Final Fantasy: Chaos

author=WCouillard
Loop Animation (required for VE State Animations) is bugged to hell. It broke when Victor updated a bunch of his scripts long ago. He never fixed it.

author=RydiaMist
I think all you really need to do to fix some of the maps like the castle and perhaps the towns (though those aren't hard to navigate, really), is shrink the size of each individual map, and then combine them into a smaller number of maps. The castle especially feels disjointed because every hallway seems to have its own map, and they all look similar, so it's really easy to get lost.

I'd also suggest maybe putting a sparkle or something on the book Lucius is supposed to look at in the Library (or perhaps a NPC who says "I saw an interesting history book on a desk in the back. You might be interested, Young Master."), and for other points maybe have him be a little clearer about where he's headed, and give the entrances to his destinations a distinct look. Even just a guard or NPC in the hall outside who states "This is the Library", or something would be helpful. It might also be a good idea to have the various maids scattered around mention where in the castle you are. It comes off as hand-holdy, I know, but that's not a bad thing at the start of the game.

I was able to get through it fine, but from personal experience making a game, I find that players are a lot happier when they are given explicit instructions on where they need to go with detailed directions on how to get there, and who exactly they need to talk to next. The side stuff is what should take poking around/talking to every npc/etc.

Anyway, sorry if this came off as preachy or anything! Just offering an opinion/suggestions.

As for your other question earlier, my game uses Tankentai, so I don't know anything about Victor's sideview or the Yanfly state script, so I can't really help you there, sorry (though I think Victor made his own state animation script?). :/

author=WCouillard
Two days later and I still cannot leave this starting area. I found the King and Queen eating dinner, then was told to visit the library. I did so, nothing special happens there, and thus, I have no idea where to go next after walking around the castle for another 30 minutes unable to leave.

This is getting tiresome. I suggest making this entire portion of the game a lot less confusing, giving clear directions on what to do, who to speak to, and where to go every step of the way. Any area where the player is trapped like this shouldn't be this confusing.

author=RydiaMist
Hey! I played through the demo and figured I'd give a few thoughts.

-Story seems solid so far. I agree with Noel that "angels and demons" isn't FF-esque in and of itself, but the series has plenty of extradimensional/multiple world stuff so I am interested to see where you go with it. The intro didn't really bother me, as while there wasn't any immediate action, things got moving quickly enough. I think it's fine that Lucius knows he's a demon, but I'm not sure if having the fact that he has some other special power being revealed to the player so soon will take away from things later. Way too early to tell where you're going with things. =)

-Characters are good. Lucius is a dick and not especially likable, but I imagine you're going to be developing his character, so I'm sure it's intended. I like Kura and Claire, they give off a definite Palom/Porom vibe. Veillia isn't really around long enough to say much about her character.

-Battle system is very well done! Besides a few graphical errors everything seems fairly solid. I'll go into detail about those later. I absolutely LOVE your battler sprites and status animations! I can tell a huge amount of work went into those.

-Game balance is... weird. I think you should put a free healing spot at the entrance to the sewers as well, because enemies quickly drain your HP, and it is very, very possible for the player to get stuck in a situation where they have exhausted their supplies and are literally stuck and unable to continue. I'd also be a little generous and scatter around a few more potions in the castle/sewer since it's not like the player can retreat from the sewers and head back to town. After you get Claire, things balance out and are mostly fine, with a couple of exceptions. First, the turtle outside the second town. Carapace crits every time and can wipe out your party faster than you can heal. Second, I think the bosses might be just a bit off.

The Phantom Saber was fine, it just had perhaps a bit too much HP (only way to kill at a decent pace is to bring Lucius to critical HP and spam Minus Strike, the elemental shifting it did seemed to not give it a weakness and you can't spam Libra at that point to find what works, unless I missed a weapon). The Crystal Host might be a bit overtuned for such an early game boss. If you don't catch on immediately and get Barshade/Barlight up and keep them up 100%, he'll slaughter you unless you've grinded a bit. He also has a boatload of HP, and you're given a caster but the boss just spams reflect so you can't even try any of her spells out really.

All of this was on the default difficulty. I'd say make default a bit easier, and make the current difficulty a step up from that.

-I kept getting a crash outside the second town, in "Changing Battlebacks", line 68. Looked like an empty hash problem, you probably just need to add a line that loads the default hash again if the current is nil, I had that same problem.

-I'd say some of the areas might be just a bit too large for the early game, but I didn't really have any problems navigating or anything.

-There's some spelling and grammar issues, but nothing terrible or unreadable.

-There seems to be a slight ATB issue. After taking an action, the ATB bars remain empty for a time before starting to refill. I assume it's probably a display problem with the gauges, or you have actions taking more than max ATB. In any event, it's not game breaking but it makes it hard to get a feel for the speed of your characters.

-A cursor appears in the enemy window when selecting a target. If you created this window the way I think, you just need to go into that class and set cursor.visible to false, that should fix it. Also, I'd have an update be forced whenever an enemy dies, as their name often takes a while to vanish from the window.

-It was mentioned before but sometimes characters don't change poses when a status ailment is removed, or they enter battle with ailments that had been cured. I don't know what sideview system you are using, so I'm not sure what to suggest.

-I'd suggest having some way to tell what status ailments are on your party and the enemy besides looking at the sprites, as you can have more ailments than are displayed. I understand why you removed the icons from the status window, I did the same thing because it is not something classic FFs did. If you are using Victor's target arrow, there should be an option to have a targeting window pop up that will show what statuses are on the target. FF4 DS and others have used this, so it's not totally inauthentic. You could also create a window that displays the statuses on the party when targeting a spell like the classic FFs did, but this takes a bit of scripting know-how.

That's about all I can think of for now! Looking forward to seeing more, I think you're off to a real great start! =)

author=Noel_Kreiss
Yes, free MP healing seems really cheap, although I don't mind it actually. You might consider lowering the amount it recovers so it doesn't look as cheap as it does now.

Now to the story commentary:

• The opening sequence (narration + castle and escape through sewers) didn't really feel like it was a Final Fantasy game.
  We get some narration outlaying the background, then we get "thrown" into castle sequence which actually lack action aside of the escape, but even that feels cheeply done. Recent Final Fantasy games just throw action into you and this game... it goes rather calm.
• I'm not sure wether I like it or not that Lucius knows who he is exactly. This is once again rather un-Final Fantasy-like; if you look at characters like Cecil, Terra, or Zidane you'll notice that at the beginning they don't consider themselves something extra-terrestial, just humans, maybe more potent than most.

I can't think of more for now, but these two things were the most glaring to me.

Are you planning on extending the "Passive" in game? Two slots are very limitting and gaining few more, be it sidequests, items, or whatever would be nice.
I was supposed to get Mognet popups but I don't seem to get them. The letters only appear when I enter the Mognet menu.
I wish there were Limit Breaks here: would make battles easier IMO.
Also, it wasn't a good idea to widen the altars in the cathedral in Luft: they look horrible.