Having fought all the way to the old man with the black ball I thought i had reached a save spot or something. I had only 1 HP by then. But suddenly there was another fight with a fairy boss or something. I know now to buy lots of healing potions and make sure to save. It would be nice to have enemy drops at least occasionally because even with the return gem, it takes time to go all the way back to buy items. BTW where is the grandpa? I cant buy armor unless hes found and I think armor is going to help get all the way through to whatever lies beyond.

Then again...maybe I am just whining!

Your right Roy, sounds like one great big fat whine to me also...... :)

Damn, now I have to download the game to find out what makes people whine so...

I have went through the forest and saved the girl now and bought the location note about X & Y -- But it's no help because X & Y is not marked on the Forest Map??
Can't locate the Thorn Faingher.

Finished the DEMO. Great work keep it going. The only thing I see wrong is the
Weapon prices. Great job.

BTW at roughly what level are you able to make it past that fairy behind the old man. I am LV 6.

No one in the potion shop really tells me anything except to sell or the one guy to tell me X and Y.
Never mind...I fed that damn dog....sorry. But since I now have your attention, what % of the game is left at this point roughly?

Hello aaron9780.

I will try to be constructive in my review here, since you wanted feedback on your demo.

The main problem I am finding so far is that there is nothing to draw the player in or catch our interest. Let's take it step by step.

The game has a VERY brief introduction, which was problematic in a few ways. It didn't catch my interest or make me ask questions about the world in which this game takes place; it didn't make me want to know more about the world or any characters. In fact, not a single character or line of dialog was included in the introduction. Because the game lacks a real description, I felt immediately disinterested. The purpose of an introduction is to make the player want to continue playing while giving a little background. I felt like you were just giving a grocery list of generic things that needed to be said for background info. You need to make the introduction much more interesting and dynamic!

After the introduction, we immediately get control of the main character without any introduction to the character. We, as players, don't know anything about the guy. Is he likable? Is he snarky? Does he have habits or annoying tendencies? How does he interact with people? None of these things are answered, and instead we immediately have control of him on the world map. Add this to the fact that he has the generic, default art (and even character description) and it felt lackluster and wrong to me. Think about any of the classic RPG genre games: you need to know more about the character, again, to draw the players in, before any control is given over to the user.

My main criticism after that is it felt like the game lacked direction. Am I supposed to go to the one town? I assumed I was, since it was a linear path on the world map with only a few limited places to go. But when I arrived in the town, there was no cutscene to give me information or even confirmation that I was going in the correct direction. In fact, the town could be skipped over on the world map itself, without ever entering the town simply by answering "No" and then walking over it. It felt really poorly thought out.

After wandering around a bit, I discovered the only place to go was the forest, so I entered and started wandering around. I will say, the warp crystal was a good idea, and I've often wanted things like that for convenience in other games. But other than that, the forest was essentially just fighting through extremely boring battles with the standard RPGMaker VX Ace battle system. I say extremely boring because it was literally "Press Attack, select enemy, hope they don't kill you/status you, repeat." I didn't even have any spells to cast or abilities to use (and I made it to level 3, by which point I should have SOMETHING other than "Attack").

Then as I was wandering up to the old man that I saw, I got wtfganked by an elite spider enemy that poisoned me on the first turn and was dealing 1/5 of my HP per attack. I was not able to kill him, even with the 3 Potions I was given via the chest. I then realized that I forgot to save at any point, because there was no reminder/no save points anywhere (I guess I was supposed to save on the world map...). I did not feel like restarting the demo due to having very little interest in the one character I had control of (can't honestly remember his name now...) and having even less interest in the world in which he lives.

I believe you can do a lot better than this given time, and I don't mean to sound too overly critical. Just remember, as you continue to develop the game, to make something to draw the interest of the player! Show us what the characters are like, tell us about the world! Add details that draw us in and make us want more! This is the crux of the issue with anything fictional. You have a pre-made community willing to play your game here at RPGMaker.net, but it needs to draw interest. There has to be something unique and attention-catching, whether it's the characters, the art, the story, the dialog, the music, or the interesting battle mechanics... But you need something in the game other than what is there right now.

Good luck on the game!
LaMasq

author=aaron9780
I do apologize battles were boring but you have to realize this is the demo containing the FIRST 2 hours of game play.

I hear you about not handing out abilities because you want to stretch them out through 99 levels, but if you think that means that the game should be boring and suffer for it, then you're going about it all wrong.

On the contrary, the game should be as exciting as you can make it at the start to grab the players' interest. Towards this end, I generally give each character at least one neat ability at the very start to making playing more fun (and to add more strategy to the battles). If you're worried about running out of skills, design more. There are thousands of options for different skills with VX Ace, so I don't see any reason why a player gets no option other than selecting "Attack" again and again.