DBAV'S PROFILE

author=Avee
Congrats on finishing the game! That must have been a lot of work.

Here are my initial thoughts on testing Normal mode for about 2 hours. Most of it might sound negative and nitpicky, so take my feedback with a grain of salt :P The only real issue I have is about the music and sound effects volume:

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Quality of life improvement suggestions and bug report:

-I can play on Windows 7 Pro.

-Text speed selection: You could indicate which number is fastest and which one is slowest.

-I selected 0 for text speed, but battle text speed's default should be a higher number because 0 comes and goes too fast to be readable.

-Pressing the Mini Map key (0 on my numpad) during the intro or elsewhere when I don't have the mini map freezes my sprite too. You could probably disable the command when the game starts and enable it only when the mini map is obtained.

-It's also weird that I can open the Menu in town using the same key (numpad 0) but when on the world map it shows the mini map.

-Intro questions: I was asked the same question twice "Do you like negotiating..." with another question in between.

-Speaking of Personalities, it would be nice to be told ingame what those do.

-There's weird waiting time when opening the first blue treasure chest and after obtaining the Map that's inside.

-Saving at a church plays that jingle, making me wait for no reason (an issue that the original series should fix in my opinion).

-Saving only at churches is another big issue that the original series should fix. Being able to save anywhere except during battle or cutscenes is the new norm.

-Doors that aren't locked could open when I run into them instead of having to press the Confirm key.

-You could probably show the item menu categories' contents while selecting the category, instead of having to enter the category by pressing Confirm. Having that large blank space while selecting categories is silly (it's an issue that the RM engines keep having).

-Since there are new items in the game, a more transparent description of their effects would be useful. For instance, I should be informed that Apples recover some MP without having to save, use one to see what it does, then reload.

-Sound effects are too loud compared to music volume, which is unpleasant and a shame considered the massive 850 MB of music you included in the game. Some music tracks are barely audible even when the volume of sound effects is painfully loud, such as the castle theme. Others, like the battle music, have some loud parts that are too loud compared to the quieter parts. Speaking of the battle music, it has parts where it just dies down. It's not always a good idea to feature live orchestrated performances because of things like that... I would recommend to balance the volume of such tracks in Audacity, and to reduce the volume of sound effects in the database and events to compensate for the quiet music.

-Lovely mapping. The towns and world map are solid improvements over the original, not only thanks to the 16-bit tiles but how you handle the tiles as well.

-The screen flashing before entering battle begins before the sprite has finished moving, which looks a bit weird. You could add a 0.2 or so waiting time before making it flash.

-You could probably remove the extra zeros when showing damage numbers under 100 and under 10.

-The sound effect for the enemy about to attack could play while they flash red to save some time.

-You could also remove the waiting time between my attack animation and the enemy taking damage animation.

-Player's and enemies' damage output varies too much. For instance, a Dracky deals between 1 and 6 damage to me, which is too much variance when I have only 15 Max HP.

-Plus, Drackies can Poison me, which is a deadly state when HP is that low. I'd suggest not having enemies inflict Poison until a little later.

-You could probably use several Variables per dialogue option to change the "Adventure Log I-III" when saving and loading. Associate a Variable's value to the current location and another to the current Level for instance, and show these Variables in the text box.

-The game on Normal seems just as grindy as the original when starting out, which is typical of older RPGs like Final Fantasy 1 and Dragon Quest 1~2 but also a big hurdle that should not be reproduced in my opinion. My recommended solution for this would be to reduce the Experience needed to reach the first few Levels.

-It would be great to be informed ingame what the exact differences between the difficulty settings are. More transparency is always best. I had to test Easy mode to learn that Exp and Gold are doubled on that setting, which is how I would have preferred to play.

I made it to Level 3 and tried the maze mini game. There might be too many things to improve for me to want to keep playing, but I think that you did a great job with this remake so far.

author=Illy

author=DBAV
A question regarding the Bahamut choice

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I try to side with the dragons because the broom told me so an I can't confront the king, only fight another horde of dragons. How does that part of the story work?

EDIT. I have three final weapons and there's something about a tomb that's supposed to give me the other,I've located the tomb but nothing happens.

Thanks for the questions! As far as Bahamut's choice~

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You can head to the Cardia Isles and meet with Bahamut but choose not to fight him, then continue to protect Sharlayan from dragon attacks. After three battles, Bahamut will show up for the fourth and after the dialogue you get the option to side with the dragons. To trigger the new battles, all you need to do is leave Sharlayan and come back.

There are in fact four ultimate weapons (one for each character), they can be found in

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The Onrac Waterfall, The Wind Cave where you retrieved the airship at the start of the game, The Black Cave north of the Dwarven Castle, and in Sharlayan after you conclude siding with the dragons.

The tomb is more of a secret easter egg that becomes available for an optional boss after you've powered all of the crystal orbs.

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It's a reference to another popular RPGMaker game on this site, Hero's Realm. The reward is more of a trophy than a practical weapon, as the damage is low but it sports a 100% crit rate.

author=Chazareth

author=crowlotus
The included walkthrough can't be opened. I tried different programs but no dice. Any ideas?

As a .docx file, it can be opened with pretty much any version of Microsoft Word, even the free online version. But I was thinking it might be easier for everyone to convert all the text to .txt because just about everybody has NotePad, WordPad, etc.

author=DBAV
I think you should modify energy modes, as far as I am right now stoic, healer, tactician and sufferer suck badly, at least increase their energy gain per action a lot to compensate.
EDIT. Bug: the bestiary entry after zombie which I suppose is the boss from the pyramid doesn't appear after beating it, also the forest dragon entry doesn't appear after beating it.
EDIT2. I think I found the cause of the bug, it's indirect damage like hemorrhage that causes the entries to not register.
EDIT3. The helmet key is bugged, I do have it but the doors marked for it don't open.

I'll look into Energy Modes in the future for sure. I've tweaked them here and there but it's hard to balance it all because everyone's play style and tactics are different.

As far as the bestiary goes, thanks for finding this. Hemorrhage is literally the only ability in the game that deals periodic damage capable of killing the target, so I had no idea this was happening. The bestiary is handled by a plugin, so I'm not sure if I can fix it, but I will add it to the "Bugs/Unintended Effects" section of the version history.

For the helmet key, is this happening for every door or just specific ones? Is anything happening when you interact with the door, or is it telling you the door is locked even when you have the key?