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A decent game but not without it's flaws

Blue Skies 2 is an RPG maker game created by Starmage. It's an improvement on the first game, having better graphics and a better story with more likeable characters. However, this game still has some rather noticeable flaws, which I'll be explaining here. Let's start with the graphics.

Graphics (9/10)
The graphics are good; the creator made separate drawings and portraits of all of them. The battle system looks a lot better than it did in the first game.
There's nothing groundbreaking but it does the job well enough. I have no real complaints.

Sound (9/10)
The sounds do their job well enough. I liked most of the music in this game. There was some RTP, but I liked the way it was used. The battle and boss themes in the game are pretty good and are probably the best music in it. Again, I have no real complaints.

Story (7/10)

Now we get into the real meat of the review, and unfortunately, this is where the game starts to run into some problems. Now, the characters are decent enough, though some are a bit underdeveloped. I liked the first half of the game; it follows the journey of the main character to escape the holy order, which wants her dead because of her powers. It makes for quite an interesting story with the character standing firm in the face of adversity. Unfortunately, it's in the second half of the game where things fall apart. I don't want to go into too many spoilers, but I do think some things get solved way too easily and the second half of the game is a pretty generic save the world plot with a villain that lacks any real depth and is evil pretty much for the sake of it.
As I said, the first half of the game was good and it would have been nice to see that same quality in the second half. That may be something to work on in their next game. This is one of the two main problems I have with this game, the other of which I'll be covering in the next section.

Gameplay (7/10)
I'll admit, for the most part, the gameplay is pretty decent. The battle system, while nothing special, does its job. There's a lot of optional things to check out with spells to unlock, sidequests to complete and weapons to find. It should keep you entertained for a few hours. My problem with this game comes with its difficulty. Early on, the game has a decent difficulty curve, probably peaking at around 2/3 of the way into the game. However, in the game's final stages, the difficulty takes a nosedive. Basically, the game's final skills are just ridiculously overpowered. Once you've learned them, you'll be pulverizing pretty much any enemy in the game, even the final boss won't last long against you. Now, granted, I did have the ultimate weapons, so that may have had something to do with it, but the boss guarding them isn't that hard at all. I really thought he would put up more of a fight. Overall, I think, in their next game, maybe the skills should be less overpowered so the final bosses can pose more of a challenge.

Replay Value (7/10)
If you missed secrets the first time around, then maybe you might want to play again to find them. However, if you found everything, there's really no reason to play a second time. There aren't multiple endings or anything. That's okay though, not every game needs replay value.

Conclusion (7/10)
I considered giving this an 8, but story and gameplay are the most important aspects of a game, and sadly, they made some mistakes in these areas. I still enjoyed this game, but I want to be honest and point out the flaws. I do this so maybe they can work on these flaws in their future games and hopefully become a better game creator. This is certainly not a terrible game; there are far worse games on this site, but there is room for improvement and I'd be doing the game creator a disservice if I didn't point out the flaws in their work. I look forward to the creator's next game.

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Hi alexjones50! Wow! Thanks so much for this extremely detailed and helpful review! ^_^ :) I really appreciate you looking into the story and finding what can be improved! ^_^ :)

I understand your concerns with the second half of the story's mistakes, and I do admit that when I finished developing the game, my gut instinct was still telling me that there were missed opportunities for story development (esp. with the main villain) but I just went with it and "Well, I am excited to release this game", which is indeed a true mistake in my part. xDD For this, I have learned to take my time when it comes to the story and not ignore my gut instincts over being excited to release a finished product ASAP. :)

As for the gameplay, well, I feel like I overcompensated a little bit too much from the previous BlueSkies' difficulty curve. xDD :D Again, these are important points that I will remember and will be working on in my currently developing game "Rave Heart". ^_^ xD :)

Thanks so much once again alexjones50! I really appreciate it so! :D
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