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Endorsements

a crazy, unchained game...and one that I would strongly recommend to anyone wanting to try something different for a change.
-ganonfrog's review

I had fun! ... The cut-scenes are very well done...I loved the humor and the quirky characters, not only the party members, but also the other people you will meet, love and hate! ... The Cerebral Symphony is a good game, not too hard and full of humor and diversions, of adequate length. ... Maybe I don't understand this game, but I sure had a lot of fun with it!
-TheRpgMakerAddict's review

Strong writing, clever system, interesting characters, and an engaging plot...this game is unreasonably good. It is probably the single cleverest thing I've played on rmn, and its ability to take itself seriously even while it's not taking itself seriously borders on the supernatural...some really phenomenal world-building and dialogue and mapping in kind of a weird package, and I think the community will dig it
-kumada (tester)

Overall I enjoyed the game because of the story. The dialogue is good, the characters are good.
-Link_2112 (tester)

LP by raikenjenova:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDOLxHMXxfE&list=PLd8tGajquAkEwoRAiZ1Po8F7YgDduApSf

Lowdown

-Begun as the side-project of a bored and depressed fifteen-year old, The Cerebral Symphony has evolved into a claustrophobic, poorly layed-out, passionately-written 2d RPG

-Chapter 1 came out in 2011, Chapter 2 in 2012, Chapter 3 in 2013, Chapter 4 in 2015, the full game came out in 2018!

-About 9 hours play time.

-Please post any feedback to this game page as I am always tweaking and updating the download. If you send me enough, I will list you as a tester.


Story

Brad, a jock, trips one day (at a party, we can only assume), accidentally plunging himself into the hallucinatory world of The Cerebral Symphony where he meets a guy called Ivan, who you might wonder is a human metaphor for repressed teenage angst.

Join the schizophrenic, multiple-personality-disorder afflicted Ivan, whose destiny (and personalities) you can steer through his individual choices as he bumbles his way through his life as a renegade thief into a big war between the underground cyborg Mafia, the omnipresent, all-seeing Corporation and the corrupt, power-crazed Government over the six elemental stones that, when gathered together, bestow ULTIMATE POWER on their holder. Mwahahaha!

On the way you will meet Liz the ADHD werewolf, Jean the insomniac minstrel, Catherine the telepath with a firey temper, Carys the delusional young stage actress, Robert the narcoleptic doctor, Zak the homeostatically-imbalanced fighter-pilot, and Bain the accident prone Gladiator. You will decide whether in the final estimation it is Ivan's more "upbeat" or his "darker" personality that will win control of his mind as they battle with his more balanced, "pensive" side.

Story-driven and choice-based, The Cerebral Symphony is a sci-fi/fantasy/drug trip 2d RPG game with an emphasis on character development and fun, non-random, side-view, Final Fantasy VI style battles, made up of 5 chapters.

Featuring the Fully Completed MULTIPLE PERSONALITY SYSTEM(TM), where Ivan's in-game choices will affect dialogue and plot, alter the screen tint and interface colours and change his battle class and music. You only gain skills in the personality in which you fight! Your choices will affect the story! Enjoy!

Latest Blog

Faenon has started writing a serial JRPGlit webnovel

Hello subscribers to TCS!

Two pieces of news. First of all, Halibabica will shortly be doing a youtube LP of TCS.

Secondly, in UK lockdown I have started uploading a serial fantasy webnovel heavily inspired by JRPGS, especially Final Fantasy IV and VI.

It has twelve heroes with distinct personalities who go on an adventure in order to carry out an epic quest, elemental magic, airships, battles, monsters, and a Cid!



People here are probably in the small subset of people who might enjoy this, so if you want to read it, go here https://www.wattpad.com/story/228098139-saga-of-the-jewels

or here https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/32469/saga-of-the-jewels

or here https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13581482/1/Saga-of-the-Jewels

or here https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3346873/1/Saga-of-the-Jewels

Peace out,
Faenon

Posts

author=DavidBlue
wow fast reply!
i had a typo i mean it's "impressively". (it doesn't matter).
what matter is... i'm really sorry for giving you a trouble mr. Faenon. you're really a very good person. thanks much for the tips. off course i'll continue play this.

God. i'm so ashamed. i even don't have a computer. T_T.. since i just new to this rpg maker world. and only using an android app to play (easyrpg player).
i can't expect too much when playing rm2k/2k3 games. still got bug here & there.

your game is very cool. ( and dark).
good luck!
and happy new year.
from East java , Indonesia.

