author=Darken
Finally beat it in time for the RM Cola to talk about it, figured I share since you seem to be open for feedback esp for the sequel:

tldr Thoughts:

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So yeah to echo the main problems, what kept me from fully enjoying the game were the battles. In general a lot of moves were kind of useless and most of the time it was better to just use damaging moves or straight up regular attacks. There isn't really a difficulty of losing most of the time and fights merely drag on. Except a lot of available party members don't really add much (unless they do damage, Rage Ninja for instance was a common choice for this reason). I get that something like a Parasite Ninja is cool in concept, but healing was rarely an issue until maybe the later parts. Something like a freeze move or a poison status won't really do much unless they end the battle quickly, this a common problem in a lot of RPGs. It can work, but only with a lot of fine tuning.

MP is also hard to come by aside from Beetle Ninja's move that can restore MP as long has he has 10, which was weird to me. It's tedious to restore MP for other party members and then to restore it again for myself, but I mean half the time most moves weren't worth it aside from Jaw Grapple. Which basically became my whole rotation (Restore MP/use Grapple, spam Attack). I never found a use for some of the DVD moves and it felt annoying to have only 1 at a time rather than just accumulate more moves. Some skill descriptions really didn't incentivize using them like the one that buffs enemies (why would I ever do that? I'm sure there's a hidden tradeoff where it works out but sometimes my instinct is just going to be stick what I've been using).

There's no progression system (exp or level ups) which is fine, but there also wasn't enough to look forward to. Maybe you didn't want the player restarting at level 1 for each ninja, or you simply wanted to keep the challenge steady. Thing is you kind of lose a lot of incentive to do a lot of the fights. Towards the very last dungeon the battles felt like punishments more than anything. The strategy for dealing with enemies stayed the same and with no progression there was no feeling like I could just endure it for the sake of gaining more power (which accumulatively makes further battles easier). I guess it's to say progression can sometimes alleviate average battles even if they are a headache to balance for the designer.

Broadly in the beginning it's easy for the player to waste days getting the wrong ninja or not knowing it was their only chance to get one for awhile (or even DVDs being a thing) I did enjoy the aspect of being surprised at how the game work but it felt a little punishing when it was too late to realize that I could have done something (forgetting to rehire a ninja, wasting too much money on dvds, running into an area for the first time without party ninjas and wondering why the battle was hard). Seeing that it isn't your typical RPG, it's worth to add some pointers on how crucial the day system can be.

A good battle system is when there are different viable ways to tackle a problem. If half of them are useless or I'm just guessing my way to a viable strategy (and it never changes) then as a player I don't always feel in control or feel good about making choices (like committed to a ninja hire or dvd). If there's a strategy out there that's actually fun, it's also not going to matter if the player can't find it (and is able to stick to a bread and butter). I get the appeal of the various combinations of party members at different times but certain things makes it hard to fully appreciate (and it's also hard to design).

Having said all that, and it sounds like I'm being harsh since all I talked about the battles, I wanted the battles over with so I could explore the world and appreciate a lot of the nuanced details that progress through the day system and exploring ares and seeing NPC dialogue, it's just that the battles really muddled the entire experience that I endorse rethinking how to approach rpg battles either for the sequel or for just as general advice.

RM2K3 out of the box does not always offer the best battle system, so it's actually not your fault. It's just not something you can throw together in a blender and it'll magically be good. For instance a common problem is agility and battle speeds. Enemies attacking at the same time (because they're the same enemy type and thus have the same agility) can be annoying but it can be addressed by making duplicates and giving them slightly diff agility values so you're not being hailed on constantly before making a command. That's just one of many annoying work arounds to make the battles smoothed out a bit better. (Agility is the worst in general) Everyone who has used RM2K3 over the years have just... accepted doing this kind of stuff to make it more tolerable. I would just run a battle system by RM2K3 veterans to what to improve.

Hope this is not too much, I look forward to the next game.

author=LordBlueRouge
...We talked about BeetleNinja on the podcast today. I was too nervous though and didn't do a very good job so I thought I'd post some of my notes here, since I beat it recently and I think it's worth talking about:

BeetleNinja itself plays like a mix of DeadRising, Katamari Damacy and Earthbound. The 14 day cycle is hard to get use to at first, but it gets easier once you understand how it works:

0)- Don't spend any of your money till after you fought the fish at the convenience store. That's when the real game starts and ninjas become recruit-able. After that, you'll want to make sure you have at least $2000 dollars between missions at all times.

1)-The First thing you want to do after completing the Fish mission - Save your game.
BeetleNinja is an rpgmaker2003 and has 15 slots: you'll want to use every single one of these slots in case you mess up at a particular part, earlier on.

2)The Second thing you want to do is check your phone messages and check the post office for mail. If you don't have a mission or a petty crime to solve - this is your rest day. You'll want to use this day wisely in order to properly increase BeetleNinja's stats according to your play style: i.e. if you use a lot of MP in battles, you'll want to spend your rest day drinking at the Ninja Dojo at least once, in order to increase your maximum MP, to give your some breathing room during battles.

3)If you have a mission or petty crime to solve - Don't accept the mission yet. Instead, spend the day exploring the town for more information and items or by talking to residents.

4) Once you feel you found everything in town for the day - Save your game, then - go to the Ninja Dojo and start hiring Ninjas. You can only hire a maximum of 3 ninjas at any given time. Some of them will be expensive, like Rage Ninja ($1550), but will be available to rehire from your office at a 50% discount, after hiring them the first time ($750).
If you're not happy with your current party members, you can also remove ninjas by using the Ninja removal tag on your office - but rehiring them will cost money. (this is why it's important to save.)

5) Once you feel you're ready for your mission, Accept the Mission.

6)Once you finish the mission - Don't spend any of your money - Save your game.(Anything can happen once you finish a mission). Once you have access to your phone messages and mail box again, start the cycle of exploring the town and hiring ninjas again.

BeetleNinja is a really challenging non-traditional jrpg that has a lot of thought and effort put into, not only the art and music, but also it's game design choices for a game made in rpgmaker2003. The problem is that, it's really not forthcoming about these design choices, so it's really just something you need to learn while playing the game. But, I really I hope people will sit down and actually see all the really interesting design and creative choices, that are in here - Like how, other Ninjas will sometimes appear on your missions and if you talk to them and say the right things, they'll sometimes quit their jobs and show up in the Ninja Dojo as secret, but powerful recruitable characters.

Small interesting touches like this, are what made Beetle Ninja such an interesting game for me to play through this year. They’ve created a really interesting world here with charming characters, that are actually quite memorable. I think BeetleNinja is worth checking out, just from the art assets alone - It makes me excited and wonder what future rpgmaker2003 games will look like, now that rpgmaker2003 is a viable option for creators.

EDIT: My favorite character in BeetleNinja is probably the conjoined Ninja Twins, you can eventually recruit very very late in the game. It would've been really cool to see their double-air-kick animated though.