KES'S PROFILE

As of last night, I am waiting for Chapter 3.

Within the framework you have set yourself I think you have done a decent job. You have managed to use the RTP tiles to create effective and often attractive maps, though I think you are a tad over keen on dark maps. A couple of towns in Chapter 2 were quite difficult to navigate and work out what the various buildings were because of that. I also think that there was an over reliance on poison floor tiles.

The dialogues for Chapter 2 mark a step up from Chapter 1. That might be because you found it easier to write interesting dialogue for Errol (a lively and flawed character) than for Marcia (a more 'perfect' character). I would have liked to have seen at least an occasional remark from the other characters, as well as the odd bit of dialogue that is not specifically moving the plot forward e.g. when a chest is opened or yet another bit of low grade armour is found. Not essential, but it does help to keep things engaging.

I found that my save file from Chapter 1, version 0.16, was not compatible with this version, so had to replay that section, and noticed that Starlight herbs were a bit more plentiful in the new version. Thank you! I do, however, think that you are still being a bit tight-fisted with the allocation of White Herbs. If a character goes down, there is no choice (other than reloading a save file and redoing the whole thing exactly as before which is not a 'fun' experience) but to use a Warp Whistle to get out, as 3 characters will not survive the fights walking out, and then a Warp Wing to get back to town for the same reason. Both those items are quite expensive, particularly at the beginning when money is low. On top of that there is a substantial cost of reviving them. That is a huge penalty on top of the need to start the dungeon again, albeit with the exp and items from the first attempt. Another way of mitigating this would be to give Healus at lower than level 9.

There is, as you know, a significant difficulty spike for the final dungeons in both chapters. Might you perhaps consider having slightly easier enemies in the first couple of rooms of final dungeons to smooth things out a bit and give the player a chance to level up to the required level without having to do the walking back and forth outside to grind to a higher level?

Speaking of walking and battles, there does seem to be the usual problem of random fights in RPG Maker where you can get the "3 steps and a fight" situation rather often. There is, in fact, a very simple fix for this which, if you are interested, I can explain in a pm. Up to you.

Yes, the game is pretty similar to Hero's Realm, but given what you set out to do, that is inevitable. It seems to me that you are beginning to give us your own voice, so I would expect the similarities to reduce in future chapters. If you are thinking of going back to do further polishing, I'd like to suggest that you look at Marcia's dialogues and character. A bit one-dimensional atm. My next suggestion could well involve too much work, so you might want to ignore it, but maybe if the party occasionally had some response/reaction to what NPCs said that would help give the particular party more of an identity. At the moment everyone is just cannon fodder. Or perhaps after plot developments e.g. after the king in Winterthrone has been very disparaging about Errol, someone could say that they had thought they had signed up to join a prestigious party, not some riff-raff.

One small bug - or maybe it's just that you haven't implemented it yet. I had 5 Small Medals from Chapter 1 and one more from Chapter 2, which I handed in in Susinki(?). The NPC acknowledged that I given 6, but I didn't get the boomerang - not that I wanted it particularly, as none of my characters would be able to equip it (I think).

Overall, I think that for a demo this is good, which is why I'm waiting for Chapter 3 and not just deleting the game as something I've finished.

Just read that this is going commercial. Congrats. I, for one, am looking forward to it. HR is one of my favourite RM2k3 games.

Good luck with all the work involved.

I'm glad that you found my random thoughts useful.

I probably won't play any further with this just at the moment. I've been off for several months following a huge accident, and I need to get back into the game I was developing. Trouble is, I think I need to find a couple of people to play through the bit I have done to see if it's worth the effort of trying to pick it up, having forgotten what half the things I was going to do are, or to start fresh. Decisions, decisions.

I've just reached the beginning of floor 3, and so far I'm enjoying it a lot. There is one thing, though, that you might want to keep in mind for future projects, and that is relative EXP and money for troops.

Some troops seem to deal out a lot of damage but give less EXP and gold than other troops which do less damage. For example, the troop of 4 cave bats and the troop of 4 fish (forgotten the name, but begins with an R). Those bats can all deal high damage to 2 allies, but the total EXP is, iirc, 80, a lot less than troops which have either fewer enemies and/or deal less damage.

btw, I'm ksjp17 from RM. This thread seems more up to date than the RM one, so I thought I'd open an account and post here.