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A Gem or a Dud? Too Early to Tell.

  • Sviel
  • 07/20/2014 08:08 PM
  • 448 views
Part I


tl;dr This game has a lot going for it, though, there are some major numbers issues which turn those boons inside out. I would not recommend playing this version for fun (though it makes an excellent study in why numbers are important), but I imagine that the next or at least some subsequent version will be quite fun.
There are also some minor technical issues which probably speak to the difficulty of getting the game running in the first place. I can't really guage how hard it was, but I am probably impressed.

The first part here is an overview while the second part is a log from my playing hours. As such, part II will wreck havoc with the spoilers. It is, however, meant primarily for the developer's use.

There won't be a rating for this one as I was unable (unwilling) to finish it. In fact, I barely got anywhere at all. Some of the numbers were so off that it was too painful to continue despite the hope that some other, positive elements would blossom into something very cool. I did, however, put ~4 hours into it. In lieu of that, I'll be talking about what was good,what was bad, and...well...yeah.

THE GOOD: The combat system is modeled off of Megaman Battle Network, which you may know already if you read the game page (I didn't). What's great about it is that the enemies tend to have proper tells and animations so that, with decent observation skills, a player can avoid damage and land attacks. Not to mention that these are all custom animations. When you go to fire your bow, your character literally nocks an arrow, draws the bow and fires it.
Storywise, it has a couple of fairly well-done characters. They're quirky enough that they don't feel stale, save, perhaps, for the main character. But honestly, if you can get a princess, a queen and traveling priests to feel pretty good, then you can get a pass on that. Dialogue needs some sharpening, but is mostly ok.

THE BAD: Mapping is not tight enough. I didn't encounter any errors, but, town was big enough that there was a loading point in the middle of it. The landscape changed after the load too, so it seemed like a strange teleportation glitch at first. This wasn't necessary as most of the space didn't actually serve any purpose. Later on, in a certain forest, there are loads of maps for seemingly no reason. At one point, I walked through 3 maps with no features (not even random encounters). They weren't even visibly different in theme from the maps before them.

There is an ammunition system in combat and very limited options if you run out. Replenishing it is cheap and only requires a trip to the weapons store, but, there didn't seem to be anything gained by forcing this trip. Combat would have been better off with infinite ammo or better options once it was gone.

The 'deck' of skills that the player starts with obeys the mechanics of the game it borrows from but, by that standard, is very near the worst possible deck to build. It is uncommon to be able to use more than one card at a time in this game, though the source made sure that several combinations were immediately available.

Also with combat, the animation for the basic attack is rather long, making it difficult to hit some enemies. Even when one does hit, subsequent attacks take just as long, so outplaying the AI has a very limited reward: one attack. Using skills exacerbates this issue as they often take even longer to fire.

Storywise, the humor tends to feel unfiltered, as if no one was consulted about it. Some of it is ok and some of it just doesn't work. There's also a sort of self-insert feel to the main character. That's likely due to how he is seemingly smooth and respected and well-liked and talented and looked-up to and all that. Not to mention his job is quite enviable. I didn't get to much beyond the set-up, though, so I won't comment too much on that. I will say that what I saw was promising; a story with enough freshness to be worth playing through.

THE UGLY: Combat takes too long. Basic attacks take 3 seconds to pull off and it takes 15-20 of those to kill common enemies. If they come to the front row you may be able to speed things up with melee attacks, but that can't be relied on. Skills would help, but you usually get only one of those per ~20 second 'round' so they're not all that helpful in the end...also, they generally do less than a third of enemy's health, so the majority of your damage will be coming from basic attacks.

The overworld walk 'speed' is painfully slow. Even if the travel time remained the same by making the map larger, the walk speed there needs to be higher. It hurts to watch.

In Crow Forest, the random encounter rate is about every 5 steps, pre-exaggeration. That's dumb.

The first boss has 10x the hp of a normal Bird-type enemy. This means it takes ~10x longer to beat. Normal Bird-type enemies take about 2-3 minutes, depending on luck. It spawns with 2 of said birds. Hoo-rah.

OVERALL: If enemies took 3-5 hits to kill, the deck had more starting combos and the walk speed/encounter rate was reasonable, this would be a pretty awesome game. I fully intend to come back if/when such things are fixed to see where the story goes and play around with the Megaman meets Medieval combat.

Part II


Show

- The opening screen is a simple black background with a bit of text and a small logo. A little too bare, I think.

-The text gets dragged kicking and beeping into the boxes. I cannot imagine anyone who would want their text to come in so slowly. It's possible to speed it up, but not to make it all just appear right off? Perhaps I can change that in options later.

-Seems that the text likes to move itself along while I'm typing here, if I happen to need the character 'f.'

-At any rate, the combat system (which I am getting a tutorial of) seems to be akin to Megaman Battle Network.

-After hitting OK in the SKILL CARD window, I get a debug error. I IGNORE it and continue.

-Unlike other games, it seems I can't put my laptop to sleep with this one running. Looks like I'm taking it from the top.

-I really hope it's a save anywhere set-up, for that reason.

