CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

I think it's fair to assume that the player will spend at least some money on armor. Granted, the percentage of money spent on weapons, armor, skills and items may vary from player to player, but I don't think the creator needs to accommodate the game for extreme choices like not spending any money at all on a certain category.

post=209425
Also, not all damage-dealing spellcasters must have access to all elements in the game.

I would take that a step further and say that you should not give any character access to all elements. Doing so will almost always trivialize the choice (the enemy is weak against fire, which element should I use?) thereby defeating the purpose of having elements in the first place. Alternatively you could give a character access to all elements, but make the skills very different like Ice is multi target, Fire is singletarget and Lightning is the most powerful, but requires a turn to charge up first.

I don't think cooldowns by itself makes the game more varied. Sure, the player cannot any longer spam the same skill over and over, but chance is the player will instead spam the same cycle of skills over and over, something I don't consider a big improvement. On the other hand, if one game uses the standard MP system while another uses a cooldown system, then that's at least variety between two games, so I definitely approve of some games using a cooldown system. Still, if cooldowns were to become a new standard (highly unlikely) then I don't think that would actually improve anything.

I was at one point considering writing a review for this game. However, I hesitated when I found out you intended to release an update that rebalanced the game and at this point my memory is less fresh, so I think I just post my thoughts here. Like I did once before, I'll use your feature list as a base for my criticism.

- A character driven story full of twists, turns and red herrings, and an intended gameplay time of
around 15 hours.
For most of the time I did not see the twist coming. I remember one red herring in particular being rather clever. There's one big exception though, a twist involving the main character and one another character which I could spot from miles due to very obvious foreshadowing.

- 6 playable characters, each one with a distinct personality, which you can mold into your own
custom character classes to suit your combat style.
Make it five characters, the last one you get is almost useless as a character (but not necessarily in combat). Even discounting Zanthus, the characters aren't that distinct. Take Alexis as an example. One of her traits is her loyalty to Ark. Each time that loyalty comes into play, she will distinct herself from the other characters. However, when her loyalty isn't relevant to the situation at hand, I find it hard to tell how she acts different from any other character. The same goes for the rest of the cast except for Zanthus and he is an exception in a bad way. In order for the characters to truly have distinct personalities, they have to think and act in a significantly different ways even when they are in the same situation.

The characters do differ from each other though, but I just wouldn't call it "distinct".

- Turn based combat with an emphasis on tough opponents and using skills, rather than
mashing "attack" over and over. Think, don't button mash!
For fighters, use Double Strike almost every turn. Switch to Y-something slash for the last dungeon. For mages, exploit elemental weakness until they have enough SP to comfortable use the expensive non-elemental spell at which point you use nothing but that. Heal as needed.

Nothing really new here. There was some thought needed on customizing the characters, but once battle actually started, everything is banal.

- A custom soundtrack, composed entirely of non comercial game music, some exclusive
to Legionwood.
The music is really good, especially the one for the last boss.

- Collect, raise and summon 6 elemental spirits to aid you in battle! Summon level up, learn skills
and fight just like your party members!
They never did anything useful for me other than being a warm body.

- Innovative Ability Point system by KGC allows you to choose which bonuses you gain in level ups,
so you're free to decide which role your characters fill in your battle plan.
The AP system is better balanced than in most other RPGs where you can control the stat distribution. There is no longer an obvious best way to spend the points as there used to be and I found that multiple builds were viable. Good job here.

post=208096
The "has always" part made me think you implied that all games were about instant-pleasure. Don't know if that was you're original intent now that I've read your response.
Though if that was not the case, mentioning those dinosaurs doesn't really add much the argument nor is it relevant.

Well, which games were not about having fun from the get go?

Mind you, delay of gratification in line of "you discover new things and get more toys to play with" has existed for quite a long time and is generally approved of. A good example for that outside of RPGs is the weapons you can find and the power up system in the Devil May Cry series. However, in this type of delay of gratification you still get to the actual meat of the game pretty much from the get go, the extra weapons and abilities just adds to the system.

The controversial type of delay of gratification is when the player has to wait a long time just to have fun. Typically that means you won't get into the meat of the game for quite a while, for example because the start is a cluster of cutscenes and the player doesn't get to control the character in a meaningful way. This behavior is a rather recent addition to games.