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Think RPG Maker doesn't do Action Games? Think again!
Slashandz- 05/27/2010 03:53 AM
- 4274 views
Avarice is an Action RPG created by Anamei Productions and Solitayre for Game Chill 2009.
I'll have to be honest, I'm bad at Action RPG's. Actually that's an understatment. I'm horrible at Action RPGs.
But at a simple 2-3 hour estimated game time, it would be silly not to at least give this game a try.
Does Avarice live up to expectations, or has it fallen victim to greed?
The Good:
Visuals:
The most obvious feature about this game is that it looks good. And I don't mean "the RTP was used very well".
I'm talking custom character graphics, sprites, well mapped towns and dungeons: the works.
It's apparent that painstaking detail was placed into the creation of every single map in the game.
And the end result is phenomenal.
Seriously, just look at this. It's professional quality.
Working Custom Battle System:
If you've tried playing/designing an Action RPG on a RPG Maker before, you'll realize it doesn't work out too well.
Be it the restricting grid-based movement, unreliable event triggers, or difficulty in programming attacks, RPG Maker
action games often fall flat on their face. This is not at all the case here. From what I can only assume to be a mountain
of scripts, Avarice features a fantastic Action-based system. Not only does it remove the grid-locked movement,
but it even allows for control by both the mouse and keyboard! How cool is that?
Granted, it's not perfect. I often grew frustrated when fighting smaller enemies because spells/bullets would miss
more often than hit. Don't be surprised if your super powerful Fireball spell flies right over a rapidly approaching Slime.
Furthermore, my character got locked up once while playing. Somehow I got knocked backwards into a rock,
where I became immobile and had to restart the game. This only happened a single time, but it's still worth pointing out.
Customization:
Avarice features a trait not found in most Action RPG's: Heavy Customization. In this case, the Customization is two-fold.
First is the equipment. All weapons cost about the same price. The weapon you wield isn't based on which has the
higher stats than the others. Each weapon has pro's and con's. A sword might have more power, but a whip would have
more range. Or if you're really concerned about range, why not use a gun? Except that then requires ammo purchases...
Do you see where I'm going with this? You wield weapons based on your own play style.
But Avarice doesn't stop there! It introduces "Talents". These are upgradable skills that further reflect your personal play style.
Let's look at Vandeli, our mage. He can upgrade the damage-dealing Elemental Magic, Warding buff and Curse debuff magic,
Enchants which allow you to access secret items, and several other skills. Again, which talents to upgrade is totally up to you.
I personally went for an agressive fire mage. Here's my Talents screen.
Special Touches:
You know those optional things that designers include in games to show they went the extra mile? This game has a ton.
Right off the bat the player is treated to a custom animated Title Screen. All of the menus in the game are custom-made
which, though difficult to learn at first, really help facilitate combat once you get the hang of them. And they look really cool as well.
On top of that, the game features four different difficulty settings! According to Avarice's profile, enemies will change up
their attack plans based on the difficulty selected. However, due to my epic failing at Action RPG's, I chose not to go past Normal mode.
We'll just have to take the team's word on that one.
And the Bad:
Character Relationships:
There's no denying it, Vandeli and Alexis are two great protagonists. One is a Wizard who thinks he's the greatest thing to walk the Earth.
The other is a down-to-earth Guild worker with a bad reputation. Unfortunately, the problem occurs when the two are thrown together.
The player is given very weak reasons for the two teaming up. Vandeli wants to keep Alexis around because she's good at opening doors,
and Alexis keeps Vandeli around because... well I'm still not sure.
What it comes down to is their personalities just don't click. You would think after 30 seconds Vandeli would go lone-wolf and kill Alexis,
or she would get sick of Vandeli's over-inflated ego and leave. But rather the two inexplicably stay together. As a result,
most of the conversations between the two end up coming off somewhat forced, with Vandeli showing more interest or Alexis
showing more patience than they each normally would.
Balance:
I've already noted that this game has tremendous customization... but this is severely downplayed when balance issues are thrown into the mix.
This game was made in a short time limit, so I can only assume there wasn't enough time to finish tweaking. First off is weapons.
