BEREGON'S PROFILE

author=Gurkengelee
Wow Beregon, thanks for taking the time to actually write a review! I am currently in the middle of translating the game to German and then make further improvements/additions.

Looking forward to it :)

author=Aldu

author=Beregon
Wait, people looked down on you for using RPG Maker?

Anyway, gratz on the win, it was well deserved!

Thanks! I appreciate it! :)
Yeah, unfortunately, RPG Maker still has a bad stigma for having so many poor quality games. It was just one GMS2 developer who thought he was better than me. Other people were impressed that I made this on an old engine and didn't even realize it was RM2k3 until they saw the save screen.

Never understood that type of mindset, engine is just a tool and especially MV and MZ are very good. I've joined a similar game jam where I was the only one with an RPG Maker game and it ended up becoming pretty popular, so it's not that bad and after all, you won :)

Also, in case you want to keep using RPG Maker 2003 for making similar battle systems to this one, you can use ScreenX and ScreenY to check for collision instead of regular X and Y. Will require a bit of work to set up semi-hitboxes, but should result in a much smoother collision detection. MV and MZ are much better for this though. Or Pixel Game Maker MV, though that one has a steeper learning curve.

author=Aldu
Thanks for the honest review!

This basically sums up why I'd rather not participate in game jams. Despite working my ass off designing a custom battle system and making original pixel art, a lot of the game was left unpolished and not up to my personal standards. I did the best I could in 2 weeks.

Hi! I understand that something like this took a nightmarish amount of effeort, especially in RPG Maker 2003. I made action-based systems in MZ and even though that one makes it a lot easier, it still took a lot of effort. The fact that it works as well as it does in just two weeks and together with custom art is honestly pretty amazing. And it's not a bad short game :)

I get what you mean about your feelings about this game falling short of your standards, I have similar feelings about my Halloween event game. Still, it taught me a lot. I think entering game jams still has value though, for me, it gives me incentive to finish something and there's something to be said about creativity blooming under limitations.

Seriously, great job, I'm sure your next game will be even better :)

author=Egdelion
You get some points, and actually, I think we can reconcile both our points of view of you divide companion classes and Princess classes ranking. For I think the tier list isn't exactly the same.

The thing is, Princess is mandatory, so if you have her in a weak class, you will have to deal with it for the entire game with no possibility of ever switching her out of the party, so it will be about limiting the disaster. So it's all about "What class am I the most ok with never switching out of the party?". For companions, it's a bit different. If a companion has nothing to bring, all you have to do is not pick them in your party. If they somehow are a one-trick pony, you can pick them in the rare situation they are somehow useful, and completely ignore them otherwise. So you will never pick a companion if there is nothing they can do that someone else can't do better. Which means that some classes may be worse as Princess choices, but less as companions.

So, here would be my companions ranking :

Show

Best
1) Rogue. Just no discussion.
2) Ranger. Best damage dealer.

Good
3-4) Paladin and Bard. I think this is a question of personal preference. I tend to get better results with Paladin, but I get why you would find Bard as so good. The thing is, they are both good supports, and you need one of them in your party regardless the situation. I tend to switch between them depending on my needs.

Average
5) Warrior. I agree that this class has a lot of flaws. They have many abilities I never use, and they indeed get the useful one late. It's worth noting, though, that you only get Warrior companion late, so it won't take long for him to get useful anyway. But it certainly doesn't rival Rogue or Ranger who are useful for the entire game and join the party early on.

Bad
6) Priest. There just isn't any reason to pick him over Paladin/Bard. His only use is picking him to use Full Heal, but after that he will be oom and you want to switch him back out of the party. The cost is just ridiculous.

Terrible.
7) Mage. Why am I insisting putting the Mage here, rather than last ? At least, Mage can be played "as intended", without getting worse results than playing it in an unintended way. And he even has a saving grace : Flame Wave can actually be passably useful against large groups, given that there are very few abilities that hit all enemies. The only others are Paladin's Holy Fire (which is comparable to Flame Wave), Warrior's Sweep Attack (which I tend to value less, because it costs 50 TP, making it unreliable, and against random encounters, you can end the fight before reaching that), and Warlock's Soul Vortex and Eternal Damnation (both of which are unreliable, the former depends on your health, the latter damages you more than the enemy, so should never be used). I consider Holy Fire and Flame Wave as the only two actually reliable abilities that hit all enemies. So if you want to deal with a large group as fast as possible, I find that using Paladin + Mage as an efficient, viable way. But that's quite situational and the only case when you would ever consider picking Mage.
8) Warlock. Simply, why would you pick Warlock in your party when she has nothing relevant to bring ? This is the only class in the game that you can't even play "as intended", because it puts your team in too much danger. If you don't use their dangerous abilities, they are useless. If you use these abilities, you put your party at risk. And if I want an "alchemist" who uses items, I would rather pick a warrior who has something else to offer when you are not using items. Also, there seems to be a bug. Warlocks are supposed to be more powerful than other classes when using items, but I can't see any difference. So right now, it's as if they didn't have any traits. Fix that and then, Warlock get a niche role as some kind of alchemist, and become better than Mage.

