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old 4/2011 video of first 10 mins sorry i couldnt be bothered to make a new one, new version is the same except it has the in-battle graph equip system etc



The Oathguard series primarily follows the life of Myunh Yala, an Oathguard who is accused of subversive activity in her home country of Sinolor. Knowing she is indeed partially culpable, and fearing the punishment she faces if convicted, Myunh reluctantly flees to the neighboring Thassadia at the behest of Alrion Yala, her mysterious cousin.

Four years later, the machinations of ambitious men in every nation have caused the continent’s political climate to shift drastically for the worse, and Myunh’s connection to Alrion—perhaps the most ambitious man of all—will take her back to Sinolor, the stage for the upcoming conflict. There, she will confront her past choices, reunite with old friends and foes alike, and find herself becoming more than just a witness to history in the making as she fights to repel a relentless invasion.

While she is initially more or less only along for the ride thanks to her sibling-like relationship with Alrion, various meetings, happenings, and revelations during the course of the series will lead Myunh to take a more active role as a leader.

But whether she finds herself to be a hero by the story’s end is another matter entirely.

*


This Prologue takes place 23 years before Myunh’s return to her homeland, during the height of what would later be called the Fortnight War.

While skirmishes rage elsewhere, a veteran Oathguard of Sinolor has embarked on a mission to apprehend several “Compremised” Oathguards who appear to be defecting to the enemy nation, Heiml, via the treacherous Banda mountain range that forms a natural border between the countries.

Sinolor’s military leadership, preoccupied with the main war effort, issues this otherwise-critical mission with indifference. However, it is of great personal importance to one they have dispatched to complete it—for the most powerful of the targets she relentlessly pursues is also her husband, and she has resolved to end his life if he really is a traitor, in order to protect their daughter. More than anything, though, she seeks the truth.

She is Ordinator Gela Yala. The fugitive is former Ordinator Bocheul Yala. Their daughter Myunh is yet an infant, but the events that follow her parents’ confrontation at Banda Pass will shape the course of her life, among many others’.

The year is 781 S.A., and the continent quietly teeters on the end of an era.

*


Designed in RM2k3, Oathguard's Prologue features:
* A traditional turn-based battle system that uses a unique "Demon Transformation" system similar to those in the Shadow Hearts or Persona series
* Ability to equip skills on the fly in battle in order to combat enemies of a certain type more effectively
* Various types of weapons, graphs, and coins available to equip that grant different types of basic attacks in battle, or passive abilities
* Customizaiton of Gela's stats to fit the player's gameplay stye by using "Remnants" gained from leveling up
* Several unique gameplay touches, such as the "Magis Eye", which keeps the player aware of important events or battles up ahead (as a handy reminder to save his/her game); and the "Converse" option, which updates the player on the current situation while also adding to the game's narrative


*

Designer and Producer
mellytan

Portrait Artist
Ghost

Primary QA Testers
Ocean
Ciel
Eike
PentagonBuddy
ElectricalKat
alterego
argh
Dyhalto

*

Project Oathguard
March 2007 - Present

Prologue
November 2009 - November 2012

Latest Blog

a bedraggled figure with incongruously great hair emerges

ey yooo

i was originally going to post this update as a comment, but it of course ballooned naturally into a full-length post. so here we go.

a fog-veiled cave stands before you. its depths are obscured by darkness but you hear a faint voice calling out from within, slowly growing in strength until your eyes adjust and recognize a bedraggled figure with incongruously great hair emerge from the cave, as if born from the blackness...




..oo.....he...o...Hel..lo.....Hello!

Yes, hello, dear reader! I'm so glad to see you! I've been wanting to tell someone:...I've decided what I will do with Oathguard!

For the foreseeable future (likely about a year or so), I will be focusing on developing my skill as an artist, while writing the novel for Oathguard on the side.

Art (in terms of the actual skill of drawing/painting; ie the mechanical skill, recognizing and using value and shapes, not drawing awful Saturday morning anime figures with horrifically incorrect anatomy, etc) in general has always been my weak point, and has always limited me in what I could do. When it came to RM2k3, the solution was always to use rips, others' works, and anything else I could frankenstein together; and when I did sprite/draw something on my own, it took forever because I had no idea what I was doing. I had no basic artistic skill, but impatiently insisted on trying to do advanced things in order to create what I had envisioned (just like many others here on RMN and in the RPG Maker community over the years who, in our vain pursuit of making the JRPG of our childhood dreams, consistently and predictably overextend ourselves).