No trouble at all, DavidBlue! And there's no need at all to feel ashamed. I love the idea that people can play TCS on their android phone.

Gosh, I never knew TCS would attract so many Indonesian fans. Well, there are two of you that I know about at least...
Feedback, incoming.

Man it's been a long time since I've played this.

-'Start' still prompts you to load the first game file. Intentional?

-"One day, Brad tripped" feels like kind of a rough opening, but I'm guessing it's a nostalgia line from an early version?

-Switching personalities through midbattle dialog doesn't change the window color until you enter and close out of a menu.

-Man, the equipment choices are still so flavorful. Music equip slot? Joy Division? Sold.

-Save points as passable objects feels weird, but this is super minor.

-Statue fight: "I don't think your sword is going to wor on these guys" work

-Shield and Regen do not seem to stack? Or at least the status loadout does not show it.

-Quarq's shop is a smorgasboard of passability problems.

-Store dialog is great.

-Things that look like area exits are not area exits.

-Bert's Books has no inventory. Intentional?

-You can walk around during Liz's intro screen. Intentional?

-Oh god, Liz's mission is exactly as unfair as I remember it. Security droids that can insta-spot you from off-screen make this segment needlessly frustrating, since you have to walk into what could be their sight lines in order to progress, and you have no way of knowing if this will insta you or not.

-Triggers are weird on giving Max the SCAB. I went into his room with it, and then had to try and leave the room in order to give it to him.

-The shift into Dark on the dancefloor feels a little too abrupt. Maybe just a line or two more of dialog before the shift would make it really hit home.

-Train to Ulm takes a loooooooong time to load in. Seriously I thought the game had crashed.

-The Transformation just straight up stops using attacks in his battle.

-I had Liz cast Reflect on herself and the spell missed. Is it supposed to do that?

-Got a perfect score on Liz's mission, no reward. Got a perfect score on the train mission, got a new dream. Did Liz's mission bug out? I got the janitor, but then did a few retries, so I might have bugged it.

-This is solid and enjoyable. I have to stop for the moment, but I'll try to burn through some more of the game tomorrow. At least with the Act 1 and 2 stuff, I think there are elements that could use a little tightening. Combat, for example, is frantic, but somehow easy despite that. Mostly the game is just a steady flow from cutscene to cutscene, relying on good pacing and solid writing to mask the art and lovingly borrowed assets...which kind of makes it a fusion of the best things from 05 - 09 era rpgmaker design culture. Lately I've been playing/working on things that have the number-crunchy, balance-oriented parts of my head in gear, so it's a bit of a shift to go from that to providing feedback on this, but I'm still really enjoying what I'm playing, and it feels like the game is going to get more sophisticated as it goes.

I'm looking forward to playing through the rest.

Edit:

-Map glitch, bottom of map in the mansion foyer, you can walk through the wall into the upstairs balcony.

-Jean got put to sleep during a battle with a spider. Is that supposed to be possible? DID I FIX HIM?!

-Did a downshift at the start of a battle and it took me all the way from positive to negative. Is that supposed to happen?

-Cure does not seem to work on status ailments. I haven't had it work yet, at least. I've tried it on an Afraid on Ivan, and I've tried it on Jean's Tired. Missed both times.

-Battle with the ninja ends, party goes south into the foyer, you can walk Ivan around through walls during the cutscene.

-"So what's the deal with you bring tired all the time" being

-"You said you co read minds. You said nothing about hurting them" could

-"I opposite this crazy lady" I sat opposite

-"Yeah, but it get's better" gets
Well kumada this is why you are listed as a beta tester! I'm glad you're enjoying it. Many thanks indeed. Feedback received and will be incorporated. Please keep me updated as you continue your playthrough.
More feedback:

-You have only two tickets to Cortesia in the inventory, but three party members. Since the first act was a stickler about having the right number of tickets, should you have three?

-Just noticed, the drug shop sells 'heroine' instead of 'heroin'. Should remove the e.

-Went into the play in upbeat mode, text and combat were in dark mode.

-Text stayed that way all the way into the Fire Temple.

Edit (more stuff):

-Personality shift gets even more bugged by the play than I had thought. Apparently I *was* in upbeat, but all the menus were dark. I got in combat, tried to upshift, everything stayed dark. I got in another combat, tried to downshift, and the game correctly switched to pensive.

