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Hate to be the one to say it, but...

  • Ayanin
  • 09/09/2013 06:28 AM
  • 34667 views
Pretty graphics are wonderful things. Original storylines are admirable, too, but when it comes down to it, a game has got to actually be playable. Even a non-gamer should be able to play it, and not be dying frequently. After all, this is not a first person shooter! (A game type where frequent death is anticipated.)

Well, that's what happened here.

Now, it would be one thing if you could traditionally "level grind" ... gain a few extra levels here and there, move on, and be fine... but you can't do that here. The monsters in each new area are pretty overkill, so that you can die more or less at any area you advance to. If you gained a few levels in the last area, you'll hardly even notice it in the next, if at all. Used up the only items that made winning against the last boss possible? Too bad. You'll die frequently in boss fights without serious help from something that isn't you (which you won't get but maybe once or twice, and maybe only then if you checked nearly every tile that you've laid eyes on), but evidently, you're otherwise just plain out of luck. Not what I would call a good gaming experience.

How bad was it?

Well, my experience was (without spending hours level grinding) the average boss fight goes like this:

1) You have approximately one round to use up whatever help you have on you... which you will probably die instantly, without. If you're lucky, you may actually get a WHOLE ROUND to attack! But it won't accomplish anything, even if you do.

2) Then, the boss promptly reduces you to near-death (as in one-hit) state. If not your whole party.

3) Now what?

Yeah... "now what?" is right. Because in the time it takes you to heal everybody (if you have enough MPs or whatever to do that), you've just wasted your next round. At which point, the boss promptly reduces you (all?) to one-hit life status, once again. So for every round that you heal yourself beyond having only one hit left, the boss simply undoes whatever you just did, pretty much the next turn he gets. Okay, you MIGHT get a single round between, sometimes, in which to attempt pathetically to attack... but often not. I say pathetically, because you are basically fleas as far as the bosses are concerned. You do fairly negligable damage to the boss, no matter what you use, while the boss, on the other hand, mops the floor with you every single round.

Basically, it's a viciouis cycle of getting knocked down, healing and then getting knocked down again.

So get ready to waste countless hours level grinding!

Or, you can just do what I did, and uninstall, and hope for another game to come along where you can actually survive long enough without truly ridiculous emounts of effort, in order to see the entire game. Or even the first half of it.

So if you actually like level grinding for hours on end, go for it. Or if you just like looking at the pretty game over screen. Or if you've got a program that allows you to hack save files, maybe. (For the first time, I really, really wished I had that, and normally, I hate even using walkthroughs, because I dislike any kind of "cheating".) But if none of that describes you... I'm afraid you might not have much more fun playing this game than I did, even if it was pretty.

Finally, I felt that in all honesty, I had to give it a pretty bad rating, and not just to be a jerk, or because I personally didn't care for it, but for a pretty striaghtforward and valid reason: like I said... a game should be playable.

Any way you look at it, no matter how beautiful, haunting or grand the music and graphics were, or how original and deep the plot, not much of that is really going to matter if the player faces what feels like literally "mission impossible," from the moment they start. If you're dying almost the moment you set foot outside of the first town, at monsters that are not even bosses, and when fighting bosses boils down to a never ending circle of "die now or die later" choices (see above), chances are, at least some people are never going to stick around long enough to see those beautiful graphics, hear your best music, or enjoy your story. Think about it: how many times does the average person... the AVERAGE person... have to end up dead in an RPG (again, not a first person shooter, or some other game-type where you'd EXPECT to die often, but in an RPG of all things), before they simply go away and find something that actually amuses them, instead of just frusterating them continually?

The cold hard truth is this: no matter how great your game is, if the player quits in frustration before they ever get to see %90 of it, then for that person, none of that remaining %90 really counts for anything. It's the same for that player as if the game ended where they quit. Or you might say, it's almost the same as if the play was somehow "broken" and you simply could not continue (even if it is actually technically possible, by some means involving epic patience, to do so).