Most enemies have projectiles, so melee is useless. You take way too much damage trying to approach the enemy.
Magic starts off viable, but with each rank, it gains very little additional damage. Soon it becomes way too weak. MP costs don't help things either.
Then there's the guns. These do a lot of damage, and can be used continuously as long as you have remaining ammo (you will).
It seems the game was designed with guns in mind, as the game suddenly becomes much harder if you use anything else.
The game also offers two control types, but again they are quite unbalanced. With the keyboard you need to line up with
the enemy, and then shoot bullets in a straight line. It's tedious. With the mouse, you simply point at the enemy and then click.
Keyboard players will find the game frustratingly difficult.
And on the subject of difficulty: it massively jumps from area to area. You'll be killing enemies in one hit in one area, and slowly whittling
down their HP in the next. These difficulty jumps make it hard to practice. This is especially true of bosses.
This is the first boss. On easy mode.
Goal:
The game begins with Vandeli attacking a village in search of an object everyone refers to as "it". What is "it"? We don't know.
But for some reason we need to get "it", and that is our motivation to complete the game. I'm all for mystery, but I prefer
having a tangible carrot at the end of the stick. I need to kill Lavos because he'll destroy the world. I need to rescue Zelda because she's
the cute princess of Hyrule. But why should I care about "it"? I don't even know what "it" is!
Jargon:
It's clear that the designers have completely developed the world in which Avarice takes place. Every town has a name,
there's several organizations running around, and there's an explanation for everything. However, the player is kept out of the loop on most of this.
Names and places are often tossed around like as if they're common knowledge, and I began to feel more and more lost.
Couldn't you have at least given me a quick rundown on the world?
...Should I be taking notes?
Final Thoughts/Suggestions for Improvement:
Avarice is certainly an impressive game. It features excellent visuals and plenty of custom touches that stand well above other games.
The battles are handled so well that at times I wondered if I really was playing an RMVX game. Unfortunetly, the story really failed to hold
my interest. While it was always fun seeing what wise crack Vandeli would make next, the lack of a tangible goal or a clear
developing relationship between the protagonists killed my motivation.
My advice to you, "Team Losers", which you may use or completely disregard, is to rethink the beginning of your game.
A player begins a game with no background knowledge or familiarity with its world. The player should be, directly or indirectly,
introduced to the world they now exist in. A prologue explaining where everything is taking place, even a simple text scroll,
is far less alienating than nothing at all. When the player's avatar knows far more than the actual player, it can be quite frustrating.
You took the time to design this great world, could you fill us in on it please?
Final Score: 4/5 "Very Good"
I'll have to be honest, I'm bad at Action RPG's. Actually that's an understatment. I'm horrible at Action RPGs.
But at a simple 2-3 hour estimated game time, it would be silly not to at least give this game a try.
Does Avarice live up to expectations, or has it fallen victim to greed?
The Good:
Visuals:
The most obvious feature about this game is that it looks good. And I don't mean "the RTP was used very well".
I'm talking custom character graphics, sprites, well mapped towns and dungeons: the works.
It's apparent that painstaking detail was placed into the creation of every single map in the game.
And the end result is phenomenal.
Seriously, just look at this. It's professional quality.
Working Custom Battle System:
If you've tried playing/designing an Action RPG on a RPG Maker before, you'll realize it doesn't work out too well.
Be it the restricting grid-based movement, unreliable event triggers, or difficulty in programming attacks, RPG Maker
action games often fall flat on their face. This is not at all the case here. From what I can only assume to be a mountain
of scripts, Avarice features a fantastic Action-based system. Not only does it remove the grid-locked movement,
but it even allows for control by both the mouse and keyboard! How cool is that?
Granted, it's not perfect. I often grew frustrated when fighting smaller enemies because spells/bullets would miss
more often than hit. Don't be surprised if your super powerful Fireball spell flies right over a rapidly approaching Slime.
Furthermore, my character got locked up once while playing. Somehow I got knocked backwards into a rock,
where I became immobile and had to restart the game. This only happened a single time, but it's still worth pointing out.
Customization:
Avarice features a trait not found in most Action RPG's: Heavy Customization. In this case, the Customization is two-fold.