-You can straight-up walk through the top left side of the screen in the first room of the fire temple.

-Actually, all black tiles in the first room are passable.

-Except you can't walk down what looks like an obvious corridor on the right side, or through the obvious archway in the right side. Why is there even a path that leads to this side if nothing can be done there?

-Carys has an amazing and intricate combat design. You could build an entire game around the way she operates in battle and I would play the heck out of it.

-Oh, the right is only accessible after operating the left? The right side is not very clear about not being a passageway until after the left button has been pushed.

-Combat balance feels weird. It goes lightning quick, and the enemies hit really hard, and character hp doesn't really seem to increase ever, so the best strategy seems to be to have Ivan go as fast as possible and if you even get to your other characters, you've done something wrong. I'm not sure the balance can of worms is worth opening, because it would take a *lot* of rebalancing to change this, but the way things currently are definitely de-prioritizes the combat and makes it sort of just an occasional brief interruption to the story.

-Soon as I say that, the Manus fight happens. This one feels more complex, although having both Manuses always target the same character at the same time means every turn they decide to use flame, they kill one party member.

-Liz casts reflect on herself, no change in status is shown. Liz casts reflect on Ivan, his status changes to reflect. Liz tries to cast reflect on herself again (her status still just shows a smiley face) and the spell misses. Bug?

-Confirmed that Liz was not actually benefiting from reflect in any way. Enemy spells were hitting her.

-What influences the mission score on this one? I got 94/100.

-Man, the next chapter starts choppily. 'We've got the stone/here's the stone/welcome to the mafia' feels really abrupt.

-And then straight into the shop menu? I'm getting whiplash.

-Children's book is a curative item...not a book. This seems a little weird.

-And once again, everything's in dark mode, even though no switch was announced and Ivan's not really acting dark. If there's going to be a "default, no specific personality, or just an NPC" dialog color, it should probably be something that isn't keyed in to one of Ivan's personalities, because knowing when Ivan is in a particular state is a big part of the way the game tells its story.

-"I'm beginning to notice a pattern" right into another abrupt cut to the world map. If this is being done stylistically, it feels really rough.

-"keep your eyes pealed" peeled

-Oh hey. Blue Temple tells you how to get a perfect score. More missions should do this. Knowing what the parameters are gives a first-time player a chance to actually go for the clear conditions.

-Carys' regular attack summons a wolf that hits for around 600. But Carys also has a special move that costs 100 mp that...summons a wolf that hits for around 600. Why is there an mp-costing version of her regular attack in her spells list?

-When you talk to the boulder in the caves, it flips upside-down during the conversation.

-Again reverted to dark during dialog with the mafia without any announcement (or apparent implementation) of a personality switch. Checked Ivan's status with 'analyze' and yeah, he's technically in upbeat even though everything is black.

-No mission status update for having finished the ice temple, although I did get all of the chests.

-'Defibrulator' should be 'Defibrilator'

-Passability glitch directly up the stairs from Quarq's shop. You can walk up either side of the futuristic Chrono Trigger tileset thing.

-'Bureaucrat1' should have a space between name and number, because in that font it looks like 'Beaurocrati'

-"Hang on, we're receiving an incoming transmission" -> The file MORE HeRo cannot be opened. Weirdly not a game crash, though. Just returns you to the start

Because this is a bug that occurs in a mandatory cutscene, this is as far as I can play without a new file.
Wow, thanks so much for this kumada, this is super helpful, please keep your playtest going!

Based on your feedback I have fixed the offending MORE HeRo faceset (it must have been changed when I was working on Chapter 5) so you should be able to carry on with your playthrough now.

Much appreciated, hope you are still enjoying!
author=kumada
Is the download updated?


Oh yes :)
Alright, more feedback:

-Just realized, Robert's intro has his defect as "narcolespy" instead of narcolepsy

-The coding on the dogfight feels really weird. I had a lot of my projectiles hit and do nothing, the foursome's blimp soaks fire, and the whole thing lasted a lot longer than it felt it needed to. That said, I did find that when strafing while firing, my shots seemed to actually score hits more often. Still not 100% of the time they connected, but at least a strong 40%

-Jungle survival is bugged. I fought a snake, found some food, and it raised my shelter level. Then I fought another snake, found some food, and it raised my food level. Then I fought *another* snake, found some food, and it lowered both my food and shelter levels.

