.)

Cool, and again, thanks! (Incidentally, unlike 99% of the userbase you have made multiple actually complete games that I'd actually love to play just for fun, if I ever get the chance.)