Full Games List
Featured Games
New Games
Reviews
Images
Blogs
Game Updates
Images Feedback Summary
Game Design Highlights
Tutorials
Articles
Scripts
Utilities / Plugins
Resources
Engines
Engine Bulletins
What is Makerscore?
Past Events
Achievements
Forums
Post History
Chat
New to RMN?
Full Store List
RMN Music Pack (free)
Add Review
Subscribe
Nominate
Submit Media
RSS
Its been a while
Coy13- 03/19/2010 08:25 PM
- 1371 views
Posts 
Pages:
1
View playlists
CloseI have played your demo twice now and have plenty of detailed feedback for you to consider. Given that you started another blog topic regarding the battle system, I'll mention all battle-related comments there and everything else here. I realize that you must have tried to put together this demo quickly to be able to release in it time for RS! X, but I felt the need to point out anything that can be improved upon just to be sure you are aware of it. Sorry if it's a bit extensive, but I am trying to be thorough.
For anybody playing the demo, WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS!:
Regarding the church scene at the beginning:
- I like that although you show all the blood and bodies early, when you show Vusui decapitating somebody he uses a cross-slash (X) and the head just gets cut off and disappears, with no blood splattering or squirting unlike a certain scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1 (perhaps you have seen it!). I suspect some might complain about the first part, but definitely the second it's as clean as you can make without getting complaints about it too gory.
- I did notice the double shadow detail of people in the church which is nice.
- I would eventually like to see some scenes either as dreams or flashbacks of what Vusui went through that made him want to lose his soul. Show them not all at once, but little by little to keep it interesting.
Regarding the tent scene up to the two battles that occur right after:
- When leaving the tent to head to the first fight, Matu walks to the left edge of the screen when just before it was mentioned that the enemy was east. He probably needs to walk towards the other side for it to make sense and in case somebody missed reading the directions, as I did in my first playthrough. I found myself trying to leave through the left-hand side, until I eventually figured it out.
- When the guards, one with the blue helmet and one with silver, speak they are both misidentified as Vusui in the text box even though you have the right faceset for them.
- The faceset showing Til's eyes can probably be creepier and some Psycho/horror movie type BGM would make the point that she's not to be messed around with.
- After Vusui says that Til should be treated as merchandise and Matu tries to appease her saying Vusui's bad tempered. I didn't feel that was a good enough argument for Til to start fighting on their behalf right away after that unless she is really naive.
Regarding dialogue:
- Check your spelling and have somebody do it for you.
- Try to use complete words in each line and avoid using the hyphen (-) at the end of line. Whenever possible try to use complete sentences in each the text box. People can otherwise easily lose track of what's being said.
- In dialogue in RPGs, you don't need to enclose what is being said in quotation marks (" "). I noticed in some parts you used them, in others you didn't.
- Use punctuation marks (,.) to make what's being said more understandable.
- Either your text boxes are too small or your fonts are too large, because in a couple of places the right part or half of the last line of text got cutoff. In couple of other places, you had text boxes that were excessively large (about a third of the screen) for the amount of text shown (one or two lines). FYI, I used Arial font for both playthroughs.
Regarding the menu (FYI, I installed the XP RTP):
- Game crashed when I tried to looking through the windowskins options when I got to Perfect Chaos and Blizzard Maker whose files are not included in the RTP. There might have been other options between those two, but I couldn't get to see the other options.
- The options of changing BGM and SE volumes as well as BGM during battle are well implemented. This last feature is nice, because sometimes having the same BGM play over and over gets annoying.
- I had two missing (blank) fonts option that if chosen made no text appear: the one after Arial and the one after Comic Sans MS. If you are going give players the options, make sure to include fonts that are not commonly included with Windows and make sure to put some sort of readme giving them instructions to install them.
- The Equipment option seems to be included to show of all the equipment available in inventory what each one can equip. You can actually do the same within the Equip option of the menu, for each character, with the bonus that you can find out what kind of equipment it is and how it affects stats and attributes. Thus, I feel Equipment is redundant and less useful.