So now, for the Princess ranking :

Show

Best
1) Rogue.
2) Ranger.
Nothing changes for these.

Good
3) Warrior. 3rd by default.

Average
4-5) Paladin and Bard. Because it is just too suboptimal to make Princess a support, and the remaining non-support classes are useless.

Bad
6) Warlock. To be fair, if you don't use the dangerous spells, Princess Warlock isn't as bad as the classes below. She can still use items and have some passable offence with Strength/Magic Drain and Incinerate (the latter could mainly serve against enemies that are immune to Dark element).

Terrible.
7) Priest. Has no offensive power at all. No relevant damage, no buff/debuff (besides heal over time), just a bazillion variations of heals, most of which you will never use anyway. Once again, no reason to pick Priest when you could have picked Paladin or Bard instead. But at least Priest can actually survive for a while, unlike...
8) Mage. Indeed. Princess Mage is just awful. Abilities are but glorified normal attacks, except for the one you learn at lvl 10 (and even then, it's only worth anything against large groups, and pretty much useless against bosses). Not that t matters a lot, though. Because you won't get many occasion to deal damage anyway. I mean, look at that health. It's just so low that you have no survivability. Good luck surviving during boss fights. And to add insult to the injury, unlike companion Mage, you can't even switch her out of your party. No wonder you struggled so much against the bonus boss with a Mage Princess.

That being said, I tend to use the companion ranking for my overall ranking because I wouldn't even consider making Princess anything that isn't Rogue, Ranger or Warrior. So other classes are classes I only know as their companion versions.

What could be interesting is thinking about how the three useless classes could be fixed. Here is some of my thoughts :

Priest

Show

Let's look at his abilities first. Only heals, revive and mana recover. In a game where the party is healed after every battle, and bosses have anti-healing debuffs. Basically a one-trick pony who is mediocre at the only thing he can do. Priest needs something else, just as Paladins and Bards have.

He needs an offensive ability, be it only a generic damage dealing ability like Mage.

Not to mention that as a support, he needs some kinds of buffs, like Bard. Thinking about it, Bards heal and buff the entire party. An option could be to give Priest stronger buffs and heals, but that only apply to one ally at a time. The kit could look something like:
- Normal heal (1 ally).
- Damage ability (deals magical damage, 1 enemy).
- Revive (1 ally).
- Buff attack and magic (1 ally). Buff both to avoid wasting an ability slot, since most classes only use one anyway.
- Buff physical and magical defences (1 ally).
- Regenerate (heal over time, 1 ally).
- Either a damage over time, a drain, or leave Pray as it is.
- Full Heal (leave it unchanged).

Of course, the numbers and power should be adjusted so that it is balanced with other supports.

Warlock

Show

The idea of a class that uses spells that have huge power but a high cost can work, but it's clearly poorly executed in the case of Warlock. Although, fixing it wouldn't require to reconsider the entire kit. Just adjust it properly.
- Strength Drain and Magic Drain : leave them as they are, these abilities are fine and suit the theme.
- Pain Focus and Soul Vortex : tweak the formula. Right now, it deals no damage if your health is high. Have it deal normal damage if you are full health (something that wouldn't be enough to rival Rogues/Rangers), and that significantly increases if you are low health.
- Soul Pact : Fits the theme, might leave as such.
- Overextend : Fits the theme, but feels redundant with Pain Focus and Soul Vortex, that are also about risking your life to deal more damage. Overextend feels like a safer version of these : while Pain Focus and Soul Vortex require you to manage to keep your health low without dying, with Overextend, you can just ignore your health and profit, Warlock will die anyway so it's just about making sure she deals as much damage as possible before that. I would be tempted to either leave it as such, or replace it with a Drain ability. Warlock seems suited for having a life drain.
- Incinerate : It's weird to have a single fire ability among so many dark abilities. Also, anti-healing is pretty much useless outside of bosses. I would be tempted to replace this with an ability that deals damage and applies Blind. I mean, Warlock has tons of Dark abilities, yet none of them applies Blind...
- Eternal damnation : This ability hurts yourself much more than it hurts enemies. I would say, keep the HP cost, but only for the Warlock, allies shouldn't be affected.
- And of course, fix the passive trait.