Now, a person might object and say that's not fair, because the player COULD have played it, and it's not the game maker's fault that they quit. Oh sure. They could have continued to play... with a ridiculous amount of effort. But in this case, we're not talking about people quitting because they're lazy. We're talking about people quitting because an absurd level of effort is required by the game. In this case, it's the game, not the user, that's unreasonable. The fault, in this case, lies with the game.

For this reason, in trying to give an honest rating, I rated it subpar.

In my book, a game is "not playable," if it's not playable for common people without an insane/ridiculous amount of effort, and if a game is "not playable," then it fails to meet the most fundamental criteria of all games: that to begin with, you can actually play it! It should not just be TECHNICALLY playable, if, for instance, you're willing to frisk every tile on every screen of the game you can physically access, and press up against every inch of wall in every map, and waste days of your life level grinding like you were playing Maple Story (where at least the players would have the option of talking to their friends rather than just dying of boredom or quitting in frustration). It should be playable for anyone willing to put forth a reasonable effort. But a REASONABLE effort, not just for those who are willing to sit up all night with a pot of coffee frisking tiles and level grinding for hours on end. (Definitely not reasonable.)

It would be far better to do a less glorious job with your game, and at least to have a game that everyone can actually play... and dare I say, maybe even enjoy? ... than to have a drop-dead-gorgeous game, that you have to have no life at all (eg, the countless hours for level grinding), and endless patience, in order to play.

And by "play" I do mean without a walkthrough. Cheating should not be a prerequisite to being able to play the game. It should be pretty straightforward and fairly balanced in difficulty, for those who know what to expect in an RPG of this kind (in this case, the mainstream kind, as opposed to, say, puzzle RPGS, where it's taken for granted that you pretty much have to be a genius to play without a walkthrough).

Posts

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Oblic
Once a member of RMN, always a member of RMN!
1937
Ummm... maybe I'm a bit behind the times with this one (I haven't played the most recent version of the game), but IIRC, this game isn't that hard. I will admit that I have some experience with some of the harder titles out there in terms of RMN and RPGs in general, but I feel like this game is pretty fair. Yes, it got tough when you got into a new area, but it didn't take long to overcome the difference in levels required to make most of the battles a breeze. To be honest, it seems to me that you just aren't a fan of the genre, seeing as you talk about FPSs quite a few times throughout the review.

Again, I may be off-base here, but I really didn't have any trouble getting through this game, and I don't recall grinding at all. Trust me, there are far harder games out there, and they're half as "pretty", if that. So consider yourself lucky that you had something pretty to look at and listen to while you were pummeled to death over and over again.
Your long re-enactment of the battles lacks a pretty crucial element. Status effects. Use them. It's not an "insane/ridiculous amount of effort," it's clicking the arrow keys and the enter key a couple of times.

The game's tough, but enough people have beaten it that it's hard to take something like this seriously.
So wait...you gave this a low rating because it was "hard"? Oh...dear. I've played hard games before; Epic Elf, before the 2013 revamp for example was impossibly difficult for me near the end, and I still gave it a good score because I found it enjoyable, like how I found this game to be enjoyable.

Whether a game is difficult or not shouldn't bring its rating down, as some games thrive from being hard, like Dark Souls or Ninja Gaiden (No seriously, try to play the original NES trilogy or NG: Black on the XBOX and try not to ragequit~ xD).
Lol Ayanin, you think this is hard? Then you haven't played some of the even harder hardcore RPGs, particular the Japanese ones (the game I'm translating, for instance). This one is nothing compared to them. And the game I'm translating was actually well-known in Japan back when it was first released. On that note, you should also take a look at Alter Aila Genesis. That game is tough as well, but it garnered a lot of attention and popularity.

And you don't need cheating to beat this game. You just lack experience in playing RPGs, period. Strategies are also thoroughly needed in this sort of games. Don't dumb down the rating of a game just because you find it hard and you don't know the strategies needed. It's not how you rate a game.

