SILVIERA'S PROFILE

Chaos has a good start there. Aside from that certain stats need to be defined (still no idea what Control is) either through a description in the intro (make it optional so that players can skip it if they've played before) and/or including a game manual. This is pretty standard stuff when you're using non standard statistic names and isn't a bad idea to include in any game if you expect to have players that are not familiar with RPGs.

DE: Ignoring the fact that you've already played this game and obviously know those things to be true (really who looks at Control and immediately thinks speed? When you start the game you don't even know how many stats there are! You don't know if there's a speed stat at all!) the fact is that confusion on the part of 'any' player is a bad thing even if you happen to somehow know exactly what the creator means from a vague description.

As for Megidolaon, in SMT can you can press a button to see a detailed description of every skill from the status menu or during combat. Esoteric terms need explicit descriptions.

You stamp on creators for submitting their best work in earnest good faith, and then tear their efforts apart to teach them a lesson. All that is encouraged by the way these reviews are written is that I should give up.

Since so much of this game is focused on the combat I cannot give this project in its current form a very good score. But that does not mean I think it is unsalvageable, not by any means. With a little more work on combat, such as making use of the customization options, this project could be a lot more fun one day, and I would very much like to see it developed further.

You seem to block out some important parts when you read a review. Really the part that saddens me the most is you don't see negative reviews as an opportunity to improve even when the flaws are described in great detail. It's possible that a negative review would be completely useless but this is certainly not one of them, there are some very obvious changes you could make to vastly improve the game based on his feedback.

Because this = "the protagonist in their ordinary world"?

I was not addressing that part, just the comparison to Starseed's intro. That brief moment of character introduction makes all the difference. Anyway even Sol stated that you didn't have to adhere to some specific structure, but I agree that paragraph probably should have been describing problems with character development in the game rather than describing a specific method which probably wouldn't work for this type of story.

Edit:

I'd argue that the player's initial confusiuon mirrors the confusion the main character is feeling and, as such, it should be quite easy to empathise with them - if not sympathise. Then again, I'm a shoddy writer, so... :)

The main issue is the player is never given any reason to care about Claudia to begin with so her confusion becomes annoying for the player (at least to me). Doesn't really help that her personality is inconsistent and she's pretty unlikeable.

Also for the record your own writing is quite competent, you were able to make me care about your cast within the first few minutes. Probably shouldn't discuss that too much here though :P.

I just don't understand...did Edchuy play a different version of the game than you?

I mean he didn't give effusive praise or anything but he at least managed to grok the strengths/weaknesses/unique abilities of the seven available classes and four available weapon types.

I think I can clear this part up for you. Let me quote one of your class descriptions as written in the game itself.

"Omega Configuration grants the best battery management and Control out of all Celestial Configurations. Omegas can use their innate pyrokinetic abilities on a vehicular scale from a Jackhammer."

Now when I first read this, I had absolutely no idea what any of this meant. We do not see the status screen and never see combat before this choice is given. A person who's never seen this before has no idea that battery power equals mp and even after playing I still have no idea what Control is. Even the term Jackhammer is only stated a single time and it's attached to a long model type so it's easy to miss entirely. I'm sure it all made sense to you when you were writing it but class selection is literally the first thing the player does after the info dump of an intro. As far as Edchuy goes, he played the game 7 times so obviously he's going to be able to understand the difference between the classes.

They effect skills as well. This is why I was so mystified by parts of his review. It almost seems like he played a broken build of the game that was not the one I meant to release. Also if you played ANY game with seven classes how could you unequivocally say the ENTIRE GAME'S balance was broken without trying any of the other six classes?

The version I played only had a single piece of equipment that effected skills. Specifically a shoulder cannon that was just 'hit harder' and had no effect on the flow of combat. I should also note it's very easy to miss this item. It's never really clear what you can interact with and I'm sure I missed some gear myself. Throughout the short demo the only choice I had was which weapon to equip and even this didn't effect combat in any significant way. I don't think it's unreasonable for a reviewer to just play a single class. For the record I played Omega and I found the combat equally boring. The main issue with it is that you have a single character with a very limited list of commands fighting enemies that all fight in the exact same way (attack, heal, attack, heal). No class selection is going to make that engaging. On a side note I found it odd that a giant machine of destruction basically not only had to recover between every single skirmish but frequently had to heal several times during battle. That alone makes combat extremely tedious.

AUXILIARY BACKPACK (you get a choice of several during the tutorial)

Maybe you did upload the wrong version. I sure didn't get any backpacks in the tutorial nor did I find them anywhere else. I did play this a few days ago so ignore this if you've updated recently. The other things you listed did work as intended though having that didn't really feel like any significant customization at all. Nearly every slot was just utilized to bump up attack or defensive values which probably could have been done with 1/3 of the slots with the exact same effect.

I agree with this review for the most part, although I thought the level design was a bit worse (the save point mechanics, walk speed, and lack of interactivity were big issues for me). Anyway I don't think this game is a complete loss but it needs some serious work before it will be playable.

Basically, DE thanks for the encouragement. Your basic message, that BloodMachine should kick more ass...I hear. And I approve.

Sol suggested this in his review if you missed it. You might find more useful information contained within if you read it carefully before exploding.