-The tutorial ends and the characters discuss VIDEO GAMES, then ask each other what VIDEO GAMES are. It isn't all that funny as it's a pretty straightforward way of doing what so many others have done before. It does, however, totally blow immersion.

-Some things are handled well, like not explicitly stating that CHLORINE is a princess. The humor, though, would benefit from similar subtlety. It feels like there wasn't any filter on it; just w/e the dev thought would be humorous was plopped in.

-Also, it's hard enough to believe that someone would fire arrows in such a reckless manner that they might hit someone in the first place...but, to shrug off almost hitting the queen? This guy is insane!

-I don't see a save option q_q.

-He has apparently done this before. More than a hundred times...?

-I talk to the QUEEN again after her stuff. Turns out she saves the game. Who knew.

-Yeah, this is exactly Megaman Battle Network. Not a bad idea.

-I'm walking about in town when suddenly the screen blacks out. It reappears a second later, but the tree that I was standing under has run off. It seems that it was just loading the other side of town, but...why did the tree disappear. This is at the southern edge, btw.

-Town is pretty huge. It's not so big as to seem vacant, but it certainly could have been tighter.

-NPCs either offer hints at buttons and game mechanics or talk about totally inane stuff like flowers and rain? Or maybe that'll be important later?

-Apparently Crowen is a PRINCE. But he is also the BUTLER. And he is also the guy that checks up on FOREIGN PRIESTS with GUNS.

-On the topic of humor...the CONTACT LENS bit was probably too long. It got dangerously awkward before turning, to the point that the turn was basically assured, thus robbing it of any actual power.

-Should be said, watching an ELLIPSES form on the screen loses its excitement if done too often.

-He doesn't want people to know he's the PRINCE, but he introduces himself with his last name...a dead give-away.

-Though, AARIANNA not getting it is pretty funny.

-Apparently, she turns into a SAVE POINT as well. For some reason, SAVE POINTS are justified with the in-world excuse of telling someone what you've been doing, but most other mechanics blatantly break immersion in their introduction. Not sure why, as, this makes it rather difficult to know when it is possible to save the game.

-The WALK SPEED on the world map is suuuuuuuper slow.

-I am accosted by a RANDOM ENCOUNTER. There is a SCREEN REFRESH glitch that causes certain parts to stop updating if I alt tab or such while the game is running. Due to this, I can't see where I am for most of the battle. It may have also been running very slowly, but this was hard to tell. At any rate, I DIE. Subsequently, the game CRASHES? No GAME OVER screen, it just closes.

-I RESTART and make it to the WITCH'S HUT without encountering any enemies. She mistakes me for PRINCESS CHLORINE as well, because my suit totally looks like a dress? The WITCH is also a catgirl? Or, rather, the WITCH is CATGIRL's master.

-Lots of TALKING ensues. It's probably ok, but the crawling message speed makes it a seem to drag a bit.

-I play CATGIRL's minigame, which is basically STEPMANIA LIGHT. I rather enjoy it, though, I was hoping she had become a SAVE POINT because I don't want to lose my progress and have to go through all that TALKING again.

-I fight ENEMIES again. This time, I wait to make comments until I'm safe in town to avoid the REFRESH GLITCH. The battle takes 3 minutes, which is WAY TOO LONG given that I'm not really doing much. Also, the starting deck has very few cards that actually combo together. ALSO, the bow firing animation feels too long. The battle would have been over in two minutes if I didn't have to watch him slowly nock and draw each time.

-On the bright side, enemies have semi-subtle tells before they attack, so I really feel like I can interact with the attack via dodging or counter-attacking. This could get good.

-I explore a few houses in town...but they're all empty. Just like the streets...where is everyone!?

-I do manage to find a few people. One is a man who somehow managed to lock his keys in his house. He walked out, managed to lock the doors and the windows...and then realized he had no keys? I suppose he must have tossed them into the chimney after locking himself out.

-I find a HUSBAND in a house that chats meaninglessly about CHORES, then asks if I want to hear something good. Whether I say YES or NO, he loops back to the beginning of his chat, effectively trapping me FOREVER.

-I RESTART.

-This time, I leave town and head south as instructed. I get into a battle and lose half my hp, though, so I return, go all the way to the inn, go upstairs, go to the second-furthest room and talk to AARIANNA to save my game and heal.

-I grow a LEVEL and get a 33% increase in HP (which is huge) and 1 additional ATP, though I have no idea what that is.

-Was it not the southern forest? The name was CROW FOREST, but...there are TREES everywhere.

-At any rate, since exploring the southern edge of the map and fighting all of those battles has drained my hp and time, I head back to town to heal and save. Next time, I'll try the northern trees.

-Exiting town north gives me the Archery Grounds and the Queen's Chamber as choices, so I exit south and head north.

-The TREES to the north that look different from the rest of the TREES don't seem to do anything. I am officially lost.

-I go to see the QUEEN because WHY NOT. She has moved to the ARCHERY GROUNDS so I find her there instead. She TEE-HEES, then saves my game.