You rate a game based on graphics, story, animation, gameplay, music and sound, all in one package, not just on one feature alone. The bulk of your review only focuses on gameplay, but you never weigh in equally the other features of a game. That's totally unfair. Had you rated 2/5 for the gameplay alone, that would be a different story.

EDIT: And just so you know, I never grinded. At all. While I do find it challenging, I don't find it "insanely difficult" like how you seem to put it. Oh, and I never, if not hardly, used the walkthrough at all.
author=Volrath
Your long re-enactment of the battles lacks a pretty crucial element. Status effects. Use them. It's not an "insane/ridiculous amount of effort," it's clicking the arrow keys and the enter key a couple of times.


Actually, I didn't overlook that. (See #1, which pretty much sums up that you have about one round to figure out how not to die, as best as possible.)

If the game is balanced, you should not have to deal with enemies/bosses that can take you out in two hits, precisely for the reason that the player can easily (not just if they mess up more than the average player) end up in a never-ending cycle situation, where in order to live you have to heal yourself, but then the boss cuts you back to near dead again, but the only way to prevent that is to use status effecting things... but the only way to do that is basically to risk getting completely wiped out next round. It simply should not be that close.

Also, when even the ordinary monsters are that difficult, it's already out of balance.

I'm not just picking on this game because it was difficult. I played another RPG maker RPG that was frankly, very difficult, both fight-wise and puzzle-wise,and frankly I loved it, with the exception of a few points. But the monsters were usually only exceptionally bad in special areas, and while the bosses were difficult, I don't recall them being nigh impossible. If you were careful, and used strategy, it was doable. But you got multiple rounds into the fight, at least, before messing up would get you killed. This was over the top, even for "difficult".

Incidentally, I didn't exactly quit the first time a boss crushed me like an ant, either. I was willing to put in a reasonable amount of effort to overcome the obstacles I met, but if the same thing keeps happening, even after stopping to gain a few levels before moving on (which didn't make any difference for the next area)... then there seems to be a greater problem.

Re: Oblic "not my genre"

Actually RPGs were one of the few genre's I've ever been willing to play. I haven't actually played (done more than tried the play control on) a FPS since about the Quake II days (does anyone even remember that game?). I'd wager my problem is actually that I like RPGs too much. To the point that I was so disgusted by what the age of eye-candy did to them (when it got to the point that we were supposed to be so awed by the lack of female clothing that we were supposed to fail to notice the lack of originality and substance... something that only got harder to do as time went on), I actually quit playing them, for the most part. Which would be why I was here looking for indie games. When originality dies in the indie field, it's time to take up table tennis or knitting.

But I am years into the development of a novel heavily inspired by my love of RPGs, to give you some idea where I stand on that matter.

But I will say this... I think the worst thing that can happen to an artist of any kind (writer, game maker, graphic artist, etc.) is that they come to the point where the only words they can or would accept, are those of praise. At the point where any of us refuses to hear what may be wrong with our works, we stop growing, there, as whatever kind of artist we are. If you aren't even willing to entertain the idea that you might have made a mistake soemwhere, there's no way you're going to learn from whatever you messed up, and if you can't learn from your mistakes, then you can never advance.

Just so everyone knows, I don't give criticism like this to be a jerk. I give it because if it were me, and someone could come to me with a criticism that did turn out to be true about what I'd done, then that would be a piece of information I would need to know in order to fix that work, and hopefully not make the same mistakes again. A lot of people just hear hatred or cruelty, whenever someone disagrees with or finds fault with their work... but it isn't about being nasty. On the contrary, it's about giving honest feedback on an experience that I (random player) had, that may expose something that is fundamentally wrong with the work. In other words, it's about giving the only kind of feedback that will actually matter. "Great job" feels good on the ego, but as a creative person, I've found that it's pretty worhtless if you honestly want to get better at what you're passionate about. I've also heard people say I'm my own worst critic... but it's funny how they don't complain too loudly when the quality of my work actually improves because of that "harsh" judgment. In reality, what I strive for is CLEAR judgment. "Harsh" judgment and clear judgment are two different things. One is about seeing mistakes where they don't exist. The other is about seeing them where they do exist... seeing reality... so that you can make corrections accordingly. That's the kind of judgement the world is now in dire need of.

