MAX MCGEE'S PROFILE

Yeah, Nightblade as I mentioned the patch downloads aren't working.

Anyway...Sacred Earth: Bonds

At present, I would say that I am annoyed by this game. While it is promising- practically any rpg maker game that actually SEES COMPLETION is promising to me, considering what a rarity that is- it has been rife with problems. Right now, I quit after dying for the second time on the ridiculous golem fight, the first boss. I am pissed because A. Since there is NO SAVE POINT before this fight, each time I die here I need to sit through two stupid, poorly written cutscenes and a substantial dungeon segment each time and B. The inability to use healing items from the menu means that I can't ever go into the fight fresh. Also, in my opinion, the boss just has too much damn HP. 5000, when the attacks that are strongest against it hit for ~150, doth not a good boss make.

Anyway, besides Golem related issues, I'm digging the custom character advancement systems (spending soul points to increase character stats) and the nifty field tools. I am not enjoying the dialog or the pop-up character artwork, both of which I feel are far too peppy and cheerful for the situation. In the beginning, why is everybody smiling when they're at their father's death bed? Either ditch the artwork entirely, or give each character multiple expressions, would be my advice.

Also, I don't feel that an adequate response to someone LAUGHING AT YOUR FATHER'S TERMINAL ILLNESS is just to call them a dumbass. I dunno, the dialogue just reminds me of anime a lot, and not in a good way.

There are a lot of custom systems, so many that it's a very impressive technical feat but I can't help feel like the way that they are explained is poorly conceived. I feel that the creator could have introduced the new mechanics unique to this game one at a time, walking the player through them, rather than forcing the player to read and absorb several pages of (non-repeatable) instructions at the beginning of the game.

I feel that the initial search for the herb through the snowy forest area before the protagonists find the first dungeon SHOULD have been playable and would make a much better lead-in to the game, in every way, and allow a playable tutorial section to introduce the new functions one at a time.

I also question the choice to make every enemy in the first dungeon strong against water and weak against fire AND give one character only a water weapon and water attacks and the other character a fire spell, thus making Veilli basically useless for the whole first dungeon, except for her myriad limit-breaky-thingies, which are basically a mystery to me anyway because I felt that the system was poorly explained and extremely non-intuitive.

Aesthetically is good looking and polished, the graphics are consistent and never clash. I am NOT AT ALL a fan of the game's chibi aesthetic, but that's just a matter of personal taste.

The worst part of the experience, by far, is the voice acting, even when it's limited to a few lines describing the field map and battle sound effects. Please GOD include an option to disable the voices in the final, final release.

I will definitely play more of this later, but I'm not sure if it's grabbed my interest enough to finish it yet.

1873: The Western!
I gave this another shot, starting from the beginning after the calendar bug killed my menu but still quit early in after my second try versus the man in white and his three shotgun goons was unsuccesful. I don't know if I can beat them at all, but I definitely can't beat them before Larsene kicks the bucket. (Speaking of that fight, what is the point of being able to "sneak" around the goons, when no matter what angle you come at them from, you can't sneak up behind them???)

A western RPG is not a bad idea, but this project isn't very well executed thus far. It's not a disaster, but it's not grabbing my attention. Also, I noticed another weird bug; once I learned Marsden's innate skill Russian Roulette after beating the three rooms full of jerks before the boss dude, used it once, and lost it (???) in the middle of the fight, and the next time I didn't learn it at all. Both things really confused me. On a very basic level, I think this game would be more fun if enemies didn't spam MEDICINE so goddamn much and if you didn't get gameovered when one party member died.

I just think you need to customize this game's battles to FEEL more like a western. Right now it just feels like a very boring, attack fest DBS RPG. One suggestion would be to make the battles more like quickdraw gunfights, where agility is key and EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER, PLAYER OR ENEMY, DIES IN ONE OR TWO SHOTS, MAX. Basically, it would be all about getting the first shot off. I mean, I just can't believe a game ostensibly set in the real world, in a real historical period, where my characters are continuously being peppered with shotgun blasts. So make every attack at least have the potential to kill, and make agility the ultimate stat to have. Likewise, I should not have to shoot an enemy, a human being, with a colt revolver that many damn times to make them die! It'll be all about who's faster. Likewise, I feel like more custom skills, sooner in the game, even something as simple as the ability to "fan the hammer" and spray all six bullets at once, would have made the game more interesting. Russian Roulette was an interesting skill, but it was immediately taken away from me!

Anyway, I might cheat so I can get past that fight, then I'll play the game some more and give you the rest of my thoughts.

Then maybe don't do anything involving broadcasting your voice to the internet until you get a working mic? Sorry to be harsh.

Sacred Earth: Bonds (BUG!)
On the second map after the game finally becomes fully playable, I am unable to access the menu. When I return to the previous map, I am.

Is this what the above menu fix (the one that involves replacing Map 007) is for? If so, I am still at a loss because both of the download links aren't working right now.

Edit: Nevermind, I guess it's working on the next map, so it's not such a big deal. I am really annoyed with the inability to use basic healing items in the field! Is there any way to access the default menu or some other way of using items that I'm missing? I didn't have the patience to read through absolutely all of the lengthy tutorials.

RTP is awesome.

Depends which RTP.

1873:
CMS is broken. Once I used the Calendar function (it had no real "use", I was just checking it out) I was unable to access the menu again at all. Nothing happened when I pressed escape, nothing at all. More later.

nevermind

Cool, I'll DL the patch and check it out once I've played some of the other RSes I meant to play. Bonus content.

By the way, I feel more like someone is doing me a favor by letting me play a video game for free than like I am doing someone a favor by playing their RPG Maker game, so that is definitely a good sign.