ACRA'S PROFILE

So, my initial assessment was right. I figured you were the one who wrote it, if only because of your obsession with using strikethroughs in your posts.

Let's just start with getting the graphics out of the way. They've never endeared anyone towards me, but I still firmly believe that creating my own unique style is better than ripping or recolouring a few lousy pixels. The foliage in the woods was quite intentional, and by the time you need to start looking for semi-hidden paths, you should have to walk under several dozen trees by then, so you should know that the top obscures the path but isn't solid. I honestly have no idea how to do a decent field, let alone a snowy one. For the little maze in the Ruins, try heading as far north as possible. I actually thought I made it far too easy.


I think it should be noted that I don't have any particular knowledge of Might and Magic, so I have no idea how heavily my battle system relates to it. Or Secret of Mana, for that matter. If I didn't say it prior, or the gaping holes didn't make it abundantly clear, I built the Menu and Battle Systems completely from the ground up. The Toolkit's default systems are essentially completely and totally unusable. As in, they literally don't even run.

There's a couple misnomers you mentioned about the Battle System. All weapons that aren't bows or crossbows do have a range of one (adjacent), but bows and crossbows have a range of three/four, not two. Most spells will have a range of two. What 'Skill' currently does is a simple attack with a range of two, doing magical damage (using the characters Magic stat, rather than Attack). So for some people it would be very weak, but for more mage-y characters like Alice and Gale it would be a good deal stronger. It has no fancy modifiers, so it hits and criticals as often as their normal attack would. Monsters also have type resistances, so some things, probably most notably being Draug's poison, may be heavily resisted, if not outright negated. I seem to recall fixing that issue with the text at the top waiting for a keypress (it should continue on automatically after about two seconds if it isn't skipped), but I'll have another look at it.

The primary way characters gain power is through their equipment (though their spells and skills will be able to gain experience too, but it pales in compare). While the mechanics of equipping are there, items in general are in a bit of a state of limbo. Without items down solidly, a shop wouldn't work. Without a shop, you can't get new weapons, so you can't get stronger (without 'cheating'). And I'm in no particular rush to create a shop system to rectify this, because the Battle System is far from the focus of the project, and I've admittedly never had that much interest in it. The focus is on a nonlinear story.


I'm not sure how much I should really say about your morality remark. You only played the game half of one time, so pretty much all nonlinearity aspects would be lost on you. I wouldn't seriously expect you to replay it, especially considering you were forced into this review, but I nevertheless find it odd that you would take interest in it. Its purpose doesn't come up that much so far, but some things happen depending on your relative alignment, and leaning too far one way limits your choices in the other (for instance, if you've been a massive prick the whole time, the option to do something really nice and self-sacrificing will be greyed out. By the way, the Good symbol is an ankh with wings behind it. Chaotic is, well, kind of a random haze.

The most definitive time it comes up so far is if you save the Midland Woods (where you met Marcia) for last (this would rightfully be any time after having five artifacts, but, well, being only six now, it makes it a bit harder to do). Depending on your alignment and previous encounters with Marcia (if any), her and the priestesses may align themselves with the scenario villain (Jade), try to fight against them (if they like you), or, well, be dead because you murdered them earlier. Every single scenario will have major variations based on when you do it (with further variations based on things like alignment and relations), but as of now, it's just the Woods and Estoc that get anything noteworthy.


I think it's more than a little hypocritical of you to completely ignore any mention of the characters at all, especially when that tends to be your own intended focus with your projects. Or at least that's what I recall you saying around the time Matsumori Days got a Let's Play from those RPG Screenshot people. Perhaps there wasn't enough for you to get a decent read on the characters, I suppose.

I kind of regret not adding a nice little program that spurts out what a player has done so far, so I can simply ask them for a text file, rather than making them recall things and have to do writing for themselves. If the response is easy and automated, more people might give feedback, right? Well, whatever. I guess I'll simply have to ask you the hard way. You made mention of going to the north. What happened with Thrall? What was the third artifact you found? I assume the first two were the woods and the northern wastes, and the fourth was Estoc, which you found prior to stumbling onto the third one. (If I'm correct here, you'll find that Estoc's scenario changed on you a bit when you grabbed the third). Did you ever return to the necromancer's camp to talk to Ethel (the map lady)? Did you catch on that there was a (poorly, apparently) implied artifact -> necromancer camp -> artifact structure? What party members did you bump into? Did you do the 'side quest' of freeing Gale from Estaria Palace? Did you ever feel lost or that you had no idea what you were supposed to be doing?