NIGHTBLADE'S PROFILE

Sorry, but it's set that way for a reason. To put it very simply.

Slower text speed - Regular Talking

Slowest text speed (Rare) - kind of a slow, angry tone

Fast text speed - Yelling, or someone rambling about very very fast.

A queue I took from Velsarbor... And Ace Attorney.

author=Skie Fortress link=topic=2010.msg33906#msg33906 date=1222323625
Ah, I see. Well thanks for the criticism everyone. As someone said, I don't think I will be changing anything regarding the story and writing, I will fix the technical issues and put in some forced tutorials. On the issue of the portraits, I'll see if I can get some basic expressions done.

The rest of this I can only take away and apply to my next effort.

Thanks for your opinions so far.

And don't stop playing!

You can get away with not having expressions if the characters original art wasn't so... happy I guess. Though personally; I didn't have a huge problem. Neutral character expressions would have made a good placeholder.

And don't worry, I'll give it another shot once I'm ready for more RM. I gave hellion a fair chance, and I'll be doing the same for all games I played.

The game really did have a lot of excellent things do, I like the enemy's special attacks, as did I the directional attacks.

I'll copy and paste what I wrote in the discussion thread. Please don't take offense. I know it hurts a bit seeing people talk this way about something you worked so hard on.




While I'm well aware of the nature of the game ( A short side story); I cannot say this is as good as I thought it would be. The game is heavily hindered by really bad pacing, odd dialog, and a ton of custom systems thrown at you all at once.

It's a real shame, because I can tell a great deal of hard work went into the game; but things are just... way too rough.


As far as the pacing is concerned, you're introduced to a lot of characters in a big hurry, the transitions between scenes are a bit clunky, and the actual cutscenes themselves don't exactly exude the same effort that was put into the battle system and character art.

The battle system has a lot of neat ideas. The ATB doesn't move at a snails pace and the basic attack system is really quite good. The option to have a high, medium and low attack has the potential for some really interesting battles. Unfortunately; during the short bit I played I noticed no difference between the three. There's a bit of a "limit break" like system in the game which worked without too much issue; but again I must say that it's all too much. You have a bunch of stuff thrown into the game's battle system with not even so much as a battle tutorial to guide you.

I haven't gotten very far, so I can't comment on the characters too much; but the dialog itself struck me as something out of a bad anime dubbing. A classic anime pitfall that should be avoided (IMO) is the super secret special attack that the user must explain in detail right after using it.


All in all, this game has the frame work for something pretty good; but it tries to do far too much, far too fast. I realize you're not going to be going back and changing anything; but you might want to take this into account for your next game. try to slow things down just a bit.

I would have been great if we were able to get to know all of the characters (including the ailing father) a bit before the whole sickly death bed scene. That way; the scene would have actually had some effect on the player. As it stands now, the game tosses you into this tragic scene; but they are given no reason to even care.

Sorry to say this, but Love and War is a great example of a home town with a lot of life in it. It's graphics aren't nearly as good as the stuff contained in your game, but I recommend you give it a look; both for reference, and for enjoyment - as it's a fantastic game.

Sacred Earth: Bonds


While I'm well aware of the nature of the game ( A short side story); I cannot say this is as good as I thought it would be. The game is heavily hindered by really bad pacing, odd dialog, and a ton of custom systems thrown at you all at once.

It's a real shame, because I can tell a great deal of hard work went into the game; but things are just... way too rough.


As far as the pacing is concerned, you're introduced to a lot of characters in a big hurry, the transitions between scenes are a bit clunky, and the actual cutscenes themselves don't exactly exude the same effort that was put into the battle system and character art.

The battle system has a lot of neat ideas. The ATB doesn't move at a snails pace and the basic attack system is really quite good. The option to have a high, medium and low attack has the potential for some really interesting battles. Unfortunately; during the short bit I played I noticed no difference between the three. There's a bit of a "limit break" like system in the game which worked without too much issue; but again I must say that it's all too much. You have a bunch of stuff thrown into the game's battle system with not even so much as a battle tutorial to guide you.

I haven't gotten very far, so I can't comment on the characters too much; but the dialog itself struck me as something out of a bad anime dubbing. A classic anime pitfall that should be avoided (IMO) is the super secret special attack that the user must explain in detail right after using it.


All in all, this game has the frame work for something pretty good; but it tries to do far too much, far too fast. I realize you're not going to be going back and changing anything; but you might want to take this into account for your next game. try to slow things down just a bit.

I would have been great if we were able to get to know all of the characters (including the ailing father) a bit before the whole sickly death bed scene. That way; the scene would have actually had some effect on the player. As it stands now, the game tosses you into this tragic scene; but they are given no reason to even care.

Sorry to say this, but Love and War is a great example of a home town with a lot of life in it. It's graphics aren't nearly as good as the stuff contained in your game, but I recommend you give it a look; both for reference, and for enjoyment - as it's a fantastic game.

Next: 1873

author=Max McGee link=topic=2017.msg33809#msg33809 date=1222298476
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 dialogue or the 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? 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 like this guy, because he reminds me of myself; only slightly less mean. I don't know, personally; I like the art work. (Despite it's popular to hate anime aesthetic.)

He brings up a few good points, but the menu thing is unfair since a patch fix was released for it. If you'd like, I could upload the patch for you. I still have it on my desktop.