Not sure what the result would be, but probably already better than what we have now.

Mage

Show

And now for the boring, useless class. First, give them some more HP. Ok, Mages aren't supposed to be tanks, but that doesn't mean they should die as soon as a boss uses a damaging ability.

The major problem this class faces is that all its abilities look like different variations of the same thing. The same spell but with different elements. When actually, there aren't that many elemental weaknesses to exploit. As a consequence, many of these spells feel useless and are never used.
- Magic Strike shouldn't even be an ability, it should be used for Mage's weapons attack, instead of the physical one. Ok, this requires a plugin, but it's simpler to use than other plugins that the game is already using.
- Burn could be interesting in that it can make the target vulnerable to other spells, but considering how weak Mage's spells are, it doesn't make that much of a difference, and it lacks other spells to combo with. And really, if you compare this with Rogue's Backstab, the bonus damage is barely relevant.
- Chill is very situational. Reducing agility is nice and all, but... even with 1 agility, the enemy is still going to use its attack anyway. So you might as well reduce their attack power of defence instead.
- Zap is the most interesting of the lot. It's basically a much better Burn. It can combo with most classes, and isn't limited to only one element.
- Splash is basically a drain. But considering how large of an HP poor Mage gets, it will hardly matter anyway.
- Crush's only particularity is dealing physical damage. You mean, as Rogues', Rangers' and Warrior's every damaging move ? Except those three deal way more damage with them ?
- Swirl is wind-based and is fast. I guess that fully justifies that it costs four times as much as Magic Strike, which is non-elemental.
- Flame Wave is Mage's only saving grace.

At that point, Mage is so bad that I would just remake the class completely. Although, I'm voluntarily going to remain quite cliché and avoid ideas that would require too many plugins/scripting, since this game has some "RPG Maker MV demo" feels:
- Fireball. Fire-elemental damage on 1 enemy and applies the "Burning" state, that makes the target more vulnerable to Ice attacks (vulnerability x200%) but more resistant to Fire attacks (vulnerability x50%). Removes the "Chilled" state. Let's be honest, for a mage, nothing is more standard than having a fireball as first spell.
- Ice shard. A shattering ice block deals ice-elemental damage to 2 random enemies, and slows them. It also applies the "Chilled" state that makes the target twice as vulnerable to Fire attacks, but half as vulnerable to Ice attacks, and removes the "Burning" state.
- Earthquake. An earthquake deals earth-elemental damage to all enemies, and reduces their defences.
- Tornado. A tornado deals wind-elemental damage to 3 random enemies, and removes all their positive states and buffs.
- Chain lightning. Bolts deal thunder-elemental damage to 4 random enemies, and make them more vulnerable to critical strikes.
- Flame Wave. Apocalyptic pillars of flames inflict colossal fire-elemental damage to all enemies while also silencing them. Applies "Burning" state and removes "Chilled" state.
- Antarctica. A massive ice storm deals tremendous ice-elemental damage to all enemies, while also blinding them. Applies "Chilled" state and removes "Burning" state.
- Doom Storm. Bolts originating directly from the Aether deal monumental thunder-elemental damage to 4 random enemies while also preventing their next action. They never miss and ignore magical resistance (but not thunder elemental resistance).

Not sure how Mage would then be compared to other classes, but I'm quite sure it would be far better than its current state.

I don't know if you've read my review of this game, my ranking and evaluation of the various classes is almost identical to yours and I go to even more depth about some of the imbalance issue in the review comments. I actually talked about how this game could be fixed and improved in my review too, though the majority of it was focused on the story, which I found full of potential, but it was ultimately wasted. So, check it out if you are interested. Well, let's focus on gameplay for this moment:

I've finished this game three times, first as a Mage, then as a Warrior and finally as a Rogue. I didn't manage to defeat the bonus boss with the Mage (only got to Phase 2 once), but I managed to defeat both the bonus boss and the stronger version of the final boss with the Warrior and Rogue, it was trivial with the latter.

