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a broken combat system will destroy your experience.

i tried playing this game, the story seemed interesting, as it was sugested i started from the first game, i care a lot about story, so there is no way i would play the second before beating the first, however i never got past the tutorial, because the first game had the stupidest battle sytem i had ever seen, not only did a whole bunch of stuff happen without any explanation seemingly at random, like for example, sometimes you got tow attacks in a turn, sometimes you didnt, there was no way to know if you would get that until you attacked, so you could not plan or count on it, even worse however was the magic option, you start with one spell wich is a buff you use on yourself, it used the orange resource that i forgot the name for, but even though i had enough of it to use the skill it sometimes didnt allow me to, it never explained why, and worse, when it did get used it could MISS, a skill you have to charge up the resource for, you didnt have from the start of the battle, and it sometimes couldnt even be used for whatever reason, and when you did use it it could still miss you, at first i thought it would only miss when that shock trooper guy blinded you, but no, it can miss on its own too, so you wonder why even bother using that in the first place, this was a very bad sign, it meant that either the combat system had way too many rules you couldnt find anywhere and as such you would be forced to guess while restarting the same tutorial over and over again until you got them right, (because who doesnt like unskipable tutorials?) or it meant that the battle system was broken due to poor design, perhaps its a mixture of both, anyway this meant those issues would likely continue through the whole game and rear their ugly heads in the most crucial moments to make the game extra frustrating, it wouldnt just be an issue of a rushed tutorial.

as if that where not enough however the first boss, the shock trooper, has a skill that blinds you, you have no way to counter that at all, it simply criples your ability to do anything, as it somehow affects all you skills, even the ones you cast on yourself, there is also no distinguishable timer for you to know how long that would last, whenever i fought him it seemed to last for many turns, during wich your basic attack was, ironically enough, the only thing remotely usable since it hit so many times it might get in some hits on your enemy, also, all this happens after a very anoying escape sequence with no chance for you to save the game before you face the boss, so whenever you die you have to start the game from scratch, but after tow failed attempts to beat the boss i came up with a strategy, i wasnt happy with it since it was boring as hell and didnt make use of any interesting mechanics, all you do is kill the normal soldier that comes with the final boss in order to reduce the enemies stun and damage potential, then spam auto attack on the boss while you are blind using potions to try and keep you health up, this is the only reliable strategy because otherwise the soldier will keep stunning you, and his damage plus the boss damage was often enough to 1 hit kill you even at full health if both used their strongest skills, so you have to get rid of him before you go blind and your attacks become almost completly unreliable, however even after doing that the boss still somehow stunned me twice in a row and killed me when i originally had full health, after that i realised the second major flaw with combat system: it is far FAR too random, everything you do can fail horribly for reasons completly outside of your controll, that eliminates any semblance of planing and preparation, instead all you do is auto attack and pray that the RNG will favor you, since after all your auto attack is the only remotely reliable damage you have when you are blind, and it so reliable when you arent blind that every other skill is superfluous, that combined with the fact that every one of your skills is worthless while you are blind since they will all miss and do not have like 5 attempts like your auto attack makes it so all you ever do is auto attack and use potions, and even that has no guarantee of geting you anywhere.

in conclusion, this game might have a great story, it might have wonderfull characters, it might have beautifull maps and scenes (althought that would probably only be present in the second one, what i saw in terms of map design in the first one was pretty lack luster), but i will never really know if it has any of those things since the combat sistem is garbage, so please rework that sistem from the ground up.

Posts

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I can see your concern even though I didn't play this yet. If the combat system is that broken, I'm holding off until it's fixed. As much as I hate to admit this review saved me from trying to play this since the combat system is broken. I hope the author can learn from this, and pay more attention to balancing. People like a challenge, but not an impossible, or just flat out hard battle.
I was just starting to use rpg maker when I was making this so I appreciate the honesty about the broken combat system. I designed it to be random on purpose but I could see no way to fix the phase out skill. It works most of the time but sometimes it will miss no matter what. That being said in the first town just after the intro the house to the south has a save in it so you don't have to keep redoing the same tutorial over and over. In that house their is also an accessory which will protect you from being blinded. Hopefully this will help future players as well.
author=zizlefratz
I was just starting to use rpg maker when I was making this so I appreciate the honesty about the broken combat system. I designed it to be random on purpose but I could see no way to fix the phase out skill. It works most of the time but sometimes it will miss no matter what. That being said in the first town just after the intro the house to the south has a save in it so you don't have to keep redoing the same tutorial over and over. In that house their is also an accessory which will protect you from being blinded. Hopefully this will help future players as well.

thanks, i hadnt looked for it since there didnt seem to be anything i could interact with other then the soldiers, and as such i assumed there probably wouldnt be anything to do other then escape, but that information makes it a lot less frustrating to beat the tutorial, the issues with the battle system remain, but if anyone is either ok wit looking past that for the sake of playing the game, or if they genuinely dont mind those issues then they could have fun with this, maybe i will try it again soon.
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