Brave Hero Yuusha

Hello there SgtMettool.

I have been playing RPGMaker games from this site for years and years, but never saw a reason to signup. I've played most of the "classics" on here and having just completed Brave Hero Yuusha, I finally decided to signup so I can start giving impressions and experiences I have with the game to the developer.

I want to say also I am a complete amateur at this and will likely be jumping from topic to topic randomly, so I apologize if it is difficult to follow along.

Right off the bat, this game is clearly inspired by Dragon Quest. I am a huge fan of Dragon Quest and have been since I was a small child. (I'm 25 by the way) The quality in the presentation was immediately apparent to me. Your menus are simple and imitate the classic games it is inspired from, without being default RPGMaker skin either. The music was catchy and looped well. Not incredibly memorable music, but it set the tone it meant to and was pleasant.

The writing is nothing spectacular, but it gets the job done. I have certainly seen much much worse. There are three instances where I noticed typos. One was early while talking to the mayor of the desert trading town (with the vital charms) the other two were in a flashback sequence towards the end of the game. Sorry I can't give you exacts, I wrapped up my playthrough last night and cannot recall. The dialogue never seems forced, cheesy or out of place. Flows well enough, but the general scenario/plot of the game doesn't lend itself to any fantastic monologues or whatnot.

The world map music reminded me of FF5. The sprites are what you would expect of this style of game. There were many mini medals hidden around the map, which is nice but I wish there would have been more worthwhile secrets. Perhaps give the player another key at the end of the game which lets you access some strong optional bosses/ ultimate equipment? A way to mitigate random encounters would have been a plus also; be it an item or a spell it doesn't matter. I would normally recommend a world map to be included in these kinds of games, but your game was short enough/ small enough world to not have needed one which may be a negative on it's own. More dungeons, more towns, more places to explore, etc is almost always a criticism I make with games so don't take it personally. I do admit the game length fits the simple narrative well enough, but I almost always thirst for more.

Regarding the battle system ... it works well enough for the most part, but it lacked the depth and challenge I personally enjoy. Most random encounters revolved around spamming attack + attack/cure us + fire all/frostall/firemostall/frostmostall ;

Most boss encounters revolved around
Hero- 1st turn Zeal, 2nd turn Fortify then either attack or use Comet/Meteor Strike if they're weak to it

Volza- Can inflict some status effects on bosses but its usually not worth it so he ends up attacking and healing in a rotation or spamming heal on the last couple bosses

Glynn- FireMost/Frostmost, occasional Dread/Siphon

I just wish the game had forced me to break out of this routine. To be fair most rpgs fall victim to this, especially commercial games.

More random notes about the game,
-You had a challenge enemy as a blue chest in one of the dungeons and it gave a nice reward, I would have LOVED to see one of these in each dungeon!
-Would have liked slightly more enemy variety, maybe an additional 2-3 enemies per zone/dungeon
-More nods to older rpgs via either in town secrets, npc dialogue, locations on the map etc would have been lovely

Overall it was a very enjoyable game. I wouldn't be commenting if it wasn't. End playtime was 5 hours 38 minutes, having left the game idol a bit and got all the medals. My main and most major criticism is the game length, variety in equips/monsters/spells/areas and more joking/4th wall breaking npcs. Sorry if it sounds like I'm a bit harsh, my life motto is to be critical to help people improve. Ass kissing does very little to help, afterall.

Thank you for the hours of fun. I hope you develop more games! Compared to games like Cthulhu Saves the World, if you expanded and made a larger game with this level of polish you could easily sell it commercially via Steam or something for $5-$10

Till next time,
Andrew