Other observations:
- It would be nice if you somehow address in a future release how Matu ended up with Vusui. They seem to have opposing personalities, from what I could tell.
- In the cards tutorial, I suggest that they are chosen under the Item option to be used, either in or out of battle depending on what type of card it is.
- In the Dark Woods 2 map, there's slime near the upper right corner of the screen, near a treasure chest, that's stuck in place.
- Some of the screens containing enemies were too wide, so it could have been easy to miss one of them, if you wanted to kill them all as I did, or a treasure chest. Personally, I like the screen before the boss, since the path, while winding, allowed confronting all the enemies somewhere along the way.
- It is nice that in your screens that you have roads showing paths that eventually lead to the next screen or treasure.
- Instead of just having the sound of falling rain when out of battle as the only background sound you could have some creepy mood-setting BGM proper to places that have zombies among the monsters you encounter.
- I hope you eventually have places to shop to buy gear upgrades, and healing items.
- When equipping the T-Virus Charm, game crashed and had message "Unable to find Graphics/Icons/CMS/stat_zombieâ€.
- When the boss and Vusui speak before the final battle, the faceset of Matu appears in both cases with the text. After leaving the forest for the world map, Matu's faceset reappears but the text's use of curse words makes me think it is Vusui who's actually speaking.
- I found the miniature version of city at the end of the demo to very nice.
For anybody playing the demo, WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS!:
Regarding the church scene at the beginning:
- I like that although you show all the blood and bodies early, when you show Vusui decapitating somebody he uses a cross-slash (X) and the head just gets cut off and disappears, with no blood splattering or squirting unlike a certain scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1 (perhaps you have seen it!). I suspect some might complain about the first part, but definitely the second it's as clean as you can make without getting complaints about it too gory.
- I did notice the double shadow detail of people in the church which is nice.
- I would eventually like to see some scenes either as dreams or flashbacks of what Vusui went through that made him want to lose his soul. Show them not all at once, but little by little to keep it interesting.
Regarding the tent scene up to the two battles that occur right after:
- When leaving the tent to head to the first fight, Matu walks to the left edge of the screen when just before it was mentioned that the enemy was east. He probably needs to walk towards the other side for it to make sense and in case somebody missed reading the directions, as I did in my first playthrough. I found myself trying to leave through the left-hand side, until I eventually figured it out.
- When the guards, one with the blue helmet and one with silver, speak they are both misidentified as Vusui in the text box even though you have the right faceset for them.
- The faceset showing Til's eyes can probably be creepier and some Psycho/horror movie type BGM would make the point that she's not to be messed around with.
- After Vusui says that Til should be treated as merchandise and Matu tries to appease her saying Vusui's bad tempered. I didn't feel that was a good enough argument for Til to start fighting on their behalf right away after that unless she is really naive.
Regarding dialogue:
- Check your spelling and have somebody do it for you.
- Try to use complete words in each line and avoid using the hyphen (-) at the end of line. Whenever possible try to use complete sentences in each the text box. People can otherwise easily lose track of what's being said.
- In dialogue in RPGs, you don't need to enclose what is being said in quotation marks (" "). I noticed in some parts you used them, in others you didn't.
- Use punctuation marks (,.) to make what's being said more understandable.
- Either your text boxes are too small or your fonts are too large, because in a couple of places the right part or half of the last line of text got cutoff. In couple of other places, you had text boxes that were excessively large (about a third of the screen) for the amount of text shown (one or two lines). FYI, I used Arial font for both playthroughs.
Regarding the menu (FYI, I installed the XP RTP):
- Game crashed when I tried to looking through the windowskins options when I got to Perfect Chaos and Blizzard Maker whose files are not included in the RTP. There might have been other options between those two, but I couldn't get to see the other options.
- The options of changing BGM and SE volumes as well as BGM during battle are well implemented. This last feature is nice, because sometimes having the same BGM play over and over gets annoying.
