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Too hard, too traditional, not quite there
- calunio
- 01/04/2012 01:45 AM
- 2692 views
The good thing about review events like RMN's Secret Santa 2011 is that I get to play games I probably wouldn't play otherwise. I have double reasons not to play this game, the second one being that I usually don't play demos. But in a way, it's good that I played this game in demo stage, because all my feedback will make more sense.
Version played: 12/10/2011 demo
Incarnation is, I believe, Liberty's first RMVX project. It is a simple quest-oriented RPG.
You just died. Your soul woke up in the limbo, lost and memoryless. A voice within tells you that you have one last adventure before your eternal rest. You're incarnated in the body of either a boy or a girl. Also, that voice asks you questions about your ideal friend, and your answers will determine the class of your opposite-sex companion. After that, you're thrown in a very standard town, and you have to do standard RPG tasks, like talking to people, opening treasure chests, and taking on quests.
This game is VERY standard in almost every way. So before I start complaining about that, let me talk about what's somewhat new and interesting about Incarnation.
First of all, there's this custom character creation event at the very beginning of the game that determines the class of your companion through a series of questions. I like that sort of character creation system, reminds me of Ogre Battle.
Second, there are many optional party characters that you may get through the game, some temporary, some permanent. Having more party possibilities is always a good thing. Sadly, I didn't get anyone to join my party in the time I played.
Third, most of the items you find are not identified. You have to pay someone to identify them for you.
I will admit it now: I ragequit this game. Well, not exactly ragequit, because I endured it a lot. But I didn't play to the end of the demo, because it was way too frustrating, and because I felt like I knew everything I needed to know to write a review.
My first issue with this game, like I said, is that it's TOO standard. I don't believe games have to be completely unique and original in order to be any good. Even after over two decades of gaming, I still manage to enjoy some classic genres, and I've said in previous reviews how classic genres can still turn into enjoyable games. But there's really nothing here in Incarnation. What you WILL NOT find here:
- Interesting dialogs
- Character depth
- Fresh character classes and skills
- Fresh items
- Interesting locations
- Weird monsters
- Addictive battle system mechanics
- Custom character progression
- Custom graphics
- Fun pacing
What you will find here instead
- Long and empty NPC dialogs
- Mute PCs
- Standard healer/striker/wizard classes
- Standard healing potions, scrolls, swords, shields
- Very standard town-dungeon location structure
- Traditional monsters
- A battle system that plays exactly like an unmodified version of RM2K's DBS with no battle events.
- Leveling up that doesn't make much difference.
- RTP
- Very slow pace
I'm not necessarily hating on this game for calling it "standard", since there are people who love standard, and Incarnation could very well be a game I would have loved playing like... 15 years ago. But there's a question I always ask when I see new indie games: "Why did that person decided to put energy and effort into this game? What's good about this game?" I often see people flooding forum topic with interesting game ideas, but sadly we don't have time and energy to work on every idea we have. So why, among all, select this particular one? What's special about Incarnation? (Yes, I would like an answer to this question - not cynically, just intrigued).
But those things are still not the reason I quit playing. I can endure standard. But what I can't endure is...
POINTLESSLY FRUSTRATING DIFFICULTY!
Really... what? The demo release blog says this version has more balanced battles. Seriously?
You know something's wrong with a game when you die on your first battle. One of my first quests involved getting feathers, which I could get from killing roosters. Sure, cool. My first battle was against 3 roosters. They have something like a 25% chance of paralyzing you in each attack, and they do A LOT of damage. I need two attacks to kill each, and characters have a relatively high chance of missing. Paralyzation lasts about 5 turns. So... yes, I died on the fist battle a bunch of times. And when I didn't die, I left it weak enough to have to go back to town and sleep in the inn (which is a long walk, especially because of the slow walk speed).
