LAMASQUERADE'S PROFILE

Hey, I have been playing the demo for about an hour now. It's looking pretty great so far, honestly! The only comments I have at this point are:

1) Grammar/spelling/text errors. Maybe I'm being overly picky here, but I can barely seem to get through a single line of dialog without noticing some form of a text error, be it grammatical, spelling, etc. It seems like the demo was barely proofread at all when it comes to the character text... and btw, in the Statistic screen, you spelled "Strength" as "Strenght." Just little stuff like that started to get extremely annoying after a while.

2) I have encountered a weird glitch twice now. I just got to the point where you can start capturing pokemon... er, I mean, rebuilding mechs. (:P) It seems that every once in a while, I get a pure black screen when I should be getting an encounter. It tends to only happen after I have a battle party of greater than 1... I'm not entirely sure what causes it, but the symptoms may help you diagnose the bug. It makes the sound effect for an encounter, and the screen goes dark. Then the background music resumes after a second instead of the battle music... and the encounter never initializes. And then the game freezes in that state. Fortunately I didn't lose too much data either time, but it's a little annoying. If I find more information about what causes it, I'll let you know.

Hey luiishu535,

I played through the demo (I could only find the one that ends after the first boss on the first floor).

Overall it's looking very good so far! The characters and plot drew me in enough to finish the entire demo in one sitting, which is a good reflection thus far. The difficulty felt just about right, although the Shadow Shaman boss seemed pretty hard compared to what most games throw at you early in the game. Is there any way to predict or counter when he's going to hit you with the Darkness spell (which seems to happen in-between turns)? If there is some system at play there, it would be nice to know what exactly it is.

There were only a few things that annoyed me. First, when you're in the village (before leaving for the castle), there's a chest that I think I figured out how to get to... except when I walked over the tile that exits to the next map, it put me in the cutscene where you find the castle again, and I wasn't able to backtrack. I don't know if the chest contained anything worthwhile, but as a completionist, I didn't want to have to start the whole game over just to get the one chest... and I also wanted to continue playing. This could be fixed by adding a way to backtrack to the village, or by extending the map down 1-2 tiles so that players wouldn't accidentally run into the exit tile by moving to the right.

There were other minor things, like an Inn sign that didn't say anything (yet sparkled as though it should say something) and a few typos and grammar errors. I was more focused on playing through the game, though, and didn't mark down their exact locations. Some quick proofreading could probably find them; overall the text was pretty good.

It seems that you've made progress since the demo I played (like I said, it was the only official download I could find) and I definitely want to play more!

Keep up the good work,
LaMasquerade

Hello rydwha,

I just finishing playing your demo, "Suikoden Another Stories." Or rather, I got so frustrated by the constant level minimums that I stopped playing at the cave. More on that later.

I decided it would be helpful if I gave you some feedback on what you've got going for you in this fan game, and what you definitely, absolutely need to improve on. I'll start with the positive things.

Positives

1) Battle system was interesting, I'm sure it could be expanded on quite easily as characters learn more skills (are there Runes?), and it felt fun, while not being so off-the-wall as to be not appropriate to the genre of a Suikoden fan game.

2) The art is pretty good. I know you've had some criticisms in this department, because it seems too unlike Suikoden 2 graphics... I personally didn't mind it at all, I found that, if anything, it added to the game. The monsters were well sprited, and the character art was pretty darn good. The environments were so-so, they could use some work, but overall, it was pretty good.

Unfortunately, that's about all I can say as far as things that were done well.

Negatives

1) This is by far the most important. By. Far. Your characters are not acting like themselves. Like, not even remotely close. If you are going to do a fan game, and use actual characters from the game on which your game is based, they MUST MUST MUST have realistic, fun, believable dialog, and they must be true to their character from the series!!! I cannot stress this enough. Here are some of the more obvious problems:

-Flik doesn't even gamble (to my knowledge), and certainly wouldn't be gambling away all his money. And most certainly, he wouldn't be without any kind of income. He's Flik of the Blue Lightning for fuck's sake... If you wanted him to start at "rock bottom," it's understandable, but having the character be so out-of-proportion desperate is just not forgivable.
-The interaction between Flik and Viktor is completely... well. To start with, they are long time friends, and while their interactions may have been snarky in the past, they certainly weren't hostile to each other. It felt wrong on so many levels. And the use of Australian slang ("bugger off..." really?!?!) was out of place and inappropriately used.
-Nina also doesn't act like herself. In the scene where she asks Flik nicely to use her name... wait, Nina was NICE and HUMBLE?! What has the world come to? Also since when does Flik not know/use Nina's name? More on that later...

