KAFRO'S PROFILE

author=zoviet_francis
Don't get me wrong, not saying I'm not appreciative, but I just hope that you feel you made the right decision without feeling that you compromised what you were aiming to make all because of one guy, which would be significant for a small upstart game like this. Seeing how extremely harsh some of my wording was in regards to that, I definitely plan on taking some of that back.

Haha, don't worry about it. I modified the bosses' stats primarily because I felt I had to take resetting of party status into account. Outside feedback was also important, of course, but in no way do I feel like I took steps that compromised my vision. In my personal tests for the update, Form 2 became rather tedious with their original stats — especially since they only have a 2 to 3 turn cycle for their movesets (gets rather boring to see over and over) and Suit no longer retains an Aggression buff — so I nerfed them. Conversely, I upped Form 3's stats and skillset because in my personal tests I would usually blow right through that part.

Honestly, player feedback particularly came into play with the modification to the Stage 2 Boss. Several players told me that they would spend around a half-hour on this boss, an effort which also tended to lead to a crash. This was a slog I did not want people to think was intentional, so the game now punishes them with an unavoidable party wipe for stalling too long. For the record, when I told one of said players about this new turn limit he was quite flabbergasted.

author=zoviet_francis
One thing I will say is I went with an altogether different party set-up... well just one was different really. Instead of Momentum I used Fury. I felt getting through this much faster would need an extra offensive player, especially one with as powerful a combo attack as Ignite mixed with the attack the does double damage. 20+ points of damage at once is nothing to sneeze at. It definitely was that little guy that made short work of the Three Suckateers (I think that's a better name for them now than "the three assholes" wouldn't you say? (;).

I also must admit I didn't really test out alternative Construct loadouts much. I intended Boss 2 to be cleared by using Fury and Momentum and every form of the Final Boss can be done using Guardian and Momentum, which I generally did for testing. I did want to make Health more useful, particularly for Form 3, but I was afraid of players using Health to stall the battle out, potentially leading to a crash. Anyway, if you happened to find an alternate party that worked for you, that's great!

author=zoviet_francis
I also didn't know that that was the only guy you had to kill to move on - was it like that with the previous version of the game? Because I decided to just arbitrarily focus on killing him, and, when I did, then I got to meet the Reaper, or, actually, what was his name again? Did it begin with a "V"? I'm bad with names, in general, let alone with RPGs where I'm barely focused on the enemy names.

Bosses with minions have always died upon killing the "main part", though I never bothered testing out strategies focused on that. Along with that, the "Reaper" is called 'Quietus', but quite frankly the names in this game (both for enemies and allies) really don't matter at all. As I mentioned in my response to nhubi's review, they're only there for ease of battle targeting.

author=zoviet_francis
Anyway that guy put up a pretty good fight, my game did close out on me in the middle of one of my fights with him though (oh, another thing, this seems to extend to battles in general - one incident I forgot to mention was when I ran into the battle with the three red jellies, I mad a concerted effort to try to beat them - I had managed to do so with the white ones, but the red ones were much more stubborn - after a while the game closed out - so I'm thinking it's less to do with specific battles and more to do with something in the battle system in general - maybe you've already considered that, but just wanted to bring that up).

This actually happened to me for the first time while I was testing the update. As you can imagine, this bug is quite irritating to completely fix.

author=zoviet_francis
That's why after I finished him off and got to the fourth battle, which I knew was part of the same fight, so if it crashed I'd have to fight the third boss all over again. This is where I got in a panic throwing everything I had at the little bastard. He was certainly non-threatening but he had a surprisingly long health bar. It eventually came down to just blind and quick mashing, trying to beat him, paranoid that the game would shut down on me any moment, haha. I can't imagine what it'd be like if I got that far in the original iteration of the game (without boosters of course).