I came back, and did this fight1time-goback-sleep a bunch of times (dying often). It got a little easier when I decided to sell all the healing items I had found on chests to buy better equipment. It helped. But it was still hard. I was on level 3 when I stopped playing and I had all the best store items, but still I could only battle 3 times tops before having to go back and sleep.
Another bad thing about the battle system is that battles give you ridiculously low amount of XP, and your stats raise very little when you gain levels. I didn't see much hope for my future. I got really pissed when I decided to fight one of the "bosses" (black flame), and though they were not much stronger than regular enemies, they gave me ONE XP. ONE. No, really, a boss gave me 1XP.
What I recommend
I'll be honest: there are lots of things I didn't like about this game. If I were to comment on each of them, my review would be unnecessarily lengthy and overnegative. Some of my disliked are just taste issues, but most of them are complaints on design choices. Since this game is relatively old and there were no reviews and so few comments on the game profiles, I'll take it as a sign that other players were unsatisfied too, but politely decided not to say anything. I'll just post a few suggestions that could make this game much better without having to redo everything.
1 - Faster walk speed. Yes, it will do miracles to this game.
2 - Redesign the battle system entirely. Considering the type of game Incarnation is, it NEEDS fun engaging battles. Battles cannot be secondary. I'm not sure how you could do this, there are many options. You could add some tactical factor, I don't know exactly, I'm no battle specialist. You can ask people like Craze and Anaryu for suggestions.
3 - Balance. Weaker monsters. Faster character growth. Remember one thing: the game will ALWAYS be easier for you (the person who made the game) than for the players.
4 - Customization on character progression. Something like... skill trees. This is very good incentive for keeping players interested in the game, motivates them to battle and gain more XP, etc.
5 - Better intro. I like the butterfly bit, but after that there's a lot of "nothing" before the game begins to launch. You can't expect that players will know what to do just because they're inside an "I've been there" RPG town.
That's it. I could suggest some changes on other stuff, like removing the backtracking necessary to identify items adding an identify skill, or improve the soundtrack (which is mildly annoying), etc. But if you just follow the things I suggested above (which I understand are not little things), this game could improve at least 400%.
Two other smaller issues:
There are quite a few times when the message lines are wider than the message box, and parts of the text are missing;
The system graphic is pretty, but the selection is hard to see, and I often caught myself healing the wrong character cause I didn't notice which one was selected.
Final Words
I feel bad about hating so much on this game because, despite everything, it is very polished, very well thought and clearly a lot of love was put into it. But if you want players to love it as well, it needs to shine a bit more, to have more charm, more spice. I felt Incarnation was excessively conservative, unnecessarily hard, and much too slow.
I understand that the game has additional features that have not yet been implemented in the demo, but although they sound interesting, I don't think they would make much difference in terms of overall enjoyability.
Version played: 12/10/2011 demo
Incarnation is, I believe, Liberty's first RMVX project. It is a simple quest-oriented RPG.
You just died. Your soul woke up in the limbo, lost and memoryless. A voice within tells you that you have one last adventure before your eternal rest. You're incarnated in the body of either a boy or a girl. Also, that voice asks you questions about your ideal friend, and your answers will determine the class of your opposite-sex companion. After that, you're thrown in a very standard town, and you have to do standard RPG tasks, like talking to people, opening treasure chests, and taking on quests.
This game is VERY standard in almost every way. So before I start complaining about that, let me talk about what's somewhat new and interesting about Incarnation.
First of all, there's this custom character creation event at the very beginning of the game that determines the class of your companion through a series of questions. I like that sort of character creation system, reminds me of Ogre Battle.
Second, there are many optional party characters that you may get through the game, some temporary, some permanent. Having more party possibilities is always a good thing. Sadly, I didn't get anyone to join my party in the time I played.
Third, most of the items you find are not identified. You have to pay someone to identify them for you.
I will admit it now: I ragequit this game. Well, not exactly ragequit, because I endured it a lot. But I didn't play to the end of the demo, because it was way too frustrating, and because I felt like I knew everything I needed to know to write a review.
