KAEMPFER'S PROFILE

author=Deckiller
Story has some nice intrigue, though it hasn't quite gripped me yet (I have a feeling it's about to). Same with the characters. The dialogue is well written and there are some nice NPC quips, though it hasn't fully immersed me yet.

This is a direct result of how the game was cobbled together. It was originally going to be a much larger project, but I trimmed it back after many years of sitting on a shelf because I realized it was simply too much work for me to possibly accomplish on my own. As a result, the story got pared down quite a lot, and some of the dialogue ended up being a little big long or clunky in spots as I tried to wrap up ends that would otherwise been left loose.

author=Deckiller
Mapping is very solid, though some of the areas (mostly the caves and towns) do get kinda samey in their look and feel. The beach area is the MVP so far. Great mix of grays and browns. Nice use of staggered elevations as well. The towns are sprawling and certainly evoke some of that FF6 feel.

I had other cave graphics planned, but again, reducing the scope of the project meant fewer tilesets, allowing me to craft new maps more speedily (since I was very used to the tiles). Some of the caves, especially, were inserted to combine otherwise disassociated areas into a coherent world.

author=Deckiller
The opening areas feel like an MMO starting zone, complete with NPC errands and all that jazz. Thankfully it only lasted like 30-40 minutes before I got to sink my teeth into the systems.

It's amazing how much of this still shines through, but when I started the project so, so long ago the aim was to be similar to an Elder Scrolls game (complete with an open world). That idea was quickly abandoned, but it still exists in the initial areas. I thought it was very funny that you picked up on this so easily!

author=Deckiller
The gameplay, while extremely easy, is interesting enough to keep me playing.

To be fair, you did have a pretty strong understanding of the systems! The game definitely errs to the too easy side, though. It's actually less easy than it was for the testers, but balancing can be a real tight rope, and I'd rather there be a net below me if I fall off.

author=Deckiller
I wasn't a big fan of having to hunt down specific NPCs to sell items, especially since money is rather tight.

Initially only Giovanni would buy items, since I had a "dynamic shop" feature planned for him where he'd sell better items as you sold him more of your junk. Very late in the project I realized that he wasn't available for long stretches of the game, so I added emergency buyers. I wanted the player to be short on cash, though, so I'm OK with this.

author=Deckiller
The skill trees are fun and the main reason why I'm still playing. There are a ton of toys to play with here. AP becomes abundant after the first couple of areas, especially once enemies start granting 2 per kill.

I LOVE skill trees. Honestly, even a mediocre skill tree can make a game more fun than it has any right to be. It was a lot of work to get up and running, but I really think it was worth it. I have devalued the AP totals numerous times, but it's a bitch to go through the battle event pages to tweak the balancing.

author=Deckiller
this game is extremely easy so far.

I really wanted people to have ample access to the skills, since the replayability can come from other classes/characters/combos. Your exploration and the synergies you employed have made things much easier for you, but it's not particularly hard even without that. Like I said earlier, balancing is tricky, though I definitely veered toward the too-easy side. It's especially tricky in an engine where you don't have detailed access to how damage is formulated nor terribly much control over it. Besides, it's my experience in RM* games that I'm much more likely to stick with the ones where I can smash through enemies than the ones where I almost die every encounter. I have to admit, I'm mostly in it for the exploration.

author=Deckiller
Masterful stratagems

I would say the power of your party stems more from your ability to utilize skills in tandem with one another than the party itself. I really didn't want any character to feel worse than the others, so they should all have options to work well in a team if their strengths and weaknesses are balanced. For instance, Siegfried is extremely powerful, but struggles against clumps of undead enemies, since a lot of his skills are just downright useless against them. Playing to elemental strengths also makes the game quite easy, but I wanted to reward players for playing smart, and you're playing very smart.

author=Deckiller
There seems to be a particularly strong AP grinding spot that I was tempted to use: the jellyfishes. You almost always encounter 5 of them on the beach cave map, and they can be one-shotted with Death Wave III. I haven't really capitalized on this, but it would be an easy 10 AP per fight. I could see someone maxing out the skill trees in less than an hour.

This is probably too good a grinding spot, but honestly, I don't mind so much. All of my favourite games have one or two spots that are simply superior to others for players who really want to go to town on the game's systems. I'm OK in that company.

author=Deckiller
Once I mastered the heal song, I had to go into the editor and fix the Aria IV state. It was only regenerating 1 HP per turn, so I set it to +17 HP. (It probably should've been set to +16 HP, since the skill gains +3 HP per level, but I wanted the extra point for mastering the skill :P)

I will check this out and include it in the next patch.

author=Deckiller
Really nice use of symbols in the menus to communicate the intricacies of the equipment system. Love the system graphics as well.

Those are around 50% custom, 40% edited glyphs. I love glyphs. I love making them and using them. I'm glad you noticed!

author=Deckiller
The level design is very basic, and it's clear that you're mostly trying to get by on the high quality of the mapping. I just like more engaging dungeons, tbh, so I get a little nitpicky about 'em these days. Maybe it's the Zelda fan in me. I did like the barrel/crate pushing in the warehouses though.

Yeah, I would definitely agree that the dungeons are just places to walk through. My focus is and always will be on exploration, and although I agree that more interactivity is needed, I doubt it will ever be a strength of mine. I don't feel like Zelda-esque dungeons would have been appropriate here, but I'd like to move closer to a happy middle ground in the future.

author=Deckiller
Cutscenes improved toward the end - the approach to the castle was nice and cinematic, as was the final cutscene. The deaths seemed a little nonchalant, though.

The ending section was the most recent thing I made, and I made it entirely in the last days of the project. Everything else had some element of the older project in it (some more than others). It is more indicative of my current RM* abilities, since I wanted to flex a bit to show off what I've learned since the old days.