First is the equipment. All weapons cost about the same price. The weapon you wield isn't based on which has the
higher stats than the others. Each weapon has pro's and con's. A sword might have more power, but a whip would have
more range. Or if you're really concerned about range, why not use a gun? Except that then requires ammo purchases...
Do you see where I'm going with this? You wield weapons based on your own play style.
But Avarice doesn't stop there! It introduces "Talents". These are upgradable skills that further reflect your personal play style.
Let's look at Vandeli, our mage. He can upgrade the damage-dealing Elemental Magic, Warding buff and Curse debuff magic,
Enchants which allow you to access secret items, and several other skills. Again, which talents to upgrade is totally up to you.
I personally went for an agressive fire mage. Here's my Talents screen.
Special Touches:
You know those optional things that designers include in games to show they went the extra mile? This game has a ton.
Right off the bat the player is treated to a custom animated Title Screen. All of the menus in the game are custom-made
which, though difficult to learn at first, really help facilitate combat once you get the hang of them. And they look really cool as well.
On top of that, the game features four different difficulty settings! According to Avarice's profile, enemies will change up
their attack plans based on the difficulty selected. However, due to my epic failing at Action RPG's, I chose not to go past Normal mode.
We'll just have to take the team's word on that one.
And the Bad:
Character Relationships:
There's no denying it, Vandeli and Alexis are two great protagonists. One is a Wizard who thinks he's the greatest thing to walk the Earth.
The other is a down-to-earth Guild worker with a bad reputation. Unfortunately, the problem occurs when the two are thrown together.
The player is given very weak reasons for the two teaming up. Vandeli wants to keep Alexis around because she's good at opening doors,
and Alexis keeps Vandeli around because... well I'm still not sure.
What it comes down to is their personalities just don't click. You would think after 30 seconds Vandeli would go lone-wolf and kill Alexis,
or she would get sick of Vandeli's over-inflated ego and leave. But rather the two inexplicably stay together. As a result,
most of the conversations between the two end up coming off somewhat forced, with Vandeli showing more interest or Alexis
showing more patience than they each normally would.
Balance:
I've already noted that this game has tremendous customization... but this is severely downplayed when balance issues are thrown into the mix.
This game was made in a short time limit, so I can only assume there wasn't enough time to finish tweaking. First off is weapons.
Most enemies have projectiles, so melee is useless. You take way too much damage trying to approach the enemy.
Magic starts off viable, but with each rank, it gains very little additional damage. Soon it becomes way too weak. MP costs don't help things either.
Then there's the guns. These do a lot of damage, and can be used continuously as long as you have remaining ammo (you will).
It seems the game was designed with guns in mind, as the game suddenly becomes much harder if you use anything else.
The game also offers two control types, but again they are quite unbalanced. With the keyboard you need to line up with
the enemy, and then shoot bullets in a straight line. It's tedious. With the mouse, you simply point at the enemy and then click.
Keyboard players will find the game frustratingly difficult.
And on the subject of difficulty: it massively jumps from area to area. You'll be killing enemies in one hit in one area, and slowly whittling
down their HP in the next. These difficulty jumps make it hard to practice. This is especially true of bosses.
This is the first boss. On easy mode.
Goal:
The game begins with Vandeli attacking a village in search of an object everyone refers to as "it". What is "it"? We don't know.
But for some reason we need to get "it", and that is our motivation to complete the game. I'm all for mystery, but I prefer
having a tangible carrot at the end of the stick. I need to kill Lavos because he'll destroy the world. I need to rescue Zelda because she's
the cute princess of Hyrule. But why should I care about "it"? I don't even know what "it" is!
Jargon:
It's clear that the designers have completely developed the world in which Avarice takes place. Every town has a name,
there's several organizations running around, and there's an explanation for everything. However, the player is kept out of the loop on most of this.
Names and places are often tossed around like as if they're common knowledge, and I began to feel more and more lost.
Couldn't you have at least given me a quick rundown on the world?
...Should I be taking notes?
Final Thoughts/Suggestions for Improvement:
Avarice is certainly an impressive game. It features excellent visuals and plenty of custom touches that stand well above other games.