My first issue with this game, like I said, is that it's TOO standard. I don't believe games have to be completely unique and original in order to be any good. Even after over two decades of gaming, I still manage to enjoy some classic genres, and I've said in previous reviews how classic genres can still turn into enjoyable games. But there's really nothing here in Incarnation. What you WILL NOT find here:
- Interesting dialogs
- Character depth
- Fresh character classes and skills
- Fresh items
- Interesting locations
- Weird monsters
- Addictive battle system mechanics
- Custom character progression
- Custom graphics
- Fun pacing
What you will find here instead
- Long and empty NPC dialogs
- Mute PCs
- Standard healer/striker/wizard classes
- Standard healing potions, scrolls, swords, shields
- Very standard town-dungeon location structure
- Traditional monsters
- A battle system that plays exactly like an unmodified version of RM2K's DBS with no battle events.
- Leveling up that doesn't make much difference.
- RTP
- Very slow pace
I'm not necessarily hating on this game for calling it "standard", since there are people who love standard, and Incarnation could very well be a game I would have loved playing like... 15 years ago. But there's a question I always ask when I see new indie games: "Why did that person decided to put energy and effort into this game? What's good about this game?" I often see people flooding forum topic with interesting game ideas, but sadly we don't have time and energy to work on every idea we have. So why, among all, select this particular one? What's special about Incarnation? (Yes, I would like an answer to this question - not cynically, just intrigued).
But those things are still not the reason I quit playing. I can endure standard. But what I can't endure is...
POINTLESSLY FRUSTRATING DIFFICULTY!
Really... what? The demo release blog says this version has more balanced battles. Seriously?
You know something's wrong with a game when you die on your first battle. One of my first quests involved getting feathers, which I could get from killing roosters. Sure, cool. My first battle was against 3 roosters. They have something like a 25% chance of paralyzing you in each attack, and they do A LOT of damage. I need two attacks to kill each, and characters have a relatively high chance of missing. Paralyzation lasts about 5 turns. So... yes, I died on the fist battle a bunch of times. And when I didn't die, I left it weak enough to have to go back to town and sleep in the inn (which is a long walk, especially because of the slow walk speed).
I came back, and did this fight1time-goback-sleep a bunch of times (dying often). It got a little easier when I decided to sell all the healing items I had found on chests to buy better equipment. It helped. But it was still hard. I was on level 3 when I stopped playing and I had all the best store items, but still I could only battle 3 times tops before having to go back and sleep.
Another bad thing about the battle system is that battles give you ridiculously low amount of XP, and your stats raise very little when you gain levels. I didn't see much hope for my future. I got really pissed when I decided to fight one of the "bosses" (black flame), and though they were not much stronger than regular enemies, they gave me ONE XP. ONE. No, really, a boss gave me 1XP.
What I recommend
I'll be honest: there are lots of things I didn't like about this game. If I were to comment on each of them, my review would be unnecessarily lengthy and overnegative. Some of my disliked are just taste issues, but most of them are complaints on design choices. Since this game is relatively old and there were no reviews and so few comments on the game profiles, I'll take it as a sign that other players were unsatisfied too, but politely decided not to say anything. I'll just post a few suggestions that could make this game much better without having to redo everything.
1 - Faster walk speed. Yes, it will do miracles to this game.
2 - Redesign the battle system entirely. Considering the type of game Incarnation is, it NEEDS fun engaging battles. Battles cannot be secondary. I'm not sure how you could do this, there are many options. You could add some tactical factor, I don't know exactly, I'm no battle specialist. You can ask people like Craze and Anaryu for suggestions.
3 - Balance. Weaker monsters. Faster character growth. Remember one thing: the game will ALWAYS be easier for you (the person who made the game) than for the players.
4 - Customization on character progression. Something like... skill trees. This is very good incentive for keeping players interested in the game, motivates them to battle and gain more XP, etc.