-Fought a tiger, found some food, it lowered my water.

-Bug is apparently somewhat random but very duplicateable. Fought another snake that lowered my food and water. These effects seem to be triggering when one of the gauges is at green. Some sort of rounding error?

-Frigging snake just wiped out a point each of water, food, and shelter with its alleged 'food'.

-Tiger food depleted a point of water. Also, how do you get shelter? The save point does not provide it.

-Some sort of SFX glitch has caused an ominous whirring sound to persist endlessly after a combat with a tiger.

-Snakes and tigers one-shot everyone they hit. At first I thought it was just Sergius, but no. It's everyone in the party.

-Jungle time passes while you're in a menu. Not sure if this is intentional, but I came out of a menu to find that I was at 0 bars of shelter and, since nothing on the map seems to restore shelter, the jungle appears unwinnable. Halp?
Oh dear Kumada, sorry! The jungle may need rethinking... See raikenjenova's LP on the media page. Or: You find shelter by finding a log (usually they are near save points) and interacting with it. That skips time forward quite a lot too.

I think what might be happening with the monsters and water/shelter is that the code isn't recognizing that one of those is depleted until a battle is finished, and THEN the recognition is kicking in, since time has passed in the battle... Lots of food for thought for me,
I can't find any logs, and there's only the one save point as far as I can tell. I think the jungle would benefit from some serious redesign. The basic concept is solid, a survival minigame thrown into the regular structure of the game, but the jungle feels really barren and it takes forever for time to pass to the next day.

What about structuring the jungle as a series of dialog choices? Some increase or decrease your food/shelter/water levels, some throw you into combat, etc.

The writing is a strong point in this game and, when in doubt, I feel like you can always get good gameplay by boiling more complex design elements down to simple choices.

Edit:

Did some further testing and found a log in the upper left corner. I feel pretty strongly that there should also be one at the start point if the jungle segment is going to be kept unchanged.

Also, food/water/shelter decays normally if you're just walking around. It doesn't get cached and then triggered by an event. The food events are just borked *if* your food stat is full.

-When I first loaded in, I couldn't change Zack's equipment from the menu. Now that I've reloaded, I can. Bug?

-The item description for Sergius' Doors of Percept- is great.

-Animals spawn inside of walls.

-"oh don't be such a moaner Carys" comma after moaner

-Why is Liz's pad so nice? Does she not live in the same dystopian future?

-Sergius is utterly useless in solo battle. Poison only does 50?

-Zack's battle against Axman, immediately shifts into weak, ATB freezes, Axman just strings together basic attacks and wins without me getting to act. Is this intended function?

-Also, Zack losing his battle game-overed me. Is this intended function?
kumada, this is brilliant, you are finding all the bugs I didn't know about and that other playtesters have missed...

I don't think you are meant to gameover if you lose there but I will go in and check again. You have also got extremely unlucky with Zak by having his homeostatic imbalance switch him to "WEAK" at that point.

It shouldn't be too difficult to try again from last save and win with Zak. He is a bit of a wildcard character, but the battle should be easy to win on one or two more attempts.
Ok I've checked. Yeah, that's right, you are meant to get a game over if you lose any of the first-round battles of the jungle tournament.

But you should have saved just before Zak's battle, so it shouldn't be too hard to try again?
Wait, you're meant to get a gameover if you lose any of the first-round battles? I picked Sergius for his battle and got steamrolled. In fact, I'm not sure it's possible to win with him without having equipped some very specific gear well in advance. Even then, his damage potential is basically nothing, and he interrupts half of his own actions to fall asleep into an attack that hits before his second heal 100 bonus can trigger...sooooo yeah.

Anyway, I lost my first-round battle with Sergius and it did not trigger a game over.
I mistyped. You can get gameovered for losing any of the round 1 tournament battles EXCEPT for that one. It is nearly impossible to win as solo Dr Sergius against GoldNine, as this means you will almost definitely trigger a plot point in round two of the tournament...
Hey so TCS is currently featured on the RMN homepage!

It's listed as a "Classic" which is a bit weird, especially as it isn't even technically completed yet (nearly there, beta is out), but I guess it has been in development for 7 years...

It will be marked "Complete" at some point this year anyway, so maybe I will try to pick up a misao for something.

Anyhow, maybe this will generate some more buzz!

Please post on the gamepage if you've played this game and like it!