The battles are handled so well that at times I wondered if I really was playing an RMVX game. Unfortunetly, the story really failed to hold
my interest. While it was always fun seeing what wise crack Vandeli would make next, the lack of a tangible goal or a clear
developing relationship between the protagonists killed my motivation.
My advice to you, "Team Losers", which you may use or completely disregard, is to rethink the beginning of your game.
A player begins a game with no background knowledge or familiarity with its world. The player should be, directly or indirectly,
introduced to the world they now exist in. A prologue explaining where everything is taking place, even a simple text scroll,
is far less alienating than nothing at all. When the player's avatar knows far more than the actual player, it can be quite frustrating.
You took the time to design this great world, could you fill us in on it please?
Final Score: 4/5 "Very Good"
Posts 
Pages:
1
sunshinesan
534
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CloseI need to try this out. I'm tired of turn based/active time based battle systems.
Being a short game and having nice graphics is also a bonus :D
Being a short game and having nice graphics is also a bonus :D
Hey, thanks for the great review! It is great to see some genuine criticisms here. I find myself agreeing with almost everything you said, I have noted before we didn't get to do nearly the level of character development we wanted. Vandeli's intentions are revealed after clearing the first dungeon, but it never occurred to me that this might not be early enough to get the player's interest.
Speaking of which, you can actually do the dungeons in any order. It sounds like you went to one of the harder ones first. Natalia guides the player towards easier ones first but in the end we decided to let the dungeons be cleared in any order for players looking for a challenge. Sometimes conversations even change to reflect this!
As for the world, we dropped details about it around mostly for flavor text, none of it is immediately relevant to anything happening in the game. But I'm glad you enjoyed it nonetheless!
I'll let Anaryu address your concerns with the combat.
Speaking of which, you can actually do the dungeons in any order. It sounds like you went to one of the harder ones first. Natalia guides the player towards easier ones first but in the end we decided to let the dungeons be cleared in any order for players looking for a challenge. Sometimes conversations even change to reflect this!
As for the world, we dropped details about it around mostly for flavor text, none of it is immediately relevant to anything happening in the game. But I'm glad you enjoyed it nonetheless!
I'll let Anaryu address your concerns with the combat.
Anaryu
8848
On combat you mentioned one thing that was an issue due to poor presentation more than anything, and that's the difficulty hitting enemies with certain skills (a bug with a Fireball for example.)
Certain skills hit by a pixel-type of collision detection, others by an area, small insects and targets are much easier to hit with the area-type skills like Gust, mines, a Fireball exploding on an object they're, or melee weapons.
The pixel-type collision ones tend to be a bit more powerful but are harder to hit small or fast enemies with.
Melee weapons are not nearly as easy as ranged due to their shorter range and odds of being hit more often, but the payoff is that they have a very high "surprise critical" rate - if you hit an enemy with a melee weapon before they know you're there, you will do a massive amount of damage, usually killing even tougher enemies in 1 hit. (Melee also makes any hits you take do half damage, so you can take 2x as many blows.)
Both of these facets are NOT presented clearly enough that the player ever picks up on them though, definitely something we should have included some mandatory skills and a quick tutorial on.
Things I've learned for future games:
1. For different collision types make them marked more clearly on the attacks and ensure there's a small tutorial area where they are shown effectively how to use both so it's clear
2. Enemies have vulnerable times when they can be sneaked up on, these need to be more rewarding for melee than ranged (why risk sneaking up with a melee when you can sniper rifle from well outside their normal range) - this would probably be in the form of additional rewards for melee kills.
3. Make melee defense bonuses more visible (maybe a shaded number so the player knows they're taking half as much damage vs. full damage)
* Additional suggestions or thoughts on those?
I'm a bit surprised by the fact that you didn't find magic as useful, there are certainly less spells to choose from, but they're extremely potent spells with damage usually higher than it's guns counter-part, especially as you get into the higher-tier spells like Flame Pulse and Geyser which have secondary effects or multi-hit like Bolt, etc.
I'm not sure what to do in that department except maybe make the usefulness of magic more apparent or mix enemies up so they have strengths/weaknesses to physical vs. magic? Or maybe removing MP healing items and focus on a faster MP regen?