5 - Better intro. I like the butterfly bit, but after that there's a lot of "nothing" before the game begins to launch. You can't expect that players will know what to do just because they're inside an "I've been there" RPG town.
That's it. I could suggest some changes on other stuff, like removing the backtracking necessary to identify items adding an identify skill, or improve the soundtrack (which is mildly annoying), etc. But if you just follow the things I suggested above (which I understand are not little things), this game could improve at least 400%.
Two other smaller issues:
There are quite a few times when the message lines are wider than the message box, and parts of the text are missing;
The system graphic is pretty, but the selection is hard to see, and I often caught myself healing the wrong character cause I didn't notice which one was selected.
Final Words
I feel bad about hating so much on this game because, despite everything, it is very polished, very well thought and clearly a lot of love was put into it. But if you want players to love it as well, it needs to shine a bit more, to have more charm, more spice. I felt Incarnation was excessively conservative, unnecessarily hard, and much too slow.
I understand that the game has additional features that have not yet been implemented in the demo, but although they sound interesting, I don't think they would make much difference in terms of overall enjoyability.
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author=calunio
I understand if you enjoyed it, but I'd be surprised if you said it wasn't super hard.
No, it was pretty hard.
Oh, shit. Didn't see this posted up! Thanks for the review, calunio! I appreciate that you took the time to play it.
One or two things, though...
As stated there's no story in this version (it was stated, right? In the introduction. I may have taken that out, though. If so, oops! ^.^;) hence no main story. The main character and his/her companion is my attempt at a silent hero, but the other characters that join you do talk and add character depth.
There are more classes and skills - they aren't in the demo though. The other character you can get (who you missed) is a Sun Knight... I'd love to know which companion you got.
I thought the items were pretty original in some aspects - the fruit and vegetables that do stuff in battle, though granted the scrolls are normal fare, as are the healing items, somewhat.
Later one there are more interesting places like an underwater city/volcano, underground snow town, dead forest... for instance. The beginning is rather normal, though. As for weird monsters, I dunno, they were kinda weird imo. They could probably use a bit more work though.
DBS, well... I like the DBS. ^.^ I'll try to add more to it, but it will remain DBS. I'm working on a skill creation idea, though.
There's a lot of edited graphics in the game, they're done in the RTP style, so they might not stick out much - which is great really! That means they aren't badly done. :P
I'll try to make the NPCs more engaging, but the mute PC will stay. The other companions will talk - once you get them.
They're the standard because they work. Though they each have good and bad points. The male and female versions are different from each other. For instance, the Witch has wind and debuff skills, whilst the warlock focuses on earth and affliction instead.
Already talked about the items, though the weapons will probably undergo some changes. Keep in mind they are at the start of the game so most things are basic.
Well, it's a quest-driven game, though it will open up a bit more after certain story events. But the demo doesn't include that, so right you are.
Traditional monsters, well, the first dungeon is basic, but the second isn't that basic... though it still needs a bit of work, yes.
There's battle events. The Con Job skill, for instance, makes the enemy drop money when used, but also confuses them for a turn or two, then makes them berserk. And yeah, DBS. If it ain't broke, why fix it?
The levelling up will probably need going over again, but there's enough difference between level 2 and 3. You do see more damage being done. In fact, monsters HP is set so that if you level up you can do enough damage to kill some in one hit instead of two or three. I'll look into it anyway.
Slow pace? Well... I'm not sure what you mean. I mean, there's no story in the demo. It's just exploration. There' no pace to go except your own.
1 - In the menu, under 'system' you can toggle walk and run. (I'm not a fan of the default speed in VX... evidenced by the choices in system - Run and UGH!)
2 - I first made the game without battles and didn't consider them for a while. I'm still not sure that I like them, but I figure the DBS is enough. I might look into something else, though I'm not sure what. Battles aren't exactly my forte.
