MARREND'S PROFILE

comment=42201
Oh I might add, you can remove status conditions at places other than churches, by using items or spells.

If I came off as suggesting that status removal was impossible without the church, my bad. You can most certainly remove status conditions via spells and items. Unless the status in question is "unconscious". There might be a spell Ariel gets at a very late level that revives, but I didn't see any items that could revive my party members. Again, that might just be the style of the game, but I prefer to have an answer to unconscious characters that can be used inside battle.

Quick self-review of Matsumori Days:
This demo has one of the oddest difficulty curves ever. The first Chapter is the hardest chapter, since you have absolutely no resources. The optimal strategy for battles in Chapter 1 seem to be to fight one or two encounters before retreating to the rest point. Chapter 2 follows a similar path, at least until the fourth character gets her abilities. At that specific point, the difficulty curve goes down. Sharply. The only problem fight after that moment is the final fight, which is more of a test of patience and endurance than a test of skill and player knowledge.

The dungeons get very tiring very fast. Outside of a little bit of treasure hunting, there isn't much to do in them outside of grinding for levels. There's no mazes. No puzzles. Just a fairly straight-forward path to follow. There does seem to be a moment where the game can be non-linear, but the events in question are not in place as of this writing.

I'm not sure Katai is a very viable character. His only meaningful role is to have another character hate him. Seriously, that's all there is to the guy. He might be a good NPC that happens to have a face graphic, but a full-fledged party member?

For those interested in stories, this game might be worth your while. It's essentially a tale of a bunch of high-school students who get involved in a mystical battle in another dimension. Nothing that hasn't been done before, certainly. There seems to be some serious thought about how the two realities are connected, but perhaps not necessarily why they are connected.


The bouns

I wouldn't call it a "wall", since it's totally optional, but that tracking mini-game seriously messes me up. I know to follow the "arrows" backwards, but I've sometimes followed them forwards because, well, they're shaped like arrows. I easily get lost, trying to backtrack to the point where I messed up, only to mess up my direction again. I end up wasting a lot of time this way. I didn't even know the game was timed until Tom essentially belted out, "Way to fail, Splinter!" At some point, I would probably do an F12 reset anyway, but Tom's time-out statement came out of absolutely nowhere. Maybe I was too concentrated on finding my bearings that I didn't notice the timer, if there was one displayed?

The Magneton was very much a "wall". I must have fought it at least five times before I noticed the Yellow Bands in my inventory. When I went back after equipping them (I might have grinded another level out of good measure), I beat it. I used all my Beast Revives in the process, and still ended up with with one "whacked" party member (Splinter, I think). At that point, I didn't care about fallen party members. I was glad to have beaten it at all.

As for a rating, I think it has the potential to be a solid 3, if not better. This demo probably stands at about a 2.5.

The company that originally made RM2K and RM2K3 never released an English translation of those makers. In fact, translations of those makers are considered illegal. So while downloading an English translation usually doesn't require payment, you're still getting an illegal product.

Not that this has stopped anyone from making games with RM2K or RM2K3...

I was looking at rpgmakerweb a few moments ago, and it appears they have absolutely no FAQs for RMXP, but quite a bit of support for RMVX. Granted, VX is a later product, but the fact that XP has no apparent on-line support (or at least obvious on-line support), tosses a red flag of possible abandonment.

It's equally possible that the FAQs are simply not up yet. I have no idea how long Enterbrain has used rpgmakerweb as it's official site for everything RM-related, but it could be the simple case of an incomplete data transfer from one sever to another.

Either way, things aren't looking too good for you, MKID. I don't know how helpful filling out another technical issue form, or sending another e-mail, would be, but what other option is there?