NINES'S PROFILE

Looks sexy! Subscribed.

This game piqued my interest for some reason, so I gave it a shot. For a first attempt, I'd have to say it's not too bad at all (it beats the crap out of my first RM game, at least). It definately need a lot of improvement, but it's a good start. Keep it up!

There were lots of little things that I really liked here; but also a lot of little things that really turned me off. The little bits of interactive environment (like the vanity in the bedroom, for example) were nice touches, but there just needs to be more of it to keep the player wanting to explore and check things out.

A few of the lines of dialog were great and made me laugh ("The school will suck out our souls! We must flee!" was my personal favorite), but at times it just didn't make sense (when Diana accuses Brian of lying about being in a hurry because he's running late for something...sounds like a perfectly good excuse to me...).

I like where you're going with the story. The shifting-realities slant, while not the most original concept, is pulled off pretty well here (and that's what counts in my book). The little scene in the school actually made me go whoa...

The mapping definately needs a LOT of work. One of my big peeves is having open edges on maps that don't go anywhere. The crossroads south of the first town should probably just not be there unless you plan on putting transitions on ALL the roads leading to different areas. There were also a few places where I encountered invisible walls, especially in Diana's house, where there seems to be a mini-maze of them on the left end of the living room. Over-all though I like the style you're going for, and it has potential. I think you just need to work on your technique (which will come with experience).

The battles were also not so great. The Daggers need to be beefed up a lot. Most of the time, I just one-hitted all of them before they were able to inflict more than 1-2 hits on my characters, and they seemed to do no damage at all to Brian. Yeah, monsters in the beginning of a game should be fairly easy to kill, but they should provide at least a little bit of a challenge to make it interesting. Because they were so easy, I was really thrown off by the monsters in the cave. I made the mistake of using the same strategy for them (mash C) and got my ass kicked, which sucked because there's no revival items/skills (unless Kitty has something...I wouldn't know because he got one-hitted on the first encounter with him in the party).

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Cosmetic change: Should I change the Deralius' Diana's default name to something else?

No. That would be confusing, as the player might mistake the two Dianas as actually being two different characters. But that might be what you're going for...Mulholland Drive, anyone?