3 - There's two things I want to put here. Most of my games are challenging during battles. This is because I try to encourage using items as part of the system. A lot of people, I've noticed, like to hoard items and don't use them when they need to. Using items makes the battles easier, as does using skills. Granted, you missed Shinua from the sounds of it, whose spells make battles much easier. That said, I'll look in to the balance again. le sigh~ ^.^;
4 - I'm not a fan of skill trees. They can be okay in certain games but... Well, I'll look into something. I'm considering a skill creation system. Sort of like in Wild ARMs where you could choose two events to mix in order to create spells. Things like Wind makes an 'all' effect, water adds a 'heal' effect, fire adds damage and earth adds affliction/buffs. So a wind/earth spell could make an earth all spell, a defence all spell or an afflict all spell. There's also skills you can find that can be taught to any character. Con Job and Hail for instance, though with Hail you have to find four pieces of a ripped scroll before you can use it.
5 - The intro will probably stay the same. I'm kinda fond of it and it's a bit of an ode to another game about a butterfly... As for afterwards, well I might add something like 'God' prompting you what next to do.
Anyway, thanks again for the review. It's given me a lot to think about and I hope you'll try the game again once I've done a bit of 'fixing'. ^.^
One or two things, though...
What you won't find:
- Interesting dialogs
- Character depth
- Fresh character classes and skills
- Fresh items
- Interesting locations
- Weird monsters
- Addictive battle system mechanics
- Custom character progression
- Custom graphics
- Fun pacing
As stated there's no story in this version (it was stated, right? In the introduction. I may have taken that out, though. If so, oops! ^.^;) hence no main story. The main character and his/her companion is my attempt at a silent hero, but the other characters that join you do talk and add character depth.
There are more classes and skills - they aren't in the demo though. The other character you can get (who you missed) is a Sun Knight... I'd love to know which companion you got.
I thought the items were pretty original in some aspects - the fruit and vegetables that do stuff in battle, though granted the scrolls are normal fare, as are the healing items, somewhat.
Later one there are more interesting places like an underwater city/volcano, underground snow town, dead forest... for instance. The beginning is rather normal, though. As for weird monsters, I dunno, they were kinda weird imo. They could probably use a bit more work though.
DBS, well... I like the DBS. ^.^ I'll try to add more to it, but it will remain DBS. I'm working on a skill creation idea, though.
There's a lot of edited graphics in the game, they're done in the RTP style, so they might not stick out much - which is great really! That means they aren't badly done. :P
What you will find here instead
- Long and empty NPC dialogs
- Mute PCs
- Standard healer/striker/wizard classes
- Standard healing potions, scrolls, swords, shields
- Very standard town-dungeon location structure
- Traditional monsters
- A battle system that plays exactly like an unmodified version of RM2K's DBS with no battle events.
- Leveling up that doesn't make much difference.
- RTP
- Very slow pace
I'll try to make the NPCs more engaging, but the mute PC will stay. The other companions will talk - once you get them.
They're the standard because they work. Though they each have good and bad points. The male and female versions are different from each other. For instance, the Witch has wind and debuff skills, whilst the warlock focuses on earth and affliction instead.
Already talked about the items, though the weapons will probably undergo some changes. Keep in mind they are at the start of the game so most things are basic.
Well, it's a quest-driven game, though it will open up a bit more after certain story events. But the demo doesn't include that, so right you are.
Traditional monsters, well, the first dungeon is basic, but the second isn't that basic... though it still needs a bit of work, yes.
There's battle events. The Con Job skill, for instance, makes the enemy drop money when used, but also confuses them for a turn or two, then makes them berserk. And yeah, DBS. If it ain't broke, why fix it?
The levelling up will probably need going over again, but there's enough difference between level 2 and 3. You do see more damage being done. In fact, monsters HP is set so that if you level up you can do enough damage to kill some in one hit instead of two or three. I'll look into it anyway.
Slow pace? Well... I'm not sure what you mean. I mean, there's no story in the demo. It's just exploration. There' no pace to go except your own.