Returning to the game, I suppose you could say lots of people probably played this game with the walkthroughs and had no problem at all with it, but like I said... you shouldn't have to essentially cheat in order to get through it. (Wasn't there an article on this very topic on one of the various RPG Maker blogs?) It should be simple enough that the majority can get through it without wanting to pull their hair out. If there's some knowledge that is vital, it shouldn't be hidden away somewhere where most players aren't even going to look. Keep in mind a lot of people don't want to waste time visiting all the "training rooms" in that first town. Right or wrong, they just don't. Why not? Well, the assumption is, whatever's out there, shouldn't be too difficult to figure out on your own. And as that article pointed out, they shouldn't really be mistaken in that assumption. What you need to know that is actually vital to play the game, really should be pretty obvious.

So yeah... that's a pretty major problem, as far as I can see.
author=eplipswich
Don't dumb down the rating of a game just because you find it hard. It's not how you rate a game.


How do you suppose the profesional game companies "rate" the games they put out, during production?

For them, the dollar is the bottom line, and that means everyone, including absolute morons, must be able to play the game, without a lot of effort. (Sad but true.)

Returning to first person shooters, for example, this is what has pretty much killed any serious competition in that field. Back in the Halo 1 days, the pros actually had to have SKILL... not luck... to get kills. And the guns actually worked! But eventually, the game companies figured out that people wouldn't have any fun if they had ZERO skill, but were always dying to people who actually had some. So the guns started working worse and worse, and gradually it became almost completely about luck. Why? So that EVERYONE could do it! But the players who had the skill knew something was up when teams they had never even heard of were coming out of nowhere and mopping the floor with the long-time #1 pros at money-paying torunaments, on completely BS wins that everybody knew were BS wins. (This little tidbit from one of the great unknowns who the top pros used to play with to prepare for those tournaments, and who himself could have easily joined them.) The play control became crap because the companies finally acknowledged that if they want to sell games, then everybody has got to be able to play them.

Moral of the story: outside of niche markets, it's pretty standard to design games in such a way that everyone... even the WORST players... can have a chance at playing and even winning. (Bad as that may be.)

Yeah, the Japanese are notoriously crazy with the required skill level of all kinds of games (I recall laughing quite hard at a video of one of their absurd one-hit-you're-dead space shooters). And I'm not saying there isn't a place for games that do require crazy skill or make crazy demands on the players. But then, the maker should actually warn the player that this is one of those... not market it like it's a commonplace title of that genre.

If this were, for instance, a PUZZLE-type RPG, I wouldn't have bothered. If you go into the game knowing, in that case for instance, that you're expected to be a literal genius in order to play, then you expect the frustration that ensues (like spending four or five hours on one puzzle in certain old-school PC horror games). But that's a genre where that kind of effort is expected, up front. To most people, an standard RPG just isn't expected to be all that difficult.

But seriously... people can get as personally hurt about the review as they want. But what is a review, again? Oh yeah! It's a piece of writing the describes the user's personal experience with it, and what they thought of it, and why! (Not what everybody else thought of it.) Which is what I did do.

And I backed up what I said with the account of the in-game experience that led me to that conclusion (not just saying things for no factual reason.) I, random player, ended up in boss fight after boss fight, which became immediately never ending circles of curing and being reduced to near death state. Those are FACTS, not feelings, not fanciful fabrications. Which is why I bothered presenting them.

When it comes to art (of any kind) I don't deal in sentimental garbage. I just tell it like it is. If you're emotionally attached to the game, that's your thing.

And a person's brain doesn't melt if they step away from the controller for a while. These are not the Olympics (physical abilities you can loose by inactivity). They're video games.
I still don't really see a reference to the status effects in that section but if you say they were on your mind, fair enough.

author=Ayanin
Returning to the game, I suppose you could say lots of people probably played this game with the walkthroughs and had no problem at all with it, but like I said... you shouldn't have to essentially cheat in order to get through it.