I did have my concerns with keeping the 4th Form's LF as is, since it can certainly take a while to defeat it. This is probably ridiculous to say, but I designed it like that so that the song in the background would have time to play a good portion out. If I hear reports of people crashing on that last part specifically because of how long it takes I may lower his health in another minor update.

author=zoviet_francis
Anyway a VERY heavy rewrite of my review is in the works, not just for these changes but other things I discovered, some small, some large.

To turn what you said earlier around, I certainly hope my correspondence hasn't compromised your own thoughts on the game too heavily. I greatly respect the integrity of reviewers and only wish to see their honest opinions.

author=zoviet_francis
Like, in the review I mentioned I had no idea what Freeze or Sleep did (the former doubles the WP cost of attacks and abilities, some to the point of being impossible to use, the latter makes it so your next turn only regenerates 1 WP instead of 2 - did I get that right?)

Correct.

author=zoviet_francis
I also didn't know there were two endings until I read nhubi's review. Then I figured it had something to do with the 3 happy memories. First time I finished it with the boost trick, I only had 2 of them. Finishing them with 3, I... wow, must say that's a really good ending and changed my perspective of the main character and why he's doing all this. I suppose I should have suspected something like this, but his journey feels all the more justified now. Never seeing this ending in v.1.0 is this pretty much the same ending or were there changes/rewrites made? The further details of the past coyote incident turned things on its head I must say.

author=zoviet_francis
I didn't catch whatever the pun that you added in was though. (???)

author=zoviet_francis
And so ends another overlong piece of babbling for yours truly. Once my headspace is cleared I will come back to this one, go over it and fix it up. If it requires starting from scratch altogether (which I hope not) then so be it. All the best, z_f

Don't stress over updating the review — I'm just happy to hear that you could finish the game without insurmountable crashing. Thanks again for your thoughts!

author=zoviet_francis
Thanks for dropping by. I'm REALLY starting to think the crashes have something to do with how long you remain in battle. The times the game crashes for me were when I was sticking out for a long time (well it's always a long time but potentially longer than others). I'd like to know how long it took the playtesters to beat who I now call "the three assholes" in the final fight let alone the entire battle in general if you can get that information, thanks.

The propensity for the bug to happen after extended time in battle has been noted on multiple occasions, so it will be the focus on the fixes to come. My main playtester did mention that the second form of the final battle was the most obtuse of them to get through, but he was able to get through it without any help on my part. While none of them have given me specific times as to how long the entire fight took for them, I estimate that they found Form 1 moderately challenging, Form 2 the most difficult, and Form 3 superfluous (it's the kind of thing you'd want to just kill as soon as possible rather than prolong).

author=Kylaila
The easiest way to fix this would probably be to split the battle up. Make a cut somewhere and it'd be fine - I always get to the last part.

As I have been unable to discern the cause of the bug over the last two days, I've switched over to this plan. This may require re-tuning of the final battle, however, because I'm unsure if I can make certain buffs carry over.

author=zoviet_francis
Oh btw never mind the raging in Update Zwei. Just when I thought I was getting better I fell back down several steps behind again. The bug crashing the game isn't what is irritating me so, really. I'd much rather it be that the game crashes while I'm on a good streak than me gradually meeting my defeat and the game remaining open as if to say "take it all in, and suck it, bitch!" If any major updates are made, someone makes a video fighting and defeating the final boss, or at least one other person can confess to struggling for a long time with this boss, I mean ffs, come on now, I may give it another go, but for the time being, I'm done with this game. As far as I care, I've already beaten the game, whether it could be considered cheating or not, via the booster, so... yeah, that. Urrrghhhh...

I should point out that the fourth, final form of the final boss is intended to have no difficulty to it, so if you got through the first three you can absolutely say you completed all the challenges in the game.

I'm also sorry that you consider the game so frustrating. I always found challenge in most turn-based RPGs lacking, including some of the ones people hold up as the pinnacle of difficulty like the Shin Megami Tensei and Etrian Odyssey series, so with this game I set out to create a system in which every action legitimately felt like it mattered.