Yeah, I'm glad we agree that when it comes to the worst class to be stuck with forever cause you can't switch the Princess, Mage wins hands down. In my first playthrough with the Mage, I spent half the time ressurecting the main character (in hindsight, I probably shouldn't have bothered). In the rare cases where I actually used the Warlock (pretty much just the first boss and my first few attempts at the second boss), they seemed to actually be among the last ones to go down, which enabled them to use ressurection items. But yeah, still a terrible class and the worst designed one. And yeah, Bard is an awesome class and Paladin is a good class, but both are better as companions you can switch out.

I don't agree that Flame Wave AoE is something substantial that makes Mage worth something. The damage and cost are bad. And when you get it, you don't need it anymore. I was level 9 when I reached the endgame with my Mage in my first playthrough and the random encounters there are mostly 1 strong mob, like Dragons or those Angels in the bonus dungeon. Even when it comes to the companion, if you are somehow able to level him to max before fighting the General (I don't think that's possible), the General is a very easy boss you can take down in a few rounds if you simply ignore the minions and DPS him down. And when it comes to AoE, I find the Ranger's 1 AoE skill to be much better, especially since Ranger does crazy damage. Rogue(s) can take down any mobs it doesn't hit, so it takes even less time than switching to Mage+Paladin would need.

Warlock actually has one slightly useful ability. It has damaging spells that debuff Attack and Magic Attack.
I find this much more useful than Flame Wave with its terrible damage and high MP cost, especially in boss fights. I'm not saying that it's amazing, but it's something and I actually used it sometimes in boss battles. The only reason I ever used the Mage companion past my first playthrough was to cast Chill at the boss and I don't think that was even needed with the Bard party wide Agility buff. Reducing Agility is good, because if you go first, it ensure that people can use potions or their actual skills before they go down and it can prevent a wipe sometimes. But the Bard has a skill that buffs the Agility of the whole party, so Chill isn't really that great. The only other Mage ability I actually find good is Zap, but the Rogue has the same skill, so she can do it instead.

Also, the reason why I rate Bard so high is because once you get her, the power of your party increases exponentially. You can feel it. It would be nothing on its own, but the Rogue and even Ranger wouldn't be as OP without her.

If I had to rate the class choices for MC like you did, it would be like this:



When it comes to how the game could be fixed, the worst part of the game that causes the most problems is the boss debuff that prevents healing and MP restoration. I'd remove it completely, but even if it stays, it should not prevent MP recovery and it should be up much less than it is and maybe shorter duration. Maybe also have Priest be able to remove it.

Also, concerning the main character, she should either be able to be switched out of the main party or she could be able to change class or she could start as one and then be able to select an additional one. In a game when your are supposed to switch in classes as you need them, her design conflicts with that.

When it comes to individual classes:



Your ideas for Priest, Mage and Warlock are great too, would like to hear your thoughts about how the rest of the classes could be improved. And maybe you can use those Mage skills you came up with in your own game :)

Also, I'm pretty sure the Warlock's anti-healing ability doesn't work on bosses. I remember trying it a few times and they got healed regardless.

author=Aldu

author=Beregon
I also got massive lag on the character selection screen, as I mentioned in my review. Thought I was the only one, since Liberty didn't have any issues when she streamed it. Dunno what causes it.

Good review btw. Seems we pretty much agree on this game. :)

I was curious as well so I opened the project. On the character selection screen, it's repeatedly calculating the stats and pictures to display even while you're not pressing anything. Avee used End Event Processing but I don't think they are aware that parallel processes aren't affected by it.
Thanks for checking out my review! :)

author=Avee
I really like how you wrote and presented it. Are you planning to make more video reviews of other RMN games?

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it! :D Yeah, I had fun making your review so I'm planning to make more. The people I shared the video with also said it was good so I guess I'm an RM game reviewer now lol.

author=Avee
Lazy decision, but then I imagined that it would be funny to plaster it everywhere :P

As a designer, this is bringing out the AKA in me. Haha, jk. It's understandable given the short development period. You did a great job!

Yeah, the review was great, I'm actually surprised that this was the first one you did, the quality was like you were doing this for years! You should definitely continue doing this!

If you are up to it, maybe you could consider reviewing some more of the Event Games from 2020, since they are almost entirely unrepresented among the Misao awards? There's been a lot of good ones this year, just like this one.

You can even review one of my event games if you feel like it :)