This is a pretty broad assumption and I think it underscores my issue with the review in general. In my case, the first time I played it was before a strategy guide was even available. I lost a lot of boss fights, but experimenting with strategy always got me through in the end. I never had to actually grind, just change up which skills I was using. Unless you've done a broad survey of the thousands of people who have played this, I don't think you can defend a statement like that.

If the game was hard enough to ruin your experience, that's that. But it's a step too far to presume as a fact that the game is unplayable when many others have beaten it. I could never figure out how to see those Magic Eye illusions, but I didn't think they were broken, I just couldn't do it.
author=Ayanin
But seriously... people can get as personally hurt about the review as they want. But what is a review, again? Oh yeah! It's a piece of writing the describes the user's personal experience with it, and what they thought of it, and why! (Not what everybody else thought of it.) Which is what I did do.

Yeah, but like I said earlier, it would have been more appropriate if you had rated just the gameplay 2/5. That, I would have accepted. But what about the graphics/artwork? The story? The music? The setting/ambience/atmosphere? You can't just rate a game on one factor alone when there are so many factors that make up a game, particularly an RPG. The weakness of your review is, you didn't consider the other factors of a game. You only considered the gameplay.

EDIT: You should really read this as an advice on how to write a good review: http://rpgmaker.net/articles/249/
Sailerius
did someone say angels
3214
author=Volrath
I still don't really see a reference to the status effects in that section but if you say they were on your mind, fair enough.

author=Ayanin
Returning to the game, I suppose you could say lots of people probably played this game with the walkthroughs and had no problem at all with it, but like I said... you shouldn't have to essentially cheat in order to get through it.

This is a pretty broad assumption and I think it underscores my issue with the review in general. In my case, the first time I played it was before a strategy guide was even available. I lost a lot of boss fights, but experimenting with strategy always got me through in the end. I never had to actually grind, just change up which skills I was using. Unless you've done a broad survey of the thousands of people who have played this, I don't think you can defend a statement like that.

If the game was hard enough to ruin your experience, that's that. But it's a step too far to presume as a fact that the game is unplayable when many others have beaten it. I could never figure out how to see those Magic Eye illusions, but I didn't think they were broken, I just couldn't do it.
As much as I like the game, I do think the difficulty is rather luck-based. I ended up dropping it because I got frustrated with status ailments not landing and dying when I did everything right. I think what the review is trying to get at is that he feels that the game is too unfair rather than too hard.
I'm really baffled by the people who say that this game is too hard. I consider myself a very mediocre player, and I was able to beat it without trouble as a beta tester. Before the battles were balanced and polished. Before there were boss guides or anything of the sort. If a noobster like me can beat the unfinished version, I think anyone familiar with RPGs should be able to get through the finished product with little trouble. I think some of the complaints I'm seeing here are a little over the top.
Oblic
Once a member of RMN, always a member of RMN!
1937
Wow... alright.

First, I would like to reiterate by saying I had very little trouble with this game difficulty-wise. I really feel like it was pretty balanced, and I want to echo Volrath by saying the game probably is near impossible without the utilization of status effects. Unless something was changed in one of the more recent updates, status affects hit fairly often, especially for the player, making it pretty easy to blind/put to sleep/paralyze/stun the enemy before they "mop the floor with your party".

Next, you say you are trying to be fair and honest in your criticism of the game. Alright... if that's the case, I feel like you missed quite a few assets that the game offers. I understand your annoyance with the "mainstream" RPG genre. Square, company I once loved, and to some degree still do, pissed away a ton of opportunities to make some truly amazing games, only to focus on the visual assets. But an indie game like this and most others on this site are labors of love. These people don't have six, seven, eight or even more figure budgets to create their assets; a lot of time and effort goes into making every little bit of these games enjoyable, which includes the music, and graphics, and deep story. If you didn't like the gameplay, fine; say so and move onto other parts of the game. It's like getting a cashmere sweater as a gift and complaining that there is a tiny red dot on the inside of it (Seinfeld reference anyone?).