Hello! Thank you so much for taking the time to review my game. I'm terribly sorry that I did not notice this review sooner, especially since I somehow commented on the game's main page on a later date without noticing it. I'd also like to apologize if my following response comes off as too wordy, defensive, or otherwise odd in any manner — it's been a while since I've made anything creative and received critique for it.

(A note to other readers: This response contains slight spoilers.)

To begin with, quite frankly, the majority of the game from the second stage onward was produced within the last week before the IGMC deadline, give or take a few days. I ended up rushing out designs and dialogue with minimal editing (save for a few conversations I typed down beforehand), and while I'm not entirely unhappy with the finished product, I definitely felt my lack of time and experience was obvious even on the day I made it public.

I'm happy to hear that you found Suit's character arc engaging, even though I had to give up on several opportunities to further embellish his character. In particular, I feel as though I could have foreshadowed his true dilemma better, further explained his distrust for getting help from professionals he does not know personally, and made the "Happy Place" in the third stage actually have a place in the narrative. Along with that, the idea that Suit could solve his true dilemma without remembering it is complete garbage, but unfortunately I was literally a day away from the deadline when I coded that part down.

This dissatisfaction is, of course, in addition to all the glaring inconsistencies about the technology utilized in the game. (Why does the coyote notice them when humans do not? What exactly are the logistics of singling out a state of mind as opposed to a memory? Whose bright idea was it to make literally fighting memories a requirement for the procedure? Why are mind zombies?)

However, while I can certainly agree that I could have written Glasses's character better — especially with respect to his attitudes toward his profession — I never particularly saw the need to give him layers or a form of inner conflict. After all, this is Suit's story, and I intended Glasses to be a comparatively calm, stable individual to Suit, as well as a source of (perhaps blunt) positivity to his negativity. In essence, I meant for Glasses to adopt the kind of stance I imagine a well-meaning but not wholly placating friend would take if they were to respond to Suit's rather standard regrets.

The other ending was another idea I had in mind when beginning the project that turned out half-baked by the end. It's the kind of ending that only adds to the narrative if you see it first (which works against itself since I made it easy to meet the conditions for the longer ending), and even then only barely. In its current state it doesn't particularly give another interesting perspective to the plot or characters, so it's fine that you skipped it.

Lastly, I'll address the rather light take on the agreeably dark subject matter. While it was never my intention, the idea for this game's story ended up somewhat similar to a story-based game that also involved memory-changing themes, To The Moon. That game, while also lighthearted at many points, utilized its memory-changing technology in a more controversial procedure and addressed it thusly. Consequently, I felt that giving focus to the contentious aspects of the procedure in Null Regrets would be retreading old ground, and instead I thought about how such technology could be used in a more justifiable form — which is why the memory-wiping in Null Regrets is stated to be primarily used to aid victims of abuse and PTSD. Perhaps I could have done more to imply that the casual use of the procedure is atypical, but I felt that the comments about 'tiers' sufficed.

That isn't to say that I ever expected players to completely empathise with the game's procedure or characters though, nor did I ever intend for the message of the game to be "regrets are something that should be banished along with the memories that induce them." I simply set out to create a short story grounded in reality involving a debatable subject matter; I wanted to let players decide their own level of empathy or disdain towards its progression and conclusion, despite how the game itself only focuses on one angle of the affair. While I may have failed at conveying that, I am nonetheless very glad to hear that, in the end, the game made you ponder its themes after you finished playing, even if only for a moment.

A couple more minor things I'll list that don't really fit into anything above:

• 'Suit' and 'Glasses' are honestly even less than nicknames. I was originally going to have no form of nomenclature attributable to both allies and enemies, but that made battle targeting harder to read.
• I'm happy to hear that you enjoyed the in-game manual. I did that on a whim one day solely because I thought it would be funny.
• A question: Did you happen to experience the bug wherein the game would crash during battles? If so, I'd like to know so I can gather more information that could potentially help me fix the issue.

Dang, sorry that this response wound up so long — hopefully it was insightful in some form. Again, thank you very much for taking the time to review my game. I sincerely appreciate it.