CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

My strategy was to use the Aquagard shield to resist damage and regeneration to heal up most of it. I started with turning the notes green and building up my Fury, since the boss can't be healed to more than 100% max HP anyway. Then I cast the regeneration spell and turned the notes blue. I kept hitting them with TriSlash. Once my regeneration wore off, I had enough Fury for a heal spell. I could then kill the boss before it killed me.

I did not wear Nimble Boots or Spike Armor, so I guess I could have made the fight a lot easier than I did. In any case, there sure are a lot of strategies that work against that boss.

Chance is it's my fault my tactics became less diverse on hard enemies. I think I have to give this game at least a second go some time.

Personally, if I thought a game deserves a 4,8 rating, I would round it up to five stars. If the scale instead was from 1 to 100, then I would have demanded a practically perfect game for a 100 rating. However, with the system RMN uses, I can imagine given a game a 5 star rating.

That said, I am rather stingy with giving out high scores. A game has to entertain me from practically the start to the end for a five star rating. I will not let minutes of boredom here and there dock half a star, but battles that are pure attack and heal spam, or poor writing, will kill the chance for a five star rating.

author=Jude
6. Encounter alert/flee can be buggy. Sometimes it can permanently lock you out of the menu (rare) and sometimes the exclamation point doesn't appear. I have considered removing it from this release until it is fixed, but decided I would rather use you as a play tester.

Exclamation points almost never appears for me. I've killed the first boss and only twice have I seen them appear.

That's definitely one of the problems with the default XP formulas and maybe even the main problem. But there's definitely a lot more problems.

XP by default gives you more control over more stats than the other engines. However, often you don't get to manipulate them in a satisfactory way. For example, the other engines have one stat for both casting magic and magic defense. XP has one stat which makes you better at casting spells and another stat for magic defense. This decision I approve off. The problem is, MDEF is an equipment only stat, while INT raises as the character levels up. Also, MDEF lowers the base damage while INT increases the rate. This means that while they do offset each other, they do so in an unnecessarily complicated way.

During the last two updates, the balance has shifted strongly in favor for mages. The reason for that is that they have gotten stronger spells. The stronger spells cost more MP to cast, but the characters also now have more MP as well. Fighters haven't gotten any skills stronger than Critical Strike until the very last update where they got Triple Strike. However, Triple Strike costs more AP and fighters don't get more AP now than they got before. So, mages gets more MP as they level up to use their stronger skills while fighters do not.

There's also Osmose which is starting to obsolete the MP issue completely. One advantage fighters had is that they don't need their MP for their offensive skills, so they can use their MP for healing. However, now that mages have Osmose, that advantage is taken out of the picture.