My point is, instead of being informative in your review, you come off as whiny and condescending. You focus solely on what you didn't like, with somewhat fair reasoning I will add, but completely ignore the rest (a footnote saying "the game was pretty" does not count). I'm not saying you should change the score or your review of the gameplay; I'm saying that an OVERALL score of 2/5 is invalid because it does not focus on anything other than the one thing you thought was lacking. Even if you think that gameplay is by far more important than any other asset a game offers, they should be given some consideration into the final score of the game, shouldn't they?

I've written a handful of reviews, and yes, the scores I give are generally good, but I will tear apart the parts I didn't enjoy or thought were lacking. If I thought there was something wrong with the story, I'll say so, and I'll do my best to explain why. If the graphics were boring and unengaging, I'll point it out. I know my breakdowns can be boring and seem somewhat juvenile, but it's both easier for me to portray my thoughts and for the reader to digest. A page long rant on how a game is "unplayable" doesn't really tell the reader much about why you thought it was unplayable (even though you posit that you have given reasons for its difficulty, I fail to see where).

To be perfectly honest, I really don't think this review will affect this game or its popularity, and that's not at all why I replied to it. I personally have no emotional attachment to this game at all. I thought it was fun, but I haven't thought about in months, and only clicked the notice for the review out of shear curiosity. If anything, I'm trying to point out why I feel your review is unhelpful, and in the process help you understand why you are being inundated with other replies that agree. Sorry to be a bit of a condescending dick, but I couldn't really help myself. I feel like I had to respond in kind.
All I can add is, during my play through I didn't find the game "hard" at all. From my memory I did have to do grinding later in the game. A few of the puzzles were a quite challenging, and I admit I did die a few times during some of the boss fights and ended up looking through the guide provided at the wiki, but I'm surprised you found this "hard" Ayanin.

Then again, it's been a long while since I last played this so if there truly is a luck element I missed knowing of, perhaps I got lucky?

I'm still surprised by the 2 star rating, I personally loved this. The story, gameplay, visuals. The whole game was stunning for my own personal experience so I'm shocked you had such a struggling, difficult and negative experience in comparison. (That is what you mean by "hard"?)
Ronove
More like Misao Stealing Prince
2867
But I will say this... I think the worst thing that can happen to an artist of any kind (writer, game maker, graphic artist, etc.) is that they come to the point where the only words they can or would accept, are those of praise. At the point where any of us refuses to hear what may be wrong with our works, we stop growing, there, as whatever kind of artist we are. If you aren't even willing to entertain the idea that you might have made a mistake soemwhere, there's no way you're going to learn from whatever you messed up, and if you can't learn from your mistakes, then you can never advance.

Excuse me? I have not come to a point where all I accept is praise. It has been a while since I finished this game and I do not need someone talking down to me saying "oh you will never learn from your mistakes." What version of the game is this? It's over 3.0. I have been refining this game since the day it came out and I have been refining to keep my original vision but still making it easier for people and you cannot say I have not. My vision was to make a game which difficulty reflects the one I want to play. If that's too hard for you, there's not much I can do. I will not nerf this game just to let people play it without a thought in their head on how to take advantage of the battle and how to decimate the enemies. I give players all the tools they need and if they cannot think to use those tools, there's nothing I can do.

Hell, I had another review from someone I didn't have a good opinion of, but I listened to him. And I made changes because he was right and he spread his opinion in a manner that was him understanding the game and not just hating one aspect of it and flying off the handle with how enraged he was.

I haven't even spoken to you and you act like I am beyond your criticism? I agree with none of this and you are fully within your right to tell the world of your opinion, but you are spinning it as though it is fact. But then you say later it's your personal experience. Average people have played my game. People who had trouble figuring out the controls because I forgot to show them the controls at the start of game could play my game and figure it out and play and die very rarely.

I, random player, ended up in boss fight after boss fight, which became immediately never ending circles of curing and being reduced to near death state. Those are FACTS, not feelings, not fanciful fabrications.

