KAEMPFER'S PROFILE

Why not Phillip? He's a salty sea dog who's seen the world!

Please don't change the skill names. I LIKE Fire1 being Fire1. What's this skill? Oh a basic fire attack, makes sense. Or, Jaruman's Burning Conflagration? Perfect! Only 2 MP! Oh, it's a basic fire skill. I want skill names to be quick n' easy.

The balancing wasn't necessarily an issue of how much money and how many items you get, (I felt the number of medkits equalled very well the amount of damage you took) it was a matter of how much certain items cost that were of dubious use. There was also the fact that certain items sold for, what, 5 dollars where even the cheapest healing item was several times that cost. In terms of item cost, some (Panacea) were just too expensive to ever rationalize buying (80 bones? That is like two quests worth of money!), but overall it wasn't too bad. The major gripe I had was that some status effects were too powerful (Burn, because it lasts out of battle and therefore is an instant 20 dollar charge and Confusion, because if David gets hit with confusion he can deal 40 damage a turn to his teammates until healed and Blind because it ) and then some just weren't detrimental hardly at all (Sluggish, even Drain in most cases) but you encounter then at about the same rate. There were also a few cases where enemies (Grenadiers) used a move that inflicted 10-15 damage most turns and then some enemies literally dealt no damage during a whole battle.

I felt the towns were fairly good, I just meant that they'd have to be more fleshed out if the sidequests were; sort of scaled to fit, if that makes sense. It wasn't even the linearity of the quests that got me, it was the fact that they didn't really take advantage of the areas. It was obvious you put a lot of thought into keeping the locations they send you fresh, but you didn't have to keep it that fresh! I wouldn't have minded exploring the sewers a bit more or if the power generation area were larger, for instance. Little side dungeons can't hurt in a game where sidequests are a focus.

As for the music, well... it wasn't bad for the most part, I just felt it was misused. Like Darken, I was expecting something a little more depressing for the slums, but we ended up with pretty high-energy music in low-energy zones and visa versa. If you reassembled the tracks you already have and put them into different areas, you'd probably be fine!

I didn't think there was going to be a remake, by the way, I just thought it would be a nice idea. :D

And I got the "riot" ending. I saw in the editor (after I completed the game) there was another ending, but I really have no idea where the deviation was. I'm pretty sure I got the good ending. *shades*

edit: Yeah, I am familiar with the lack of modern chipsets, and I was going to point it out in my review but I don't really feel like it's too much of an excuse. Some of the buildings are a single tile with no edge pieces, and there are other misuses of the Theo stuff. Overall it wasn't bad, but there is a lot of room for improvement, even with minor edits.