-She does not, however, offer any help in terms of finding PRINCESS CHLORINE. Also, when speaking to her again, I get the whole dialogue, which is not all that short. Would be faster to go into town, run all the way to the second floor of the inn and save there.

-I return to the ALCHEWITCH, but she is of no use to me.

-I head back north, though I don't really know where else to check. There's a path there that leads into the horde of TREES, so...maybe if I check out the trees directly at the end of that?

-The battles still take foooooorever. The issue isn't purely length, though...it's that for most of the battle I'm just spamming arrows. It takes 15-20 hits at least to kill an enemy outside of skills and I don't get enough skills to kill them. That means tons of time is spent on a simple game mechanic that probably wasn't meant to see so much daylight.

-I'm not certain what is gained by making arrows follow an actual ammunition system. Either you have a bulk of them and it doesn't matter, or you run out and life seriously sucks.

-Also, the guy who buys mob drops gives his spiel each time.

-Well, nothing at the end of that path...

-I check the borderless west to no avail.

-I get a hint from the DEV that I should consult the MAP. Apparently, there is no indication in the dialogue of where the forest in question is.

-The MAP says that I should go north...but I tried that. Nevertheless, I venture forth yet again.

-Soon, I'm wondering around in the DIFFERENT trees, hoping to find the entry to the forest.

-Turns out, I have to go to the edge of the screen and hit CONFIRM. That's...not intuitive.

-Inside of the forest, the ENCOUNTER RATE is sky high. I have never killed so many bunnies in so short a period.

-Apparently, this LARGE, very OPEN forest is also a sort of maze. With a super high ENCOUNTER RATE.

-I RUN AWAY because I RUN OUT of ARROWS. Awesome. Nothing makes a HIGH ENCOUNTER RATE more fun like Pointlessly Limited Ammunition.

-I go to switch more FLEE skills into my deck, but it doesn't seem to work. Eventually, I realize it is because I can only have 3 max, but, a little feedback would have been nice.

-It'd be nice if, after each draw, the skill use thing returned to the first slot. Also, if it moved along automatically after using a skill.

-I return to town and spend all of my money on ARROWS.

-I bought IRON ARROWS, which do more damage, in the hopes of spending less of my life in combat. I discover, however, that these arrows cannot be used automatically...I must use a skill to switch my ammunition every battle.

-Except it doesn't work.

-I return to town, sell the MONSTER PARTS that I have and buy NORMAL ARROWS.

-Turns out the forest isn't a MAZE. It's just a long, wide, super linear path. Not really believable as a forest.

-I reach the end and have no idea what I'm supposed to do. I don't particularly feel like trying to figure it out with ENCOUNTERS literally every 5 steps.

-I keep getting a terrible battle rating, as if it's possible to kill everything much faster than I do.

-So far, the only skill cards I've obtained have been 2 from CATGIRL's game and 3 from battles. The latter 3 were all FLEE skills while the former 2 were EVADE or some such non-attack skill.
UPDATE: I got an Eat Meat skill card from a monster. To date, none of them drop MEAT or APPLES, the health restoring items.

-I can't seem to walk back anymore? The transfer simply does not happen. Turns out, if a battle triggers at the same time, I just end up staying on the map. It just happened to do that twice in a row.

-It seems wrong to end a review at the start of the game, but I'm seriously tempted.

-It's also really annoying that I can only consume food to restore health while in combat, and only if I draw + use the appropriate food skill.

-With the transfer-canceling battle thing in mind, I discover that the forest does have another path.

-The BIRDS are HELL to fight. Since monsters DODGE attacks when they enter their own attack animation, it's very difficult to hit them with skills as those animations tend to be even longer than the basic attack. Also, since I can only attack once before they attack, I spend way more time dodging and waiting for them to finish attacking than dealing damage. They also take almost 20 hits to kill.

-Doesn't help that it takes a minimum of ~20 seconds to flee from a battle.

-The ENCOUNTERS randomly stop, allowing me to walk through several empty maps in peace.

-I find CHLORINE. She is being held hostage by...birds? I engage the THREE BIRDS in battle. Or, rather, the game wants me to, but I take a few minutes to roll my eyes and convince myself not to RAGE QUIT.

-I fight the BIRDS. It takes like 5 minutes. There's a scene and I have to head further into the forest. What I really want to do is save the game and LEAVE. I did not expect to be trapped in HOURS of "gameplay" and have places to be.

-There's another BOSS. 2 BIRDS and a MOMMA BIRD. I do 13 damage per hit...the MOMMA BIRD has 2000 HEALTH. That's ~155 hits. If I hadn't stocked up on ARROWS, this would be even more frustrating. I decide to attempt the fight, but, I'm really quite done here.

-I DIE. Oh well. That was only, what, 10 more minutes of my life?

-The MOMMA BIRD had tells or some such, which is nice. If the NUMBERS weren't so terribly balanced, it could have been a semi-fun fight.

-That seems to be the story for the whole game. It could have been fun, but there are some simple but SUPER IMPORTANT things that deny it. For instance, common enemies should not take 20 hits to kill, especially when those 20 hits take a full minute to execute without factoring in dodging, missing due to enemy animations and all that jazz.