That is NOT a fact. That is your personal experience. The FACT is that there are tons of people who have played my game and never had an issue. The FACT is there are tons of people who have FINISHED my game and enjoyed the difficulty. What you have there is your Personal Experience. The FACT is that my game is playable. The FACT is my game is hard, I will give you that but it's Personal Experience if you lose and don't think of another way to approach the battle so you may win. The FACT is that you can beat my game just like tons of people have. Your Personal Experience may make that difficult than others depending on how you approach the game but it is a FACT you can beat my game.

You spin yourself, as a random player, a random personal experience, as the only one that matters. That you are shining beacon of how everyone feels when they play this game. Yes, you can give me a 2 star review, that is totally your right to do so as my game has enraged you so much you put pen to paper, more power to you, but you cannot act like you are the sole voice of reason to tell me my game is too hard. Yes, your voice should be heard, but there is no reason to act like I think myself as such a god that I am above your criticism. What we feel about my game differs a lot and that's fine. However, like you say, you are a random player in the vast sea of players, a lot of which have played my game and have beat it without issue. Some have even played it dozens of times and know the game better than I do myself at times.

If I feel my game needs to be rebalanced, I will do so in a heart beat. However, as you are one player in a vast sea of many and in many of those players, many have completed my game just fine, I can say thank you for your words and move on. I know not everyone will like my game and that's a fact of life.

There is so much more I could reply to but I feel it's a wasted effort. Either the RM gods will make mods come yell at me for defending my design choices or this will simply fall by the wayside no one giving it a second thought.

Enjoy your day in the limelight, I'm not changing my game radically because you (and anyone else) couldn't beat it. That decision is mine and mine alone and I have made that decision to open it up and tweak it many times. In any case, I hope you find a game you do enjoy playing and have a nice night.
author=Sailerius
As much as I like the game, I do think the difficulty is rather luck-based. I ended up dropping it because I got frustrated with status ailments not landing and dying when I did everything right. I think what the review is trying to get at is that he feels that the game is too unfair rather than too hard.

This sums up my experience too.
And I think Ayanin should have used the term "punishing" instead of "difficult" to describe the game's battles.

Rants aside, the guy is entitled to his opinion.
If anyone dislikes the fact that this rather unprofessional review got accepted and alters the game's overall score, suck it up. That's how things work here.
I'm more confused as to why Pom Gets Wi-fi is getting a ton of positive reviews and hardly anyone has any balls to speak up about how idiotic it actually is.
There is so much more I could reply to but I feel it's a wasted effort. Either the RM gods will make mods come yell at me for defending my design choices or this will simply fall by the wayside no one giving it a second thought.

Insert kentona coming in and saying "Excuse me? I have never yelled at anyone for defending their design choices..." heh

author=Fidchell
I'm more confused as to why Pom Gets Wi-fi is getting a ton of positive reviews and hardly anyone has any balls to speak up about how idiotic it actually is.

Pom isn't a full fledged RPG and doesn't really deserve a mention here. You can't compare apples to oranges. It's a certain type of game, it's in it's own little genre, and people like that stuff. It does what it meant to do quite well. It's the same reason people who don't like Sports game, don't go out of their way to say how idiotic they are.

As soon as I saw 2 stars and the name of the game, I knew there would be some heat on this review. It's not really that good, though. The heat, that is.

The review is pretty shitty. How far did you even get? You didn't talk about anything else. You should have just posted your rant as a comment and moved on with your life. Just because you played a game, doesn't mean you have to review it, and reviewing it in this case is a pretty dickish thing to do. It does sound like you just suck at games.

Games don't need to be tailored to the average person.
This review is bad, very bad, probably one of the worst I've ever read, and I've read several ones.
The reviewer doesn't talk about anything at all (besides difficulty) which is a shame, because this game certainly has more merits than flaws.

Since when a game gets reviewed speaking only about its difficulty?
Are we joking here or what? This is beyond ridiculous.

Difficulty is subjective because it depends on your experience in playing games, so you can't base a review only about this argument.
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"From my point of view (and also that of many others), the game itself isn't that hard at all."