- I had two missing (blank) fonts option that if chosen made no text appear: the one after Arial and the one after Comic Sans MS. If you are going give players the options, make sure to include fonts that are not commonly included with Windows and make sure to put some sort of readme giving them instructions to install them.
- The Equipment option seems to be included to show of all the equipment available in inventory what each one can equip. You can actually do the same within the Equip option of the menu, for each character, with the bonus that you can find out what kind of equipment it is and how it affects stats and attributes. Thus, I feel Equipment is redundant and less useful.
Other observations:
- It would be nice if you somehow address in a future release how Matu ended up with Vusui. They seem to have opposing personalities, from what I could tell.
- In the cards tutorial, I suggest that they are chosen under the Item option to be used, either in or out of battle depending on what type of card it is.
- In the Dark Woods 2 map, there's slime near the upper right corner of the screen, near a treasure chest, that's stuck in place.
- Some of the screens containing enemies were too wide, so it could have been easy to miss one of them, if you wanted to kill them all as I did, or a treasure chest. Personally, I like the screen before the boss, since the path, while winding, allowed confronting all the enemies somewhere along the way.
- It is nice that in your screens that you have roads showing paths that eventually lead to the next screen or treasure.
- Instead of just having the sound of falling rain when out of battle as the only background sound you could have some creepy mood-setting BGM proper to places that have zombies among the monsters you encounter.
- I hope you eventually have places to shop to buy gear upgrades, and healing items.
- When equipping the T-Virus Charm, game crashed and had message "Unable to find Graphics/Icons/CMS/stat_zombieâ€.
- When the boss and Vusui speak before the final battle, the faceset of Matu appears in both cases with the text. After leaving the forest for the world map, Matu's faceset reappears but the text's use of curse words makes me think it is Vusui who's actually speaking.
- I found the miniature version of city at the end of the demo to very nice.
Coy13
326
Thanks edchuy now I can adress all of these problems. Also to tell the truth I made this demo months ago, I just never finished it. I've been working on other games but I may come back to this if enough people want me to.
Coy13,
I'm really sorry, but I just realized that I didn't include the battle related comments for your consideration (copy and paste error I guess). Here it is:
Battle-related (non-system) comments:
- I found the information in the monster book very useful, particularly knowing the strengths and weaknesses which I used to plan my battles and beat enemies more quickly. Although at first, I didn't understand what “straight†meant. Eventually, I understood it as just a regular melee Attack
- I noticed that the party got completely healed after winning each fight, except for the first few fights before a bridge in either the second or third screen in the forest. If you ran away from the fight, you would not be healed and negative status afflictions remain.
Battle tutorial comments:
- A skill tutorial might be useful, perhaps explaining what type of skills each character will have available. I suggest you explain what choosing Taunt does either as a description when chosen during battle or within the tutorial.
- During the battle tutorial, you mention that the "Threats" status is in the left-hand side and CP is under HP, when they are now in the right-hand side and CP is next to HP.
- I think you could explain a little how the choices you make during each character's turn affect the "Threats" status. For example, I couldn't understand why one character's action could affect could sometimes affect the "Threat" status of the other members of the party as well. Also, I found using a battle card during a turn didn't change the status.
- Regarding how CP works, I would like to see a more detailed explanation of how the choice each character makes during their turn affect the CP regeneration after their turn. For example, I couldn't understand why you recovered double the normal CP if you defended and didn't recover any if you used medic skills.
- Regarding the time-based turn system, I think you need to explain how the current action, might make that character's next turn sooner or later. I couldn't quite figure out how it worked.
- It would also be useful to mention the negative and positive status that can be obtained in battle and describe their effects. In particular, at first, I couldn't figure out what zombie did. In other RPGs I have played it makes a character permanently berserk or confused, which is not the case in your game.
In-Battle related comments:
- Having all the skills available in the demo for the characters probably made the demo easier than you intend the actual game will probably be.
- The arrows to show which enemy you are targeting can lead confusion. Having the enemy sprite blink as you do for the active characters would work nicely.
- When battles started with fast enemies, particularly crawlers, they were already hitting my party members.