I've finally faced the music and realized that if I want to ever develop Oathguard into something bigger (yes, probably a game in the end) that I can really be satisfied with, I have to build myself up a bit first. So I am focusing on learning how to draw and paint, from the ground up. I am sure that this is the best route to take; despite how long the process is bound to be, I know that it's the only way. In the end, even if I still can't get to where I want to be artistically, I'm sure the journey will leave me with something I can work with.

At the same time, like I said, I'm working on a novel(la?) on the side. Writing is my thing, so it's not too hard to punch out a few hundred words on most days. It's probably not going to be great, though, since a) I've probably never completed anything over 10k words in my life, and b) it's basically a novel about anime JRPG people doing anime JRPG things (hey at least that would qualify as a "light novel" in Japan). But like I said, I'm sure just trying to do this will do great things for myself and Oathguard in the future. And if the novel turns out to be pretty good in the end, that's cool, too.

On that note, I actually finished a sort of prologue chapter (which may or may not show up in the finaly product, since nobody likes prologues, after all) that covers Gela's last moments. If you want to read it, drop me a message and I'll send you the ~secret link~

Well, that's all for now. Who knows when I will emerge from my cave next...but rest assured that I will always be working on Oathguard. And always have great hair.

Thanks for reading, and don't be a stranger. See ya around!

Posts

Great to see this go "live". Though I'm banned from playing until it's fully beta-tested per Melly's order... I can at least say that I'm really excited.

You may now rest for eternity as a fallen hero...

*Nod Nod

Gomen
author=benos
Why is the Illuser so hard to kill?

using fecunda? He is weak to Terra (tree symbol) so try using fecunda or Sepulcrate if you have it. Fecunda will also lower his resistance to Terra (all invocations lower enemy resistance to their crest type actually; so Planir lowers resistance to Luna etc)

I'll be reinserting tutorials in the next version heh

- fallen games hero Dame Mellytan
benos
My mind is full of fuck.
624
Great demo, I even thought that was the end of the game, realizing you're only played the mother of the player?
author=benos
Great demo, I even thought that was the end of the game, realizing you're only played the mother of the player?


Thank you for playing -- even though actually this version was messed up (the stuff in the map after Domtrau and before the final cutscenes) haha...

Yes, this is actually one whole game; its just the first part of the series though. You did indeed play as the series' main character's mom. Future installments will be centered around Gela's daughter, Myunh.

Thanks again for playing, please let me know if you have and further suggestions.
Just downloading the demo now; looks very interesting!
Tau
RMN sex symbol
3293
Man how do you beat this game, I can't even best the first boss!? I really want to see the rest of the story, it seems interesting.
author=Tau
Man how do you beat this game, I can't even best the first boss!? I really want to see the rest of the story, it seems interesting.


Hey Tau, the Shedu general is weak to Stella attacks, so equip Planir and use that. Then in demon form, use Demilune (stronger version of Planir). If you kill just one Captain he won't respawn. Also, after the General transforms, you can kill the others off and they won't respawn. But its best to focus on the boss.

If that fails and you just want to see the story, check out that blog entry, I posted a video with only cutscenes.

Hope that helps, sorry for any errors as I'm typing on my phone.
author=mellytan
author=Tau
Man how do you beat this game, I can't even best the first boss!? I really want to see the rest of the story, it seems interesting.
Hey Tau, the Shedu general is weak to Stella attacks, so equip Planir and use that. Then in demon form, use Demilune (stronger version of Planir). If you kill just one Captain he won't respawn. Also, after the General transforms, you can kill the others off and they won't respawn. But its best to focus on the boss.

If that fails and you just want to see the story, check out that blog entry, I posted a video with only cutscenes.

Hope that helps, sorry for any errors as I'm typing on my phone.


I would add that equipping "Fresh Photo" helps a lot. Really a lot as I figured out...

