ANDREW_ANONYMOUS'S PROFILE

Hi there guys. I'd like to give some of my thoughts I had playing your game. Considering I did not play it to completion, among other reasons I don't want to give an official or proper "review" but just want to lay out my ideas and brainstorm.



Before I begin I'd like to preface with three things. First of all I'm a huge RPG fan and have played most of the classics and many of the nonclassics. I've probably passed 150 played, and over 50 completed in my life, so I have experience (ha ha ... kill me) and may judge harshly because of this.

Secondly, it seems this game was made for an event where the whole point was to create a game quickly, so again my criticism may be unwarranted or undeserved with those metrics in mind. I honestly don't enjoy the idea of such an event though, because quality > quantity but I digress.

Thirdly, with some very minor tweaks/patches I could see myself finishing your game and giving a more proper review. I'm excited to check out your future work also so please don't get too hung up or discouraged from my words.

That out of the way, let's talk about what I do and don't like about this game - Oblivion Quest.

Right out the gate I'm dropped into this azure/redish orange forest maze with no exposition or explanation. I wonder around a bit and encounter some enemies. I discover this is an ATB game which is fine, but in my opinion there needs to be battle speed options or the speed of battle increased atleast 25% because waiting for commands just makes for bad pacing and slow/boring battles.

Next thing I really noticed was the abundance of potions. Often times I would get two per battle and only need to use one, effectively gaining potions from just battling. I don't know if this was intended. Eventually after I hit level 3 or 4 I didn't even need potions at all barely after receiving the equipment upgrades in the area.

I do like how the first boss and I'm assuming tons of subsequent bosses defends a lot. It actually is good strategy to defend when he is defending on your turn and vice versa making the defend command useful to some small degree.

I found it bizarre how I had no access to save points beyond progressing to the next area, I did not like this decision. In the next zone it seemed like a hub sort of area at first and I received my second party member. I quickly found out I did not possess enough keys to open all of the doors and realized only through trial and error (coupled with the annoying save system) could i find out the contents of the boxes and make my choice before moving forward. I also accidentally proceeded after killing the second boss before returning to rest at the inn area. I tried to return but the screen with the cerberus looking beast whom you (enter? and are inside of im guessing for the next dungeon) did not allow me to return to the prior screen which again frustrated me because I had to do the entire lava/fire dungeon zone without any MP whatsoever.

It was after this area I noticed I had a ton of GP and no shops in sight, which again seemed bizarre to me because I now had three party members and the only thing I could spend money on was the inn. (which I couldn't backtrack towards)

In the area with Hecks the mage (by the way the third mage I received which again was odd because I only had 1 melee fighter) I noticed the same trend with the inn and doors with limited keys. I made sure to heal after the boss this time before proceeding to the next forest zone.

I'm gonna just sum up now because honestly I only made it to the end of the green forest after getting Hecks before I decided to uninstall and write this post.

What I like:
1) NES style graphics and sprites are nice + nostalgic

2) The few songs I heard were good (although the obvious SMT battle theme really bothered me, for some reason the Zelda jingle didn't though)

3) Decent character portraits and I'm sure humourous banter later in the game, from what little I saw

What I didn't like:
1) Even though you reduced encounters apparently, I still found the rate too high and the item drops too high, making the battles easy and frequent

2) No native xbox controller support? question mark because I'm not positive. I had to use my ps3 controller

3) 3/4 party members were mages? in a game where ethers are kind of weak and inns are a guessing game for when the next one is? (I do see the potential abuse of MP share/absorb with Hecks though) I tended to save MP due to this which hurt the pacing a lot, between the slow battles from the ATB and low melee dmg of the mages

4) Dungeons wrapped around in on themselves. Personal preference rather than a negative, I just don't prefer that sort of design, because it disorients the player if they're trying to get all the treasure before proceeding.

5) Speaking of treasure, lots of chests but most were antidotes or potions. I prefer less chests with more importance tbh.

I hope you continue to work on this game and/or future games. I'll keep an eye out. I'm sorry if this comes across as overly critical on a game completed so quickly, but I don't know how else to critique besides on the same scale as any game.

Cheers.

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