MARCHE100'S PROFILE

Hey, I'm willing to try this out. I've actually had my eye on this game in the past, but never downloaded the demo. Honestly, I never really took a good look at it, but hey, the game is out, now! I'll give it a go and give you some feedback as I go.

I have to say, it sounds like a plus that you made leveling up faster so that the narrative can move along. I'm a person who tends to like RPGs with little-no grinding and enjoys a game for its story, so hopefully this aspect lives up to my expectations. We'll see...

Back when I first started making Obama RPG, I had visions of grandeur, an RPG that would try to soar high, like Barkley Shut Up and Jam did. At first, the story was simple, but it expanded. And expanded. And expanded, until I had what I thought was a good game. Then, the first hiatus hit. I had lost the motivation to go on, and yet...I felt like I owed everyone. I felt like it was wrong of me to just up and leave it. Like it was my masterpiece and I needed to complete it. It gnawed at me. Day after day after day. Month after month. Yet, I still didn't want to make it.

So, I worked on it, on and off for a little while as a burst of motivation came, then came the next big hiatus. Approximately a year long. Still, I had that gnawing feeling. A voice in my head telling me "you need to finish this game, or else..." So, I picked it up again last month or whenever it was. Then it consumed my life.

Every waking hour I worked on it. I worked on it well past when I would usually go to bed. I exhausted myself, but time and time again I kept going, telling myself "you picked it up again, so you HAVE to finish it for the people waiting for it". This game became my life. It defined me. Heck, when I first put up that download for disk 1 and there was problems with the sound that I didn't know how to fix, I basically had a panic attack.

But all for what? Was I really doing it to entertain? No, I don't think so. I think I was trying to sate that voice in my head forcing me to work on the game. Trying to finally end this chapter in my life that had just become nothing more than an itch that you can't scratch. It had its claws in me, and it was never going to take them out.

And then, I lost motivation once more. Right after disk 1 released. I was tired. I still am tired of making games. I never wanted to go back to it. But there, still, was that gnawing feeling. "You have to work on this." I just bought RPG Maker VX Ace the other day and started making a horror game in an attempt to sate that voice with something else, but then I just get the same feeling with that game.

In all honesty, I never should have started this game. True, I've learned a lot through making it, but it has become its own little hell. Actually, not just Obama RPG. Making games has in general, given the recent RPG Maker VX Ace experiment.

I'm not cut out for this. That much is clear. I've always been a player of games, and have wanted to make games, but that doesn't mean that I should, or that everything will be just peachy when I try.

I appreciate all that my seven years of using RPG Maker has given me. It's given me a lot of heartbreak, and a lot of fun. A lot of stories, and a lot of learning experiences. But I just can't keep doing this to myself. It's far more trouble than it's worth. The voice in my head told me to make disk 2, and I just said "no".

And now, I feel like a great chain has lifted off of me. I'm free from Obama RPG. I have my life back. And that's the main reason I cancelled Obama RPG (although the legality thing is still a big concern).

Alright, I just played through quite a bit of the game, and I'm done with it. I didn't finish it, but I quit. Here are my thoughts (not going to put it in a review since I'm not pointing out every aspect of the game, just a few things I liked and the big things I disliked).

The story is alright. I'm not much for the mythology/lore surrounding the story/characters, but it was entertaining. Aldrick (I believe that was his name) was my favorite character. Plenty of personality, and I loved the scene in the guild town with the whole pub thing. That was great, and the minigame right after that was fun.

I loved the dungeons, too. The whole Zelda feel I got from the Yggdrasil Spring and the Phantasmawhatsit Manor were great, and it was very nice to include a map.

The music was good, too. I enjoyed the battle music, especially, although the style of music did get a little old after a while.

One thing I didn't like was the difficulty. It felt inconsistent, to me. Like, in the forest where you had to light the torches, I could cut through enemies like butter, but then the boss in the forest could take down nearly my entire party with just two or three powerful spells. That was irritating. And I never knew how to feel about if I was at a good level or not unless I overleveled, because enemies hit so hard that it never seemed like I was making progress. It just felt like my health was going up with each level.

But another big irritant were the glitches. I encountered I don't know how many glitches throughout the game that really hindered my progress. Two times I encountered game breaking glitches. In the Yggdrasil Spring I pushed the pillar into a bad spot in the one pillar sliding puzzle, and I was stuck. There was no way to leave, so I had to reset and lost a good deal of experience.

Also, there must have been an event in the game that slowed Blitz's speed, because the forest with the torches was absolute hell. I moved so slowly that I kept wondering how in the world anyone was supposed to be able to navigate the forest. It's a wonder that I was even able to get to the rightmost phantom in the forest, because I literally talked to him a split second before the timer was up, and that was after heading straight to him from the nearest torch (and no, I wouldn't have been able to reach him by stacking torch timers, like I had to do later on). After I got out of the forest and entered the Phantasmawhatsit Manor my speed increased somehow, so I know that it was a glitch and it wasn't just my imagination.

Speaking of the Manor, I was grinding in the manor because I felt underleveled (I was level 22ish) and I got another game-breaking glitch. I was going to be pushed off a ledge by one of the guards, but I hit down at the last second, so I moved back to a safe spot, but since the guard must have touched me, I got stuck in the being pushed animation. That was the last straw, as I had no choice but to reset, and I would have lost a ton of experience from running around the manor trying to level up, so I just quit.

So, sorry that I wasn't able to finish the game, but a combination of the difficulty and game-breaking glitches just irked me to no end. Guess it doesn't matter so much, since it's not like the story will ever have an ending, anyways, but it was alright.

Yep, I saw it on Destructoid, Wired...

Good lord, if only everyone's games got this much exposure, we'd all be set for life!

Hold up, I did notice one glitch. When you say "first battle" does that mean after the first political battle and the first forced battle? Because I noticed a glitch, there.

I don't know what else to do, man, so I'm uploading a fixed version without the glitch. Otherwise, it runs fine on my other computer that doesn't have RPG Maker 2003 on it. I'm so sorry.

PLEASE, someone else tell me if this works for them or not. I NEED to know if this is an isolated incident or not.