HOUSEKEEPING'S PROFILE

That actually feels more patronizing to me since you could pull my phrasing off as a joke at least, haha. I would feel weirded out if someone treated me like a representative of all white people, personally, regardless of their phrasing, and I haven't even been persecuted.

If you're wanting to write about minorities but you don't already have enough experience around them to appropriately empathize with their position, then I don't know why you would want to write about them in the first place. Maybe some introspection regarding the actual conflict in your life would be the best course of action.

Final Fantasy 7's the obvious one--it's got a few aging issues with some of the visuals (though they hold up better than a lot of stuff from that era) and the pacing of the battles are a bit slow because of lengthy battle animations, but I think it's pretty much an essential RPG.

You'll like Dragon Quest 8 since it keeps the series's exploration, which seemed to be a big influence on Hero's Realm's design. The game's skill progression system isn't as cool as earlier Dragon Quests, though. The art direction and characterization are a few notches above previous entries.

I fucking loved Monster Hunter Tri, so I'd give that a playthrough. It's got great mechanics--it just takes a while to get through the early missions, which aren't as engaging as hunting big game. Expect to spend a few hours learning how to gather materials and fight small monsters before you get to fight something cool, but once you do fight a bigger monster, you'll pretty much be doing that for the rest of the game (with some breaks to stock up on supplies).

@Xenos: Sounds like you should go to the locked building in Polaris (north from the entrance). You should have the keycard in your inventory.

Yeah, not to mention all the forced encounters with bears.

Thanks, Furipu! When I say more polish, I mean across the board. A Very Long Rope uses mostly RTP graphics; the game I'm working on will have mostly custom graphics, which gives me a lot more control over what I can convey. Music will be higher quality, both in terms of production value and composition. The gameplay especially is going to be much stronger; there's going to be more thought behind battle mechanics, stat progression, level design, etc. A Very Long Rope was my first real game (unless you count the game I made in high school on the playstation version of RPG Maker, but that's better left forgotten, haha), so while I'm proud of aspects of it--the story/characters more than anything--I've learned a lot about the engine and game development in general since I worked on it, and I'm really itching to deliver something great!

And, yes, it's going to be an RPG. I like all kinds of games, but that's where my heart is.