- Overdrive needs to be implemented.
- I found if you pressed the escape button accidentally when in the main menu of battle actions, you skipped your character's turn. I would have liked a warning to avoid doing it.
- I didn't find changing my stance useful, although I'm sure it would have made the boss battle easier.
- I found the Fiend Edge to be overpowered.
- I found that sometimes Til's spells (photo-, cryo-, tele- kinesis) and even Vusui's Azure Flame would be reflected to damage the caster, when attacking crawlers, slimes, zombies and the boss at the end. Did you really intend it to work this way?
- I used Phoenix Blood in battle to heal only if Matu didn't have enough CP in his turn or was stunned. Also, when someone was seriously hurt and I wanted to prevent being killed by one of the enemies' next turns, usually when HP after zombie or poisoned status.
- I found using the Flying Sword ability reduced the enemies' melee attack too much.
- When a character gets attacked with sludge he/she can get this purple ring status that heals him/her. Is this the way you intended this to work?
- From their descriptions , Jump and Aerial slash seem to do the same thing: lower hit rate. Perhaps you can change one of them to lower the enemy's agility.
- I didn't see the “Come On!†ability as a choice for Vusui. From description, it sounds similar to what Taunt does.
- I didn't using changing Stance useful, although it would probably have helped me beat the final boss more quickly.
Comments on Abilities Used:
- For Vusui, used Flying Sword especially during first turn to weaken the attack of the enemy with strongest melee attack (zombie or crawler), when not using regular melee attack.
- For Matu, used regular melee Attack unless needing to heal somebody, in which case usually used Medkit, sometimes Injection. Liked using Frag Out since I found it to be the only multiple enemy attack and because it does a lot of damage. Its drawback is the amount of CP needed to use it.
- For Til, used Photokinesis in the first turn to try to blind the enemy with the strongest melee attack. If her CP was too low in to use an ability in the other turns, I did a melee attack, unless the only enemies remaining were slimes. In that case, I defended to recover CP. If her CP was high enough, I would use either photo-, cryo- or tele- kinesis depending on the enemy's weakness and what I wanted to accomplish for that turn. Because of this strategy and being the fastest character in the party, she was also the most targeted for enemy attacks. She was at risk of dying in battle especially if she got inflicted with the zombie status.
Comments on Enemies Encountered:
- Of the regular enemies encountered, I found slimes to be the hardest and most damaging, since it's hard to do regular melee damage (at least until getting the Fiend Edge, which gave Vusui the ability to kill them with 1 regular melee attack) and because of the different status ailments their attacks can produce.
- I found zombies to cause quite some damage with regular attacks, especially if critical. Thus, I tried to either blind them or weaken their attack in the first turn of my characters.
- I found the only ways crawlers are a threat is when they cause stun and because their regular melee Attack can do some moderate damage.
- I found the boss at the end to be quite challenging, as expected, obviously because of the high HP and because of having access to the skills of all the regular monsters. Also, because regular melee Attacks were useless against it.
I'm really sorry, but I just realized that I didn't include the battle related comments for your consideration (copy and paste error I guess). Here it is:
Battle-related (non-system) comments:
- I found the information in the monster book very useful, particularly knowing the strengths and weaknesses which I used to plan my battles and beat enemies more quickly. Although at first, I didn't understand what “straight†meant. Eventually, I understood it as just a regular melee Attack
- I noticed that the party got completely healed after winning each fight, except for the first few fights before a bridge in either the second or third screen in the forest. If you ran away from the fight, you would not be healed and negative status afflictions remain.
Battle tutorial comments:
- A skill tutorial might be useful, perhaps explaining what type of skills each character will have available. I suggest you explain what choosing Taunt does either as a description when chosen during battle or within the tutorial.
- During the battle tutorial, you mention that the "Threats" status is in the left-hand side and CP is under HP, when they are now in the right-hand side and CP is next to HP.
- I think you could explain a little how the choices you make during each character's turn affect the "Threats" status. For example, I couldn't understand why one character's action could affect could sometimes affect the "Threat" status of the other members of the party as well. Also, I found using a battle card during a turn didn't change the status.