I know it's a bit of a cop-out, but the deaths in question were meant to be a bit nonchalant. The one responsible holds quite a callous opinion of life, and one soul is the same as another. The fallout from the scene will be explored in more depth, and with more weight, in the future, I hope.

author=Deckiller
The final two bosses suffered from pretty big HP inflation - more than double the previous boss. Indeed, each of these bosses was as long as all the previous bosses combined. I think the HP totals of the rat, crab, and mine bosses could've been increased by 50 percent. The optional boss had just the right amount of HP and overall fight length, but it didn't really hit hard. My Aria was able to heal through everything effortlessly and I was even able to stop it at a couple points to punch up my DPS.

I doubt there will be major balancing changes in the future, even though I agree with you to a large extent. Maybe in the Second Verse.

author=Deckiller
Approximately how much more game is left to be made?

As it stands, none. I'll be working on other things for the forseeable future. Treat this more like the first chapter in a duology, one that ends on a cliffhanger. This project used all of the material I had made in the past, and then some. Anything else I make will be completely new, and major balancing changes will be needed in the future to keep the balance curve at least someone accurate. As the game expands in size the required maintenance (in terms of balancing and bug fixing) grows exponentially, and for the time being I have dedicated as much time to this project as I can spare. I do have plans to revisit it in the future though, and have figured out how to bypass some of the hurdles that were blocking future progress already, so we'll see.

author=Deckiller
Definitely a 4/5. A bit too easy, straightforward and talky for my tastes, but the equipment and class systems are delicious. Some of the dialogue was pretty flavorful too. Towns were nice and lively, and I enjoyed the short stealth section early in the game.

I have no arguments with this! Perhaps you could aggregate your findings into a review and help the game get recognition? *whistles innocently*

Either way, I greatly appreciate your in-depth feedback. It definitely helps to know how other people think and feel about a project that I've been so close to for so long.

author=Deckiller
Edit: Apparently there were supposed to be sunstroke and sandstorm mechanics in the desert, but I never encountered them. I just kept going south-ish until I reached the ruins. Was that intentional?

Sunstroke is inflicted randomly. Leonov has 50% chance of being inflicted with it (if he is chosen as the target by the invisible hand of the event), and a zero percent chance if he has mastered Suntouch. Since the calculation randomly selects someone (or no one) to inflict it with, you just got lucky that you didn't get it. There is something other than the ruins in the desert to find, and most people get lost (which raises their chance to get it quite a bit!). It's also cured if you step in to the caves or ruins (or the other thing in the desert). The sandstorms are an edge-protection mechanic. Since you can exit a map from any side you can access, I needed some way of hemming in the desert that wasn't just cliffs (which the game has enough of, already).

author=AubreyTheBard

author=Kaempfer
Also, for some reason, when I patched my DynRPG to v0.20 (required for this plugin) the RPG_RT just simply fails to do anything. No game appears whether I run it through the engine or the executable directly, even if I remove all plugins.

Did you patch an RPG_RT that had already been patched with another DynRPG version? I could imagine that messing things up. Make sure you start with a fresh RPG_RT.

Ah! It created a backup up both the rpg_rt and the old dyn.dll so I figured it was built to override them, but I tried on a fresh project and it boots fine. I'll try that battle switch again and see if it works.

The problem is that the event in question (which is actually a modification of another plugin Pepsi made at my behest many years ago for a menu switch, weirdly enough) doesn't actually solve my issue, which is to offload the eventing out of battle script pages.

The more I have within battle script pages, the more work there is anytime I want to update or change it- with a switch activating a common event, I just fix the common event once if I ever find a bug, instead of going through every monster group and fixing the page one by one. It makes the idea of adding more monster group pages very daunting indeed.

I'll be releasing a 1.1 patch very soon to address some bugs people have found, so if anyone has found anything they think needs fixing (even something minor) now is the time to let me know!

author=Frogge
I think I broke sequence in the city with the postman sidequest by interacting with the alchemist before getting his package? When I went back to the post office the game said I delivered his package and got attacked but I didn't.

This one took awhile to track down, but the search command once again came in handy. Turns out it wasn't from talking to the alchemist, it was from talking to the NPC near the cart in the marketplace. It was a MUCH older version of the event that I just never removed that takes the package from your inventory and skips to the end of that section of quest. Whoops.

Thank you for the review! I really appreciate it. I can't find fault with anything you said. That fifth star might be pretty elusive, heh heh.

Don't underestimate the female characters, though! Bows (which only Amelia can use) have a high critical rate and both can get very powerful magic that's cheap to cast. They can smash things quite well, too!

Maps and enviroment are beautiful, the only part I didn't like was the desert, but uhm it is really short.

I hope you took Leonov with you! ^_^

The desert is a little more forgiving than it was before! Speaking of Leonov, mastering Suntouch makes him immune to sunstroke...

author=Frogge
Been playing this and encountered a few bugs. Didn't take note of most since they were pretty minor (mostly passability bugs, and I think I broke sequence in the city with the postman sidequest by interacting with the alchemist before getting his package? When I went back to the post office the game said I delivered his package and got attacked but I didn't) but I did just encounter a game breaking bug I figured you might want to know about - in the Marahas where you're supposed to meet up with Giovanni in the south docks, if you talk to the guy in the blue outfit so that he moves out of the way, but then go outside rather than go down the stairs, when you go back in he will be in the hallway and you won't be able to progress because you can't pass through. Figured you might want to know about it.

Yikes! I'm working on a patch, so I'll fix these up and they'll definitely be fixed in the future. Thanks for telling me about it. It seems no matter how much testing, something always slips through (and sometimes it's big!).

author=Ghost
I'll check it out. Good work.

Let me know what you think!