1 - Faster walk speed. Yes, it will do miracles to this game.
2 - Redesign the battle system entirely. Considering the type of game Incarnation is, it NEEDS fun engaging battles. Battles cannot be secondary. I'm not sure how you could do this, there are many options. You could add some tactical factor, I don't know exactly, I'm no battle specialist. You can ask people like Craze and Anaryu for suggestions.
3 - Balance. Weaker monsters. Faster character growth. Remember one thing: the game will ALWAYS be easier for you (the person who made the game) than for the players.
4 - Customization on character progression. Something like... skill trees. This is very good incentive for keeping players interested in the game, motivates them to battle and gain more XP, etc.
5 - Better intro. I like the butterfly bit, but after that there's a lot of "nothing" before the game begins to launch. You can't expect that players will know what to do just because they're inside an "I've been there" RPG town.
1 - In the menu, under 'system' you can toggle walk and run. (I'm not a fan of the default speed in VX... evidenced by the choices in system - Run and UGH!)
2 - I first made the game without battles and didn't consider them for a while. I'm still not sure that I like them, but I figure the DBS is enough. I might look into something else, though I'm not sure what. Battles aren't exactly my forte.
3 - There's two things I want to put here. Most of my games are challenging during battles. This is because I try to encourage using items as part of the system. A lot of people, I've noticed, like to hoard items and don't use them when they need to. Using items makes the battles easier, as does using skills. Granted, you missed Shinua from the sounds of it, whose spells make battles much easier. That said, I'll look in to the balance again. le sigh~ ^.^;
4 - I'm not a fan of skill trees. They can be okay in certain games but... Well, I'll look into something. I'm considering a skill creation system. Sort of like in Wild ARMs where you could choose two events to mix in order to create spells. Things like Wind makes an 'all' effect, water adds a 'heal' effect, fire adds damage and earth adds affliction/buffs. So a wind/earth spell could make an earth all spell, a defence all spell or an afflict all spell. There's also skills you can find that can be taught to any character. Con Job and Hail for instance, though with Hail you have to find four pieces of a ripped scroll before you can use it.
5 - The intro will probably stay the same. I'm kinda fond of it and it's a bit of an ode to another game about a butterfly... As for afterwards, well I might add something like 'God' prompting you what next to do.
Anyway, thanks again for the review. It's given me a lot to think about and I hope you'll try the game again once I've done a bit of 'fixing'. ^.^
Well, some of the things I mentioned are more of a taste issue, and some of them are more serious/balance/gameplay issues. I still think most RPG elements in the game are excessively traditional, but it is a matter of taste, and like I said, it comes from someone who's played too many games and is a bit impatient with new RPGs, so I understand if you want to keep it the way it is.
As for the battles, they are just too hard, dying in the first battle is not normal, and you definitely need to go over that. It's ok if you want to stick to the DBS, but just rebalance the whole thing. Not only battles MUST be easier, but there has to be some more rewarding character progression. I'm surprised that you considered making the game battleless, since battles seem to be a huge focus of what I played.
I like the butterfly intro too, but I think there needs to be more directions after the player gets to the town, maybe a miniminiquest with the purpose of making the player familiar with the whole thing (go to that place, fetch one item, identify one scroll, kill one monster).
And duh for me not seeing the dash option.
I'm waiting for future versions then!
As for the battles, they are just too hard, dying in the first battle is not normal, and you definitely need to go over that. It's ok if you want to stick to the DBS, but just rebalance the whole thing. Not only battles MUST be easier, but there has to be some more rewarding character progression. I'm surprised that you considered making the game battleless, since battles seem to be a huge focus of what I played.
I like the butterfly intro too, but I think there needs to be more directions after the player gets to the town, maybe a miniminiquest with the purpose of making the player familiar with the whole thing (go to that place, fetch one item, identify one scroll, kill one monster).
And duh for me not seeing the dash option.
I'm waiting for future versions then!
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