ADDIT'S PROFILE

Alrighty! I just finished out trying the teaser demo out just now in anticipation for the real deal coming soon, and I found myself a couple of interesting “doohickies” along the way:



First off, passability error. (But that’s not so much of a big deal.)

- This is, though:



(- Doh!)

Luckily for me, though, I went inside the picture folder and managed to copy one of the other credit files that were and just called it “Cred4” - and I was on my way!

All right, the good stuff about the demo:

First off, the different types of character animations, both in battle and field, are GREATLY improved from the original Ara Fell. Not only are the battle animations very smooth and are wonderful to look at, but it’s also nice to see that the characters have more poses to them under certain types of different situations, like Lita falling down a hole and grabbing onto the edge for dear life, and having Adrian kneel down on his knee with his ax beside him after twisting his ankle after making a bad jump. The original game had some of this in regards to different character poses before, but here they are greatly enhanced and plentiful.

It’s also great now that Lita no longer has a limit for her arrow usage and no longer has to change weapons throughout from lance to bow. Now it’s just one weapon for each character, and I much appreciate that. It’s also great that even Adrian can hit flying enemies now with his axe instead of having switch to his secondary weapon or rely on the other characters to hit flying based targets since he couldn’t reach them before with his limited range.

I also like the level-up bonus, too. Having the option to increase a stat – and even reset them again from scratch and start all over again is a nice added bonus. I even like that you can regenerate your health again by just moving around or by waiting over time instead of just relying on using your items to heal yourself.

The new custom music that’s was provided for the game definitely was a bit of an adjustment at first to get used to, because I’m so used to listening and hearing all of those ripped MIDI’s and stuff from before, but it starts to grow on you after a while and it actually suites the game quite well. Nothing really that majorly stands out or anything like that, maybe besides the title theme – but it works, and I like it.

Although the demo was a bit on the short side, it’s just nice and comforting to see ol’ shrimpy again… (Oh, and Adrian too, lol.)

- Now for the bad:

The custom opening sequence is…I’ll admit pretty cool and all, especially with how the background changes from different times during each start-up, but waiting for damn thing to finish loading everything up initially takes a bit too long, and there really isn’t that much going on until the white tint starts to return to normal and you can then see everything. However, I do see that you can just press the action key and just have “New Game” and all that other stuff pop-up immediately so you don’t necessarily have to wait at all, so maybe this isn’t such a big deal…? But still, I’d probably just have it when you press the action key that the white tint immediately disappeared and the logo just happened to show up instead instantly with everything else.

Because this game uses the numeral keys to do things like jumping and crawling through small spaces, I think that having a picture display about what each numeral key is used for on the screen would definitely help a lot while traversing throughout dungeons and the field map. It doesn’t have to be superly-animated or anything like that, but having something like that show up on screen will stop confused goofballs like me from pressing each numeral key every once in a while to figure out what each one of them does again.

The crafting system is a nice idea - and I’m sure it’s going to be awesome when it gets fully implemented and stuff - but I’m wondering if it’s really necessary to have all those other details about all the different types of items and stuff on screen when you still need to meet certain requirements and meet certain people in order to unlock it. It just seems a bit overwhelming at first because you have all these different actions that you can perform but you can only craft one thing at that particular time, so it’s maybe not entirely necessary to have all those other options there until you meet those certain requirements first.

Lol, was there really any need to have a “nuke” type of spell this early on to destroy everything that you come across? I mean, these early enemies aren’t exactly the strongest bunch of monsters in the bottom of the toolshack, but that nuke spell just makes things so easy!!!

Actually, thinking about it, there’s not as much bad here compared to good other than some minor annoyances. The teaser demo does a pretty good job in getting me to want to play more, although it is a bit on the short side… I think if the demo ended off like it did before where everybody turns to stone in that village and Lita then sets off on her adventure is probably where I’d end the demo off. At least you get to explore two dungeons and a village for the price of one.

Still, it felt pretty surreal all the way going like, “OMG, I’m…I’m playing a new installment in Ara Fell! Something that I’ve been wanting for years and it’s finally happened!”

I can’t wait ‘till d-day. :)

Yeah, I guess you’re right.

“A little bit of work every day and the pain will soon all go away…”

...Oh, god, how I long for that day.

Soooo…ahhh, how’s the English translation coming along for this? Are you any closer to done yet?

I still plan on reviewing this again when the full version gets completed, so I’m sure that 2.5 will turn in to at least a 3, lol.