- Regarding how CP works, I would like to see a more detailed explanation of how the choice each character makes during their turn affect the CP regeneration after their turn. For example, I couldn't understand why you recovered double the normal CP if you defended and didn't recover any if you used medic skills.
- Regarding the time-based turn system, I think you need to explain how the current action, might make that character's next turn sooner or later. I couldn't quite figure out how it worked.
- It would also be useful to mention the negative and positive status that can be obtained in battle and describe their effects. In particular, at first, I couldn't figure out what zombie did. In other RPGs I have played it makes a character permanently berserk or confused, which is not the case in your game.
In-Battle related comments:
- Having all the skills available in the demo for the characters probably made the demo easier than you intend the actual game will probably be.
- The arrows to show which enemy you are targeting can lead confusion. Having the enemy sprite blink as you do for the active characters would work nicely.
- When battles started with fast enemies, particularly crawlers, they were already hitting my party members.
- Overdrive needs to be implemented.
- I found if you pressed the escape button accidentally when in the main menu of battle actions, you skipped your character's turn. I would have liked a warning to avoid doing it.
- I didn't find changing my stance useful, although I'm sure it would have made the boss battle easier.
- I found the Fiend Edge to be overpowered.
- I found that sometimes Til's spells (photo-, cryo-, tele- kinesis) and even Vusui's Azure Flame would be reflected to damage the caster, when attacking crawlers, slimes, zombies and the boss at the end. Did you really intend it to work this way?
- I used Phoenix Blood in battle to heal only if Matu didn't have enough CP in his turn or was stunned. Also, when someone was seriously hurt and I wanted to prevent being killed by one of the enemies' next turns, usually when HP after zombie or poisoned status.
- I found using the Flying Sword ability reduced the enemies' melee attack too much.
- When a character gets attacked with sludge he/she can get this purple ring status that heals him/her. Is this the way you intended this to work?
- From their descriptions , Jump and Aerial slash seem to do the same thing: lower hit rate. Perhaps you can change one of them to lower the enemy's agility.
- I didn't see the “Come On!†ability as a choice for Vusui. From description, it sounds similar to what Taunt does.
- I didn't using changing Stance useful, although it would probably have helped me beat the final boss more quickly.
Comments on Abilities Used:
- For Vusui, used Flying Sword especially during first turn to weaken the attack of the enemy with strongest melee attack (zombie or crawler), when not using regular melee attack.
- For Matu, used regular melee Attack unless needing to heal somebody, in which case usually used Medkit, sometimes Injection. Liked using Frag Out since I found it to be the only multiple enemy attack and because it does a lot of damage. Its drawback is the amount of CP needed to use it.
- For Til, used Photokinesis in the first turn to try to blind the enemy with the strongest melee attack. If her CP was too low in to use an ability in the other turns, I did a melee attack, unless the only enemies remaining were slimes. In that case, I defended to recover CP. If her CP was high enough, I would use either photo-, cryo- or tele- kinesis depending on the enemy's weakness and what I wanted to accomplish for that turn. Because of this strategy and being the fastest character in the party, she was also the most targeted for enemy attacks. She was at risk of dying in battle especially if she got inflicted with the zombie status.
Comments on Enemies Encountered:
- Of the regular enemies encountered, I found slimes to be the hardest and most damaging, since it's hard to do regular melee damage (at least until getting the Fiend Edge, which gave Vusui the ability to kill them with 1 regular melee attack) and because of the different status ailments their attacks can produce.
- I found zombies to cause quite some damage with regular attacks, especially if critical. Thus, I tried to either blind them or weaken their attack in the first turn of my characters.
- I found the only ways crawlers are a threat is when they cause stun and because their regular melee Attack can do some moderate damage.
- I found the boss at the end to be quite challenging, as expected, obviously because of the high HP and because of having access to the skills of all the regular monsters. Also, because regular melee Attacks were useless against it.
Pages:
1
