DE'S PROFILE

I thought this was a mapping contest, not a drawing or mockup-making contest. But whatever, it's not my problem.

Will you be re-uploading the updated version some time in the future?

Played this for about 45 minutes and have rather mixed feelings about this. I'll start with the flaws and what needs polishing, because that's what should interest you most:

- the battle system is slow. As in VERY SLOW. Everything proceeds at a glacial pace, I really felt like I was playing Final Fantasy 1 again. There is a simple solution that I feel would make this issue mostly disappear - reduce the amount of text data displayed AND make it disappear on its own in about one second or so. If I put a status effect on the enemy, I don't need to be told so because an icon pops right up below its sprite. If the enemy's resistant to an effect, no icon appears and I immediately know it's useless to try it again - no need to tell me that it's immune. But yeah, at least make the text box close by itself quickly, there's only a small amount of text to read so no one should miss any crucial info.

- different effects for standard attacks played no part once I got a finisher or two. Since finishers are so powerful (that's good) and can only be initiated by a specific combination of basic attacks, I never had any choice in the order of those attacks - if I wanted to activate a certain finisher I had to use three specific skills in a specific order. This resulted in the basic skills' properties not having any impact whatsoever on my tactics, they were a slight bonus at best. Truth be told I have no idea how you could improve this, it seems to be an inherent flaw of the battle system.

- spells were for the most part useless. I'd love to get some offensive spells and not just crappy support spells so that those Fury points aren't wasted. I feel there should be more spells with more utility, not just "put a weak status effect on the enemy... maybe (if it's not immune)".

- not flashy enough. I know the animations are not finished, but there was simply not enough going on visuals-wise in a battle system with just one PC. I feel it needs spicing up or it'll get boring pretty fast watching the same simple animations.

- not enough customization. With only one PC the player need CHOICES. I didn't get any. Equipment was bare bones at best (upgrade to current best items - job done!) and there was no way to influence/upgrade parameters and skills. I don't know how difficult it would be to change that, but in my opinion the current system is not enough to hold the player's interest for the whole game.

- too many finishers. Really, it's just too many, and too many combinations of skills to pull them off to memorize to use them efficiently.

- music. I don't know, I'd rather get good midis than NES blips (and I'm pretty sure those are rips and not original compositions, aren't they?). Yeah, nostalgia, NES feel and all that, but I don't buy it. This one's obviously subjective.

- not enough money. I cheated and gave myself a thousand coins. Also - what's the point of having a circular (yeah :) arena in a tech demo that you have to go around to get to the battles? And if you want to change the difficulty or buy something you have to go all the way back... pointless. Couldn't you have put a passage just above th bat-thing? I used the walk-through-walls trick to save myself some time.

What I liked:
- the general atmosphere.
- dialogue was decent.
- graphics are awesome - the game really looks like an AAA NES title ;)

Overall the game has potential but the battle system needs polishing. I'm pretty sure though that the rest of the game will be awesome, so I'm hoping for a quick release!