Just defeated the first boss haha. So far, so good. Will keep continuing.
Yea fresh photo regenerates some LP each turn without any penalty (in fact, it boosts your SOU). Thanks for playing, hope you enjoy.

Tau if you are still having problems, check out the SAVES folder, it has a more supercharged Lv56 Gela save after pretty much every battle.
Would you like a review for the prologue?
Voice Acting the plot would be nice btw
Ocean
Resident foodmonster
11991
I bought some oatmeal and thought of you
author=MKnance
Voice Acting the plot would be nice btw


you know what would also be nice is if anyone actually played this game

author=Ocean
I bought some oatmeal and thought of you


;w;
author=Little Wing Guy
Would you like a review for the prologue?


omg how did i miss this

oh right i was becoming gundam pilot

anyway if you still feel things about this game yes please dude id be honored
Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
I just tried playing this and it's completely inscrutable. I never at any point felt like I knew what I was doing, or what you wanted me to do.

Like, for example, you rename all the elements into other stuff. That's cool, world-building, setting, that's all great. But I have no idea what any of them are or what their relationship is to each other, and I need to figure that out on top of figuring out which of these three completely different weapons to use and what skill is affiliated with what element and how to heal and manage my transformations... that is an astoundingly huge amount of information that the player is required to take in at once, and you have to figure it all out to proceed.

It doesn't help that all the skills have extremely unclear names; Planir is Lunar-elemental? When you're sitting down to play a game for the first time you don't want to have to decipher the game's language before you can figure anything useful out.

All enemies have different weakness and what does 100 damage to one enemy does 0 to another, even my normal weapons often do zero damage to an enemy which is aproblem if my heraldry is sealed and I can't do anything else. As far as I could tell there was no way to know what spell/element was effective against which enemy without experimenting; experimenting is fine, but when the penalty for guessing wrong is doing zero damage AND having to waste another turn swapping your graph, that's an extremely high price to pay for not being psychic.

The demon form was a cool ability flavor-wise but it felt useless mechanically; you can't heal it out of battle so switching into is a gamble if you left it at low HP last time, and a lot of times I felt like I couldn't risk using it because it might die as soon as I switched. Healing the demon is a major hassle, and since reverting out of it locks your heraldry it's extremely feasible to lock yourself into an unwinnable situation where you can't recover your HP and die because of the mechanics. It feels needlessly punishing, and I always felt I was better of staying as Gela and chipping away at the enemies a few HP at a time with Fecunda and healing with Retissue. Not very engaging, but it was the only way I felt safe. The LP generation is also very buggy and sometimes stopped working when I used Heraldry, which is a problem when the final battle prompts you to use the demon form and you can't generate the LP...

All in all I feel like this combat system as it stands is borderline unplayable, I can't imagine going through an entire game having to guess the enemy's weakness or do no damage. Maybe if the player were given a chance to adjust to these elements separately at a more casual pace, it could work. But the fights in the prologue are all pretty brutal and you need to be on the ball to stay alive. Very much a case of expecting the player to figure out too much at once...the fact that a lot of the people commenting here can't beat the first boss (I too had a lot of trouble and it took me several tries) is telling.
:')

it's "done" as in...the current download, originally meant to be just a prologue for future chapters, is basically all there's going to be for oathguard--as a game series anyway.

i guess what i mean is that i dont make games anymore...all the game making lifeforce i had was sucked from my bones by rm2k3 when i made this prologue. its wayyy too life/time consuming for me to do now that i'm a full-time anime character irl (pm me if u wanna know about military aviation~).

the actual oathguard series with myunh, etc, however, will live on...i'm re-writing an outline for the full story. it will either be told as a graphic novel (if i can swindle an artist into working w me) or a traditional novel i guess. i'm still trying to figure out what direction to go in with it. i will post whatever updates i have on the project status in case anyone wants to follow where the wind takes me~

tldr i just changed the status to "completed" to close this chapter in my life~
hope some people played the game....probably not lol

:')
I'm disappointed that the game is cancelled, but if the story is continuing, I'm fine with that. Story's the most important aspect, anyway. Your worldbuilding looks pretty interesting from the tantalizing bits and pieces you've released so far.