SHADOWBLADE'S PROFILE

Outstanding fanart. And I agree with WIP, Robin Tanjewel looks especially great. Glad to know you'll probably do all the main characters, I can't wait to see how they'll turn out.

Oh, and... would Tristan Ilnoir count as a main character? ;)

Indeed.

Smiley <-- me smiling

Thanks so much for this.

And I think this very thread shows that Kinetic Cipher might be more famous and loved than some people think. Now if only that could convince you to actually finish KC(A)... :P

author=ZPE link=topic=3785.msg75941#msg75941 date=1242845191
Is grinding not a skill? I think people are just jealous they don't possess the patience and determination of other players and paint a game like Pokemon* over with luck.

*Rare candies not included.

Pure grinding (as in spending hours slaughtering hordes of monsters) rarely takes "skill", though, does it? Most of the time these monsters are just weak meatbags who don't pose a real threat, and the only "challenge" lies in being very patient so that you don't die of boredom. Spending days/weeks doing the same thing over and over isn't very appealing to me. I find games who offer a (mostly) constant challenge to be a lot more enjoyable. In Phylomortis : Avant-Garde (yeah, again ;)), levelling was fun because of the battle system : the monsters were always tough to beat, so I never got bored, and because the monster groups were randomized (you never knew what you were going to face), I had to come up with new tactics many times.

As for finding super powerful hidden items, well, that depends on how it's done, and I think The Way could have done it better.

This is true but considering the Way is perhaps the most popular RPG Maker game, this is doubly true of all the games out there that are genuinely underappreciated.

YES

author=WIP link=topic=3785.msg75748#msg75748 date=1242766162
but the battles and plunges just dragged it down.

Mind you, I love The Way, but I have to agree with you on this. Both the "regular" fights and the plunges are poorly balanced, and it makes me wonder why Lun even bothered making monster encounters at all (he himself admitted that he doesn't focus on combat, so why have so much of it?). Success depends almost solely on two things :

1) Whether you're an experienced RPG player who loves to fully explore every place and run into walls to find secret passages and other stuff like that. If so, then you can be sure you will find almost every stat-boosting item, and most of the game will be ridiculously easy. If not, then you'll have lots of trouble winning the hardest fights, and you may not even be able to handle some of the "mandatory" monster fights in Ep.6.

2) Luck. Plunges are mainly about Luck and stats rather than skill. The Blade Arts are virtually the only thing that forces you to use a tiny bit of strategy, and even then most plunges are heavily randomized.

There are a few fights that can be pretty enjoyable, like Gharon and the Shadow Plungers, but most of the time the fights are either boring, easy slugfests or boring, unwinnable slugfests. A pity, because both the sword aura system and the plunge CBS had a lot of potential.

Fortunately, there's more than just combat when it comes to gameplay, and The Way has quite a few cool puzzles and minigames, and Ep.6 has some really neat subquests.

Lun's an intensely thoughtful person.

Yes.

He doesn't like to make careless statements.

Agreed. This is the first time I've seen him talk that much, actually.

And he doesn't live on an island fortress.

His forums are his fortress. Seriously, though, I do think you deserve some congratulations on interviewing this legend of a designer. And thanks! :)

Well you should know better than to make promises to mysterious crazy women that you meet at haunted hotels

That makes sense... ;D



What's with the video tape, by the way? Did it originally serve a purpose, or did you just make it a red herring because you felt like it? ;)