SILVIERA'S PROFILE

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.

comment=25695
I just ran through the game, granted I set myself up at lv 99 to do it, and I honestly have to say that I've got no strong feelings about this game one way or the other.

I had to extend my cheating an extra step to fight Samus, I mean, Nara, since my char was at 999 HP, and she was dealing over 900 per hit, which led me to believe that it was an intentional loss. This belief was demolished when the game over screen reared its ugly head.

You made a pretty big error here, namely you are not supposed to be able to reach level 99 at all. I did most of the sidequests (I think) and ended up at level 26 and all of my characters had several thousand hp which made the final boss a breeze.

I try to be somewhat entertaining, so works for me :P

Whether that was its intention or not, the bush has earned my ire.

You don't necessarily have to do puzzles, though that is something I like to see personally. I really like when a game focuses on optional puzzles rather than sticking them in all of the main dungeons. It's pretty annoying to get stuck when you can't figure something out.

As for level design, I guess the main thing you need to worry about is offering more to the player than just killing monsters over and over. Battles were fun, so that's definitely a strong point, but if all you're doing is battling the entire game things start to get a little stale.

You did have a few things, like the timed mission to snag that music box at the beginning of the game, and the stealth sequence later on to capture the Ang..something (there's no way I can remember the name of those mechs). There may have been some other things since I didn't complete 100% of the missions.

Minigames are good, quirks are good (like those random emote mushrooms in the swamp). Basically anything that will make each area of the game stand out as something different than Cave A or Cave B, and even better if you can make your areas stand out against other games. I guess it boils down to trying to be creative, which is pretty crappy advice but it's the best way I can sum things up.

As for the music issue, I think a lot of gamers (including me), are pretty spoiled in that respect. We're used to listening to seasoned composers like Nobuo Uematsu and Kenji Ito. Not to say that an amateur composer can't make something memorable, but I wouldn't worry about it too much if people aren't lavishly praising the epic quality of your music.

One thing about music is that it's largely associative. Chances are if you remember a song from a videogame vividly, you can also recall exactly the scene that accompanied it. It kind of works both ways there, where a powerful scene may lend strength to the song and make it more memorable. This isn't always the case of course, but I just thought I'd mention it as something to think about.

As a final note, impressive work on all those graphics. They'd have fit right at home in those NES era games.

Anyway, that's it for my rambling advice. I don't claim to be an expert (or really anyone who knows anything at all), but I hope at least some of it was slightly helpful.