Reminiscence: The WTF Saga

I finished the demo and it was rather fun. The balance is much better than average and the dungeons had the right length. I will now try with the characters I didn't use and see how it works out.

I've now beaten it twice and used all character between the two play troughs.

Balance is, as I mentioned, much better than average. The MP/SP pool of the characters are well balanced with the length of the dungeons. You have enough to actually make a good use of the skills, but not enough to just spam the strongest move. The damage algorithm for standard attacks is also more sensible than the default (BTW, your project is unencrypted) and weapons and armor seems to have enough impact to matter, but not enough to break the game. Equipment may be a bit on the weak side actually.

Most classes are well balanced, but I noticed two which seemed considerable weaker than the others. I think I go trough what I observed about every class.

Knight: The second weakest class. His main strength is high defense. This is not so useful when the enemies target someone else. As of now, he can't really use his defense to protect allies. An offensive class can protect allies by simple killing enemies, but a defensive class cannot unless it can redirect attacks towards itself. The knight can also serve as a secondary healer, but secondary healers aren't very useful except for boss battles. You want one healer to conserve resources, but with two healers you cripple your damage output and end up needing more healing as a result on enemies getting more turns, so it doesn't pay. For boss battles, potions will allow just about anyone to be a secondary healer.

One important role the knight does have though is to increase the speed of your designated healer and secondary healer so they are guaranteed to have reactive healing. The battle Mage can do that as well however and I really don't like using characters who are only occasionally useful.

Warrior: Hits hard and can a few times hit even harder. What's not to like about him? I predict he will get better as the game progresses since he can use Combo Attack more often and said skill will never be outdated unlike spells.

Wizard: Glass cannon. Great if you want to grind and also good for dungeon crawling. There are also a few occasions when physical classes have a problem, so she's a great insurance. She does have survivability issues, but that seems to be solved near the end of the demo as Max HP increasers becomes available.

Cleric: Heals and heals well. Unfortunately, he lacks the Speed Up spell which you want to guarantee reactive healing. If you pick him you probably want the Knight or the Battle Mage as well, but having both the Cleric and one of them will harm your damage output to much. Basically, the Knight being below par holds the Cleric back as well.

Thief: The weakest character. None of his abilities are of much use and his damage output is decent, but considerable lower than average. If you pick neither the Knight or the Battle Mage he will have a use as guaranteed reactive healing, but that's it.

Monk: Hits really hard, but has no skills. Great for randoms and still good for bosses. For some reason he can obtain a weapon which robs him of the double attack in exchange of a pitiful bonus, but just stick with the default weapon.

Dark Knight: His standard attack is much weaker than that of the monk and he can only use Combo Attack a few times. However, he is likely to get better as the game progresses since Combo Attack scales well. Also, his Blindness spell is good at disarming a few dangerous situations. Still, during the demo he seems a little weaker than the Monk overall.

Battle Mage: Has healing and Speed Up in one package. He also has a Blindness and an offensive spell which has occasional uses. A great pick despite sub-par healing.

For the purpose of the demo, I think the best party would be Warrior, Monk, Battle Mage and Wizard. That team should make a short work of random encounters and perform well against bosses too. I'll maybe test it out later.

Edit: I tested it out and that party did indeed pick the game apart.

The problem I had with the thief was that his steal failed most of the time and when it did succeed I usually got the useless strings. The number of times I got something useful can be counted on the fingers. Scan wasn't very useful to me, I learned which element the wizard should use just fine without it. His gold gathering skill can get you slightly better equipment (provided you don't grind for the best equipment anyway), but since better equipment in general means better combat ability and the thief has a relative bad combat ability, that doesn't seem to pay off.

I'm surprised about the knight earlier being able to solo. His defense advantage in my file was 13 points over the fighter and a bit more over other characters. Since one point of defense in average only reduces damage by a half, this shouldn't be such a big deal, especially not since several attacks in one or another way doesn't care about defense. Granted, I didn't have the best equipment there was.

The problem with the Cleric is not that he lacks useful spells, he does have a set of very useful spells, rather it is that you want a way to guarantee that you can get the healing of faster than the boss can act. Having the worlds most powerful healing isn't useful if a boss injures a party member one turn and then the next turn finishes him/her off before the Cleric manages to heal. The Battle Mage can simple cast Speed Up the first turn and then not having to worry about it. With the Cleric you either want someone else to cast that buff or you have to rely on a faster character to heal in critical moments. The first option requires you to bring a party member who doesn't mix well with the Cleric and you rather not have to do the second since that costs you damage output.

Anyway, I thought I report two bugs while I'm at it. You can repeat the event with the urine goblin in the well despite the graphics not being there. There's a similar problem with the thieves in the tower, if you choose the wrong option you can just climb back up and then go to the southern-most chair which will initiate the whole conversation again despite the thieves having left.

Still cant beat that bandit leader and the same group as above but now level 14 for everyone....getting bored with trying and am dying within first three rounds and I have the best of items for my guys.
Does the beggar in the hut ever actually get any money?
I feel like I am spinning my wheels. I cant get a grappling hook until I get my next ranking but am sure the ranking has to do with my problem above with the bandit leader. All I am doing is grinding but even with an additional 2 levels it is still a beeyatch. I dont find any additional quests to do at this point.
Does the lucky staff actually help at the casino? I have been silly enough to spend over an hour $10 at a time playing with it equipped and it doesnt seem to work any better on or off. I even gave it to my wizard AND had the thief in my party because he has good luck and it doesnt work any better.
Anyway i hope you get back to this page soon and give some pointers please....or someone else, I guess.