MAX MCGEE'S PROFILE

author=Discoveria link=topic=2017.msg33460#msg33460 date=1222184870
Mage Duel
Was quite fun. Looking forward to Act II...

Pros:
* Battles work well
* Character creation

Cons:
* Battler graphics are inconsistent, but that's not so bad
* The panning cutscene every time you enter a battle gets tedious if you just want to blast your way up the ranks.
* I played as an Evoker with Heal Salve, which I used after each battle. If I hadn't I would have had to travel to the rest area after each battle. Alternatively, make movement speed faster.

Thanks for the feedback! I certainly am looking forward to more and more people giving Mage Duel a shot, but I can understand that for the most part it's been lost in the avalanche of new releases.

You heard about the fatal error I had when trying to play IntelliA, right?

Anyway, everything is RTP...except the battlers. I didn't want every Mage enemy to be a pallete swap of the same four graphics (there are only so many mage looking things in RMVX's RTP), so I wound up using advocate's 1000+ front view monsters as some of later mages. They uh, didn't resize that well, I know.

Anyway, once you play some of these other fine games, you should go back and give it a run through with another class/secondary/gender (gender actually effects your stats, political incorrectness!). Evoker/Healing Salve is about the most vanilla (if effective) way you can play the game.

MODIFY:

WAIT, WHAT'S THIS...MORE FEEDBACK TO ADDRESS...ALSO FROM DISCOVERIA!

1. Playing as male Conjurer: the character creation screen description of Bind Enemy (I think) should say "non-summoned creatures"
2. The skill description for Bind Enemy has a typo: "on creature" instead of "one creature"
3. As male Conjurer: I've got both the Tribal Staff and the Force Shield. When I equip one it automatically unequips the other.

1. Um, no. It does in fact work better on summoned enemy creatures, but it works to some degree on all enemy creatures and some enemy mages. But it is a guaranteed hit versus summoned creatures/undead/familiars.
2. Very minor, but duly noted. I will fix this when I am at the "fix typos" stage, which, honestly, I'm not sure when in the development that is.
3. That is because one is a "Two handed weapon" and the other is a "shield" type item. This was intentional, not a bug; the innate magic of staves is so intense that an enchantment can't be charged to the wielder's aura at the same time. This isn't a glitch, it's a balance issue. Staves are really good, especially later in the game; you can't benefit from a staff and an enchantment at the same time. Conjurer/Healers will have one-handed alternatives to staves later on.

This makes me worry and it makes the Enchantment slot useless if you use Mirror Image frequently (I use it probably every battle). There should be a way to have the cake and eat it too, I'm going to poke my head into your code and see if I can find a solution.

I know this would probably be easy to fix, but it is an intentional choice. You see, basically, if you have Mirror Image and use it constantly, it IS your enchantment. The idea is you don't bother buying one, unless you need it for special purpose fights (versus an Evoker, unless you have taunt, having a Flame Aura or something equipped might be more useful than Mirror Image, since Mirror Image only effects physical evasion). If it helps at all, all of this will be explained in the documentation included in the final release. I can understand how it all must have seemed like glitches and bugs starting out.

So, anyone else who wants to comment on Mage Duel, could you possibly take the trouble to "mirror" your comment in the Mage Duel thread? My poor little thread is so lonely, being crushed under the weight of the dozen new releases on top of it. :'(

Well rock me sexy jesus.

Finally, Hellion by Kentona:

Wow, for a second, I thought I was playing Dragon Fantasy II again. :P

Seriously, Dragon Warrior (??) graphics and the fact that you can't really make maps made with them distinct aside, Hellion has a pretty awesome premise, being as far as I can tell, a hybrid of Fallout II and the original dragon warrior.

My experience with the game was: I made a Warlock, selected a sleep spell, the only thing I could afford, frowned because there were no undead for me, selected "Abilities" as total guesswork, not knowing what would be useful, and as a result was not particularly good at anything, played through the town, bought a bunch of armor because I thought I would be fragile (I WAS NOT WRONG), finally went into the pit, fought a couple of slimes and only narrowly survived, then fought three "Drakees" and was brutally and instantly killed. I tried to flee as their first round of attacks brought me to 1 Health, but no dice. : | Not a great first impression, I have to say. I'll try again tomorrow...with a different class, probably.

Phantom Legacy: End of Time
I will pay a very large compliment here; while Nightblade has in the past been (I felt at the time) overly critical of at least one of my projects, and the worst parts of me really wanted to find something about Phantom Legacy to justify burning him with a scathing review, there is just nothing to hate about this game. Well, either that or the better angels of my nature have just prevailed.

Seriously, I just stopped after the intro segment, after gaining control of Nero who I assume is the main protagonist. The entire experience was polished and fun, the ominous mood accomplished by the visuals and soundtrack was fantastic, and the story (most of which is a mystery to me, since I never played the game this is a sequel to) is very, very interesting. Apart from nitpicks, like the constant use of "it's" when he means "its" and other minor english errors, my one complaint was that the difficulty of the battles I fought as Slade surprised me, with the exception of the last battle I fought as him, which didn't surprise me at all. I really felt like if Slade was supposed to be like the second or third biggest living badass in the world, he shouldn't have been challenged so much by random monsters. It's not that the fights were too hard, I just feel like for the sake of the story Slade should have been able to cut through Shadar's "aberrations" like a hot knife through butter.

But all and all, this has to go on the short list of RPG Maker games that I'm very, very psyched to play. I'll probably finish the demo some time tomorrow, and then forward NB the rest of my thoughts, but this is a polished, professional, atmospheric RPG with great promise.

Mindflare:
Damn, this game is stylish! It's all about mood and atmosphere, and the mood and atmosphere are excellent. The graphics and music and sounds make this a very, very pleasant game to look at, and the gameplay, while sparse, is more fun than frustrating. I'll reserve judgment until I see how the story pans out, of course, but I am eager to play more of this. Great atmosphere!