Overall, I would say this is the hugest flaw. It made me instantly hate the game, and be turned off and negative to anything you had to offer. The dialog was not real, it was not funny, and it was not Suikoden, period. I actually had to take time away before writing this review because my frame of mind was so negative, and I didn't want to come off as being a naysayer for no good reason... but I'll say it again. If you want to do a fan game, and use characters from the game, they must must must be real and true to themselves.

2) This was the biggest flaw in the gameplay department. You had random "level requirements" stationed like EVERYWHERE ASADFASDSDF. Like seriously, I felt like I was spending more time grinding off random encounters than I was actually learning about the game, or the characters, or anything else for that matter. And that's because... oh, I actually WAS spending more time grinding than anything else. I spent 15 minutes grinding to level 5 in the woods, and 25 minutes in the cave, before saying "Screw this" and giving up on the game.

My advice is: make the game's enemies scale MUCH more slowly, and do NOT make level requirements to advance. Let players advance at their own pace, and if the difficulty of enemies is too much, players will find their own ways of dealing with it. That's part of the experience of playing a game.

3) The third thing I'll say is regarding general polish. Or, I should say, lack thereof. Now, I'm an experienced beta tester. I've tested alphas with 30 minutes of iffy gameplay before... but there are some things that I still feel the right to criticize here.

-The first time I clicked on my inventory, I got a random error telling me an asset was missing, and to contact you. And speaking of which...
-You put your contact info EVERYWHERE. Like 4 links to social media in the intro credits, and even in the Game Menu when you open it (???!?!?!). Yes, I get it, you want feedback on the game, and that's great... but you don't need to spam your name everywhere. It felt very contrived and annoying.
-There are grammar errors/missing words/spelling errors/etc all over the place. I could barely stomach the dialog, and ended up tolerating it only by playing a little mind game with myself that I call "Spot the errors." I ended up stopping that game after 20, because it just got damn depressing.

4) Lastly, the plot devices and mechanisms... Oh god. It feels like I'm being bludgeoned over the head with them!! Yes, I get it, Flik is a loser who gambles all his money away and hates ALL kids. And refers to them as "kid," even though he knows Nina's name, and has known it for years (?). And is generally unlikable to the point where you want to throw a brick at your computer. Or throw your computer at a brick. Or something. You need to be subtle. A good rule of thumb for video game prose/dialog is to show rather than tell. There are ways you can let the player infer things without directly telling them. ie: In a game I'm thinking of, the main character always alludes to the fact that they have to keep living for something, but never directly state it. Throughout the game, it's a built-upon motif, and eventually, slowly, the player learns about this plot mechanism. The reason you don't want to just go around stating stuff is because it doesn't draw interest, and it feels really contrived. And like I said, I could barely tolerate being bludgeoned over the head with the fact that Flik is a douche. I think I lost a few brain cells simply from the constant cringing.

Some last words before I call it a day,

Are you a native English speaker? If not, you should get a native English speaker to proofread/help write the script. If so... then you need to be more careful about your sentence construction and spelling/grammar/etc. And try to think of more creative ways of saying the same thing, rather than continually using the same phrases. Try to construct images rather than words. You want the player to feel in tune with the character, not just plain annoyed with them.

Overall, don't let this review get you down too much. I see a lot of potential in this game; I think I was harsh, in part, because I LOVE Suikoden 2, and the Suikoden series in general. Keep working on it, because I believe you can do better than this. If necessary, go back and give Suikoden 2 a play through; try to understand Nina, Flik, and Viktor more as characters. Try to get inside their heads, and learn about them, what makes them tick, etc. If you do that, I have a feeling the game effort will yield a much more positive result.

Good luck!
LaMasq

1) Play time: 3 hours, 4 minutes.