* Additional thoughts about why you felt magic was underpowered would be welcome.
Certain skills hit by a pixel-type of collision detection, others by an area, small insects and targets are much easier to hit with the area-type skills like Gust, mines, a Fireball exploding on an object they're, or melee weapons.
The pixel-type collision ones tend to be a bit more powerful but are harder to hit small or fast enemies with.
Melee weapons are not nearly as easy as ranged due to their shorter range and odds of being hit more often, but the payoff is that they have a very high "surprise critical" rate - if you hit an enemy with a melee weapon before they know you're there, you will do a massive amount of damage, usually killing even tougher enemies in 1 hit. (Melee also makes any hits you take do half damage, so you can take 2x as many blows.)
Both of these facets are NOT presented clearly enough that the player ever picks up on them though, definitely something we should have included some mandatory skills and a quick tutorial on.
Things I've learned for future games:
1. For different collision types make them marked more clearly on the attacks and ensure there's a small tutorial area where they are shown effectively how to use both so it's clear
2. Enemies have vulnerable times when they can be sneaked up on, these need to be more rewarding for melee than ranged (why risk sneaking up with a melee when you can sniper rifle from well outside their normal range) - this would probably be in the form of additional rewards for melee kills.
3. Make melee defense bonuses more visible (maybe a shaded number so the player knows they're taking half as much damage vs. full damage)
* Additional suggestions or thoughts on those?
I'm a bit surprised by the fact that you didn't find magic as useful, there are certainly less spells to choose from, but they're extremely potent spells with damage usually higher than it's guns counter-part, especially as you get into the higher-tier spells like Flame Pulse and Geyser which have secondary effects or multi-hit like Bolt, etc.
I'm not sure what to do in that department except maybe make the usefulness of magic more apparent or mix enemies up so they have strengths/weaknesses to physical vs. magic? Or maybe removing MP healing items and focus on a faster MP regen?
* Additional thoughts about why you felt magic was underpowered would be welcome.
Slashandz
740
Solitayre:
I hope the review wasn't too lengthy! I had a lot I wanted to cover haha.
When I was exploring, I just kinda kept going North. There really wasn't any indication that I was going down a difficult path.
...Other than all of the game overs. :P
Still, the game was really fun, and I'll probably play it again in the more "proper" order.
Anaryu:
Thanks for the additional details on combat! I was unaware of a lot of these things, especially reduced damage while using melee. A quick tutorial would have greatly helped there.
All of the suggestions for future games seem good. Maybe you could make it more clear where an enemy can see as well? I sometimes was unsure how close I could get without alerting a monster.
As for Magic, I started off with Aura Bolt, which was quickly outclassed. I moved up to the Ice attack, which was lacking range and instant-damage. I then switched over to Gust, which ate my MP waaay too fast.
I finally settled on fireball, which was good, but it didn't seem to critical. The first shot of a bullet would do roughly 100 damage while fireball would do about 29. Add in MP costs, and I was sold on guns.
Still, the combat system is really impressive, and I hope my review didn't serve to belittle this in anyway. Keep up the great work!
I hope the review wasn't too lengthy! I had a lot I wanted to cover haha.
When I was exploring, I just kinda kept going North. There really wasn't any indication that I was going down a difficult path.
...Other than all of the game overs. :P
Still, the game was really fun, and I'll probably play it again in the more "proper" order.
Anaryu:
Thanks for the additional details on combat! I was unaware of a lot of these things, especially reduced damage while using melee. A quick tutorial would have greatly helped there.
All of the suggestions for future games seem good. Maybe you could make it more clear where an enemy can see as well? I sometimes was unsure how close I could get without alerting a monster.
As for Magic, I started off with Aura Bolt, which was quickly outclassed. I moved up to the Ice attack, which was lacking range and instant-damage. I then switched over to Gust, which ate my MP waaay too fast.
I finally settled on fireball, which was good, but it didn't seem to critical. The first shot of a bullet would do roughly 100 damage while fireball would do about 29. Add in MP costs, and I was sold on guns.
Still, the combat system is really impressive, and I hope my review didn't serve to belittle this in anyway. Keep up the great work!
Pages:
1
