CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

A complicated damage formula is not necessarily harder to use than a simple one. Sometimes it's even the opposite, you need a complicated formula to get it to do what you want it to do. As far as players goes, it's usually more a question of wether or not things work as is implied rather than how simple the formulas are. For example, a significant investment in raising your defense should result in a significant decrease in damage taken while a low investment should have a low impact. If this is true, the player will be able to decide wether they should invest in defense or something else even without knowing the formulas.

Anyway, this is a huge change. It greatly alters what is effective and what is not. For example, having a high max SP will no longer affect your defenses. Mia and Luke in particular gained a significant boost to durability on account of having a high max SP. Armor will also be less effective unless altered to compensate for the changes. On the other hand, it means that the SP reduction you take from equipping heavy armor no longer affects your defenses.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Well, that makes a new playtrough more interesting since I'll need a new strategy. I wonder if the new meta is better or worse than the old one.

I would have loved an RPG maker with XP's mapping and VX Ace's everything else.

Anyway, what I have found useful with XP is to add things from one tileset to another. For example, I've merged the Woods and the Mountain tilesets into one single tileset. Indoor tilesets can often be greatly improved by taking stuff from other indoor tilesets and add them in. Ditto for town tilesets.

Hard to say. I'm with the opinion that it's a bigger sin to deliver story at the expense of gameplay than vice versa. Ideally, nether would happen. Also, even though I value gameplay more than story, I don't consider a big sacrifice of story worth a small gain in gameplay.

That said, there has been a lot of cases where I did not mind extended story time. However, for me it's not so much a matter if the writing is great or not. For this purpose, it only has to be decent as far as I'm concerned.

author=Red_Nova
But it is a period of time where you will be wandering around the environments talking to people rather than dungeon-crawling.

Now, it looks to me like this is taking place in Vergio, so I'll just assume this is the case when making my point. Here's the key; will I enjoy being in Vergio? Will I enjoy finding and looking at the kitchen, the barracks and whatever else there may be? Will I want to see what the kitchen staff, the soldiers and the other people in Vergio has to say? If yes, then I will enjoy the extended story time.

Let's however say that there isn't that much interesting (optional) stuff to see, be it environments or non progression dialogs of various people there is. In that case, I'm basically just looking for the various story progression triggers. Then I'm not going to like it, even if the story then is very well-written.

Anyway, I did enjoy Trill's introduction, so I'm feeling optimistic.

author=alexandretourne
I am clearly considering the Katana as one of the most effective weapon ever create specially during the medieval time. It is not a question to be a fanboy. First the process to make a Katana is very different compared to the European medieval weapon. This process is only known by Japanese who succeeded to make the katana's blade very strong and effective. Just saying that the effectiveness of katana is not a myth. But I will not enter into the debate of... who will win between a knight and a samurai?For the reason it does not only depend of the weapon and the armor but also of the individual's background and skill. I think both of the samurai and knight could kill each other (After all, the Vikings were able to defeat the knights several times and there armors and weapons were different). I am well aware that the long-sword was also a very effective weapon.Many people seem to forget that the Samurais succeeded to defeat twice the Mongols and Chinese army who tried to invade their land in 1274 and 1281. The Mongols hordes were probably the most powerful force on earth by the mid-thirteenth century. The samurais also invaded Korea (1592-1598) and succeeded to occupy the south of Korea for six years, despite they were outnumbered by the Chinese and Korean army.

The forging of the Katana was far more labor intense than that of the longsword. However, that does not make the Katana a super weapon.

The Japanese were not able to smelt their iron properly. This meant that it had a lot of impurities in it. The laborious forging process had two important effects here, it got rid of a lot of the impurities and it distributed the impurities that still remained (which was a lot more than a properly smelted iron would have) evenly. Further, the Katana was then shaped in a way that the best took advantage of what they had. If they had forged something like the European longsword, it would have bent too easily.

In short, the complicated and laborious forging process was a way to get around the inferior steel and still produce a great sword, not a way to produce a super sword. If you take properly smelted iron and fold it the way as the Japanese sword-smiths did, it would not improve the quality at all.

Now, some Europeans did buy a Katana. It was considered a great sword and excellent at cutting. However, the same was said about the Indian Tulwar and while great at cutting, it was less good at stabbing (though it can do that too just fine). The Katana also has a shorter range than the longsword, but is easier to draw quickly. Every sword has its trade-offs. In European environment, the Katana would probably do less well than in Japan due to the enemies carrying different equipment.

Ultimately, while the Katana is a great sword, it's still just a sword when all is said and done.

Good call about the knight vs samurai. Other than what you said, if those two meet, it would reshape how they fought. The Europeans would look at what equipment and tactics the Japanese use and then make changes to their own equipment and tactics to best exploit their enemies' weaknesses while the Japanese would do the same against the Europeans. Neither side in that alternate history would have ended up using the equipment and tactics they used in the real history.

As far as the Japanese military prowess goes, that argument only makes sense if you already consider the Katana a super effective weapon. If you do, then it makes sense to assume the Katana played a big part in it. However, if you don't, then you start to look at other factors as well such as tactics, training, other equipment and so on. Heck, history is full of armies prevailing against superior numbers and the Japanese are the only ones who had the Katana, which to me indicates that you can't really give the Katana too much credit for it.

I should also mention that the Katana was not the primary weapon of the samurai on the battlefield in the first place. It was either a bow (later musket) or a polearm, most likely the bow. Their secondary weapon was whichever of their bow or polearm that wasn't their primary weapon. The Katana was their tertiary weapon.

This is also a thing for swords in general. They were usually not the primary weapon on a battlefield. Prior to firearms, the spear or other polearms was the king of the battlefield.

The sword was however very popular outside the battlefield. It's rather easy to carry (imagine lugging around a spear all day) and can be drawn quicker than say an axe. The sword is also great against unarmored opponents, which is almost every opponent outside the battlefield.

Really, there is no most effective sword period. All swords have trade-offs and they are designed to work against the opponents you expect to use them against. Against opponents with vastly different equipment and tactics than designed to combat, they will not work so well.

author= alexandretourne
If you want to learn more about the most effective weapon ever created, I suggest you to check those Wikipedia articles:

What?

Other than that, you seem well-informed. It's also a hell lot of options for the sword. Does the character still have a large set of equipment slots like weapon, armor helm, etc. or are they more or less merged into the sword? I'm wondering since the guy doesn't exactly look like he's wearing a samurai armor and it also significantly affects what I think of this system.