More feedback:

-Ivan's battle conversation against goldnine where his personality switches bugs the chromatic heck out of the dialog panels if it triggers while Ivan is starting an attack

-The colosseum kind of highlights the issues in the combat system. Everything is over in more or less a single pass and victory depends on whether the rng decides you hit (and what state you're in in Zack's case).

-The characters are all starting to feel a bit shoehorned in/shoehorned together. There's so many of them that it feels like the game's trying more to fill a quota than to make them all interesting. With a little space for their design to breathe, I think they'd all be great, but as is a lot of them feel like party filler that exists to hand MP to Ivan to let him do attacks.

-No clear bonus for beating the earth temple?

-Catherine dislikes "Inauhenticity" should this be Inauthenticity?

-"Catherine's already considerab combat skills"

-"as a general rule the are abated"

-"and they are in turn triggered off" should just be 'and they are in turn triggered'

-Stepping on the guard catherine knocked out makes a loud meow sound. Bug? Easter egg?

-A lot of parts of this feel like they would work better as a novel. Hazard of adapting one medium to another, I suppose, but it would be a really good novel.

-Stopping for the moment. The game mechanics are really taking back seat to the plot as the game goes on, but the plot is getting vastly more interesting. I'll try to play through the three temples next weekend.
author=kumada
-A lot of parts of this feel like they would work better as a novel. Hazard of adapting one medium to another, I suppose, but it would be a really good novel.

-Stopping for the moment. The game mechanics are really taking back seat to the plot as the game goes on, but the plot is getting vastly more interesting.

Lol, thanks kumada! Thing is, I am really foremost a writer at heart. TCS has kind of been an excuse to WRITE a SNES style RPG as much as anything else.

I am actually considering adapting it into a young adult novel. So even if sometimes the game mechanics suffer a bit I'm really glad that you like the writing and that you think it would be really a good novel!

I suppose this was also down to time constraints, since as I've had less and less time to work on TCS over the years I've prioritised the writing more and more. But please keep going! This playthrough is so helpful and I hope you'll get some interesting and unusual surprises in Chapter 5...
This is totally unsolicited writing advice, but it's the feeling I've been having since playing past chapter 2.

Definitely adapt this into a novel, but *don't* adapt it scene for scene. Let it breathe. Let Ivan and Liz's backstories develop. Condense the elemental stones stuff or make it something that happens in the hub city. Give the hub city a chance to feel like a place people live in.

The first two chapters are really strong, and the narrative only starts to feel strained when everyone's gallivanting all around the globe chasing macguffins.

I'll try to play a bit more as soon as I get the chance, but for the next few days I have to focus on some editing stuff.
author=kumada
This is totally unsolicited writing advice, but it's the feeling I've been having since playing past chapter 2.

Definitely adapt this into a novel, but *don't* adapt it scene for scene. Let it breathe. Let Ivan and Liz's backstories develop. Condense the elemental stones stuff or make it something that happens in the hub city. Give the hub city a chance to feel like a place people live in.

The first two chapters are really strong, and the narrative only starts to feel strained when everyone's gallivanting all around the globe chasing macguffins.

I'll try to play a bit more as soon as I get the chance, but for the next few days I have to focus on some editing stuff.


Thanks for the suggestions kumada. Yeah, if I turn this into a YA novel I may leave out the elemental stones. Either way, certainly people will get even more fleshing out, backstory and exploration of their characters.

Constantly checking RMN for your latest play log update!
More feedback:

-Started Jean's quest first. The cut from cutscene to shop menu was really abrupt, although it's nice to have a chance to buy stuff again.

-Should the astroprojector even be sellable?

-WTF chiptune Mummer's Dance?! That is super obscure, but also suspiciously catered to a demographic of me.

-There's lots of opportunities to buy/get consumable items, but much fewer to pick up equipment. However, because of the way combat flows, using a consumable is an almost-never kind of thing, whereas gear is clutch. If you were going to redesign combat, more enemy hp, less damage output, more enemy status inflict, and an infusion of gear that adds status effects would probably do it. This would necessitate more opportunities to gear shop, though.

-Bain's Nurofen has no item description

-Is the treasure chest all the way to the left of wind tower's map start supposed to spawn already opened?

-There should probably be an indicator to suggest that you can jump gaps in the tower of wind.

-The last jump in the tower feels like you should have to wait until the wind dies down before leaping, but I tried jumping when there was zero wind noise and no luck. Is this working as intended?