Don't want to sound harsh (but I will say it anyway), "if you're a noob at rpgs and you can't even play an RM game then you should also avoid to review it."

Reviews rushed and done by frustrated haters or incompetents players like this one gave me some nerves.

Sorry for the outburst but some things "need" to be said.
author=Avee
If anyone dislikes the fact that this rather unprofessional review got accepted and alters the game's overall score, suck it up. That's how things work here.

Only because we let it be that way? Maybe if we spoke out more often against these reviews, the people in charge would get a clue?
_
Seriously, if only I'd get a penny every time I hear someone excusing a shoddy review as just an "opinion" or a "personal experience". ..Hey, don't take me wrong, there's a place for that kind of expression too, its called: the comments section. If all you want to to do is to rant- Ahem! Sorry. Being "emphatic" about a single aspect of a game, a comment should be enough for that.

A review is more like a formal event, you see? You don't attend wearing only your underwear (Unless you're crashing the event. Or if that's the 'theme' of the event. xD), you suit up all nice and dandy and you try to give the best impression of yourself... In the context of a review, I'd like to call this: Being "objective". Although some people have an issue with that word, so call it however you want, but it implies being thorough, fair, understanding, etc. You're writing for a community, not for some tabloid or your dear diary, so the best interests of that community, and what it stands for, should remain the priority. Reviews are not the place to vent or to make statements.

author=Ronove
The FACT is that there are tons of people who have played my game and never had an issue.

Just to play "Devil's advocate" a little... By this point I think it's a fact TOO that many people have issues with your game. So I don't know, maybe just allow players to pick a difficulty level at the beginning? I don't think this would be too hard to pull-off or even be an attempt on the "artistic integrity" of your game, would it? Many games do it and they're not intrinsically worse because of it; Quite the opposite. If this review brings up a good point is that your work is lost on plenty of people when you only cater to a 'niche' audience.

Edit: Also, there is difficulty and then there is "difficulty". If what I read a couple post above is true, that status ailments often don't land and there's nothing the players can do about it, that's essentially a wasted turn. That's game design 101.
There are plenty of games that frustrated me a lot because they were too hard and I really wouldn't see how I could rate them any better than 2/5 when I could only play 10 minutes of them and then got stuck because of the high difficulty with no chance to get further into the game and basically having wasted my 40€ (Dragon Quarter EU version I'm looking at you).

That being said, Star Stealing Prince isn't hard. It's actually pretty easy compared to other games released here. There is not much grind required and the only hard dungeon allows you to dodge any encounter (or escape from them). I really don't understand this review, because if the reviewer has problems with this game, then he might as well give 90% of the other games a 2/5 rating as well due to them being too hard for him.
Puddor
if squallbutts was a misao category i'd win every damn year
5702
In the sense that this review is one-sided, possibly written in a spat of frustration, and ignores other aspects of the game...yes it's bad.

In the sense that reviews are cited as personal opinions or viewpoints on a game...then...

It would be fair to criticise this review on the first point, but leaping down their throat on the basis of their personal opinion strikes me as a little childish. You or someone else may not have found it hard, but Ayanin did, apparently, and that's fair enough. Warranting of a review and a 2-star rating? Perhaps not, but this length of textual critique on a finished game generally ends up in the review section.

I didn't read Ayanin's response as a personally attack on Ronove and more of a citation of their right to actually post a review or commentary that isn't entirely positive. Which is fully within their rights. And it's fully within Ronove's right to ignore it, too. It doesn't mean it shouldn't be stated.

Essentially, everyone who's saying "it's not that hard, you're just bitching", seriously, cut it out. Complain about the review's lack of substance or critique on other areas of the game, complain that this should've been a comment, etc, but don't attack someone's right to voice an opinion. That's the way they felt and experienced the game.

I'm not taking sides, since I have yet to actually play SSP (it has been on my HDD for a little while, but I'm pretty busy). Behaviour like this is why we don't get as many people reviewing games and contributing an opinion.

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