2) Level 7/Level 7

3) I honestly have to agree with Noel_Kreiss. The difficulty seemed about right, barring two points in the game. At the very beginning, if you happen to wander onto the beach, there is an encounter with 2 of the sea horses + 2 goblins that will absolutely pwn you. I know you warn the user if they read all the NPC text in Neirbrook, but at the least, make it more rewarding if you do manage to beat one of the sea horse monsters. Right now they're really difficult when you first encounter them, for almost no reward. Additionally, the Ixion fight is a bit easy, but being the first real boss of the game, this is understandable. I also concur about the damage variance, the numbers seem wild and somewhat unpredictable.

4) Zephyr is a good main character. You give just enough detail to keep the player interested in him, while not so much that you overload us right away. He is not a caricature in the way that a lot of main characters are, which is good; often game designers will stress one or two main aspects of a character to death. The interaction between him and the other characters are all believable, in character, and often amusing or illuminating.
Winter is a good character as well; you manage to get across her main emotions and thoughts without any dialog, which is very difficult sometimes. I honestly don't have any complaints about her character; she seems vulnerable enough to be endearing, yet also realistic enough for a chocobo character (eating the neighbor's vegetables was a good touch). It doesn't hurt that she has a practical purpose too - crashing the game if you ride her near certain places! I jest.
Hautley seems a little bit stereotypical, and caricatured. but this is excusable since you don't see many scenes with him. Just be sure to add dimension to his character in the future.
Reiner is the character that I would complain the most about, so far. He seems far too rigid in manner and speech, but perhaps the most important thing is that he isn't likable. The only time I really felt like Reiner was beginning to gain some credibility to his character was when he calls Zephyr by name for the first time, in the cave scene. I know you want him to be an "honor-before-all-else" rigid character, and I'm not entirely sure what you have planned with him, but be sure to add some more "human" seeming qualities to him. If he remains aloof to everyone forever, without any seeming changes, he will likely be people's least favorite character.

5) I loved the idea of many of the features of the demo, such as the mini-games (Triple Triad!!!) and the side quests. I also loved the characters in the garrison in Lindblum. Cid was a high point, and great comic relief. Just be sure not to abuse his relationship with Cait Sith too much. If you can find new ways to add humor via developing their relationship, go for it; their relationship so far is hilarious. Just be sure not to milk it so much that it gets old. Additionally, I loved the system for DNA strand drops; add more of that! Maybe some monsters in optional places could drop some too?

6) Hmm.. my only complaint would be that it's not completed, really. Which isn't much of a complaint to lodge against a demo. :P

7) As far as polish, I'd say 9/10 for what's added so far. There were almost no text errors remaining (yay!), the dialog was well made and executed, the scenes were pretty darn good too. The minor things for polish would include the Elixir tooltip, the remaining Character info in the Status menu, and other minor things along those lines.
As far as error-free, we have a little farther to go (I'd say 8/10). Winter crashing glitches aside, I found a bug in Lindblum Castle, as well as the recipe glitch in Crescent (which it sounds like was already fixed). Essentially, though, in Lindblum Castle, if you talk to Godot from the right-hand side (instead of from the bottom), the dialog proceeds as normal, but at the end, your screen dims and stays black forever. I could still move around, and even managed to talk to the NPC in the other corner, so it appears to just be a visual error. Still, rather game breaking.

8) It is looking very good so far! P.S. Your composer sucks! o.o :D

-Brandon

Hey. I was playing and enjoying this game but I found a rather... interesting issue. I'm not sure exactly why it happened either.

I was in the cave leading to the village where I am supposed to recruit a White Mage. I came to this point:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/31/ffblackmoon001.jpg/

I pressed the action button, expecting a forced monster fight. The problem is, my game minimized, gave me a critical error, and then flooded my screen with this message:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/546/ffblackmoon002.jpg/

I could not click the message because every .5 seconds, a new one would appear. The result was a screen flooded with errors, and an effectively frozen screen. I had to use the Task Manager and force exit the application.

My theory is that it has something to do with the fact that I had downloaded a beta version of the game a long time ago, and then updated it. Note that when I updated versions, I started a new game, though, and I didn't get any issues up until this point. I really don't know what to do now, and it's very frustrating because I was just starting to get into the game. :(