SKIE FORTRESS'S PROFILE

Yeah, I don't know for sure if it's cancelled, but I do know that Jimmyly is extraordinarily busy with IRL at the moment. So I can't imagine it will be worked on any time soon.

Because RMN is no country for old men. Not anymore. /cue tumbleweed.

Currently played for a couple hours. The atmosphere and animation is all pretty good. Battle system isn't revolutionary, but it's well balanced and fun for the most part.

Though I will say that Corvus becoming useless once he runs out of MP can be a bit annoying. Also, he doesn't have an normal attack animation. I noticed that when he's confused, he just blanks out when he attacks himself and others. Not sure if it's the same for others as well. Oversight? 8V

It's been interesting playing and comparing the events I'm seeing now to the events I saw last time. As well as the locales and characters and such. I've made it to that colorless forest now, so I'm glad I'm approaching entirely new territory it seems. I'll keep playing and see where it goes.

You've given some plentiful feedback here. Thanks for playing. I do appreciate it!

Now to address all this...

author=Link_2112
Finally got around to playing this. I only did the first map area and I did make it to the end. Barely heh That last fight was pretty intense. I really thought I was going to get game over and bam! My dead hero came back to life :o I didn't know that this would happen since it was the first time I kept fighting with one dead person. It was awesome! Then right after that hero came back, my other hero died, and I really thought it was over...

Haha, yes. That's the feeling I was trying to replicate with this battle system. The constant tension lingering just around the corner. Of course I also want the player to understand what's going on, so...that needs to be addressed.

I can understand what people said about tons of info up front, but it didn't impact the game for me. There should be tutorial battles where you can't lose and every move gets to be used once. It didn't seem fair to only tell me what the special commands did after I used them, and couldn't decide if I wanted to wait. Like his SoulEater(DRK much?) ability. I used it first turn and it was a bust + 10 turn wait for it to be useful again. I almost lost because of that.

Yes, this is a problem. My current plan is to provide visual tutorial information to the player that they can access at their leisure. The only real trouble is the fact that such an approach is basically a custom menu. I'm going to have to work out a layout and materials and text and everything, so it's been on the backburner.

The menu seemed pretty bare, considering how complicated the gameplay is. A help option with lots of info would be good. No equips? No way to see what skills I have learned so far? What's my current max HP? I dunno.

The menu is bare because a lot of standard RPG conventions simply don't exist in SEM. The help option is in planning. Characters don't have equips or items. Being able to reference learned skills though would be something to consider adding though. And Characters are always at Max HP after battle, so there's no point in showing it. Though it can be referenced from the status menu.

I didn't know what the stats were. PRY? Lifeforce, or something. Is that max HP? Maybe I missed something, but something like that should be one of the first things forced into my brain. I didn't understand what the meters were below my faceset in battle.

I thought it was pretty obvious from the status menu. Guess not. I'll add explanations for what each stat is in that aforementioned Help menu. Though I will say that I did explain what the meters in battle were. In the first battle of the first dungeon there was a tutorial explanation. I know I did that much at least. Did the lack of an accompanying visual indicator cause you to ignore it? I'd actually like to know.

I don't like lack of healing. I got 1 shotted pretty early on, and I don't think it was a super hard monster. He did a magic ice attack that hit 3 or 4 times and did 80 plus damage I think. Well, it's in the video. I didn't die much, but I dunno, I just feel a little too helpless without any healing and no items. Maybe it was coming soon.

It's not that there's a lack of healing. Rather, healing is done alternatively. The EX Recover command restores character HP and MP at the cost of one EX. I explained this in the first battle too. You can also heal by way of Focus, and through the use of Elemental Barrier spells.

Oh well, you're not the first the miss all this. I really do need visuals to accompany explanations. Let it be made known now that I'm clearly not good at this tutorial thing, hah-

But I didn't really care for the whole static bg and node mapping. I can appreciate that it's something different, but the immersion isn't there for me. I like to walk around and explore.

Admittedly, SEM was initially a game where you could walk around maps and explore. There was a reason I dropped this however.

That reason is twofold; first was that I was simply not good enough at mapping and having to make piles and piles of maps drained me. Second was that I simply could not make dungeon areas engaging. Sure, you can walk around maps...but then what? I'm not good at making puzzles because lock and key, switch pushing, and block pushing stuff. Standard boring RPG fare. Anything more complicated than that and it simply becomes not possible for me.

Thus I cut out that section and focused on the game's story aspect while allowing the battle system to shine. At least that was my intention. The node maps were just a way to include some gameplay to simulate dungeons and events without having to map.

I know it's not for everyone, but I don't see myself going back to mapping because...it's a huge weakness.

Um, what else, I didn't suffer any interrupts in battle. At least I didn't notice any. I like the combo attack system, but I found the price a little too high. I could do it once or twice before having to recharge or sacrifice HP. Then I'd have to charge for 2 turns to use it once. In the long battle it felt really drawn out, I was often out of resources and had to charge. Something like that might change as you level up, but it felt really steep for a low level thing.

Well, with the Strike Chain system, you're not supposed to spend turn after turn doing full combos. The point is to balance your EP expenditure between multiple skills while raising the hit count. Plus EX Recover in addition to focus softens the blow of EP usage quite a bit. It still boggles my mind that everyone seems to have missed it, but EX Recover is seriously what makes things easier.

So yeah, the video is pending and I dunno if I'd play again. Even though I didn't see much. I'd like to explore the battle system, but I don't like the rest of the game's style enough. Could you make a Boss Rush mode? :D

That's okay, the game is essentially a visual novel at this point. It just happen to have a battle system and some gameplay to pad out the story between scenes. In that respect, it's becoming less of an RPG, but that's okay with me.

I know the game in it's current form isn't for everyone. And that's fine. Not everyone needs to play the game and enjoy every aspect of it. As for Boss rush mode...that's definitely possible. Something like that could be added to the battle arena.

Anyway, thank you for playing. I appreciate the feedback!

So I played this last night. Or rather, I finally remembered to.

- I like the portrait artwork and the various expressions for each character. But like it was said above, the edges are a little jaggy. It didn't really bother me but it's something to point out regardless.

- I enjoyed the character interaction between the twins and Kyran. I found myself chuckling more often than I figured I would. So good job there.

- Unfortunately, while I love the style of combat presented, it's execution was far off the mark. It was slow and clunky. Barely playable. SNES Star Ocean was faster than this :<

- I was also a little disappointed that characters didn't seem to have unique skill animations when using their techs and spells. But I suppose that'd be more work.

- No 8 directional movement in and out of battle? That's a crying shame in an engine above 2k3. That would have made field navigation and combat slightly more bearable. Mostly just combat though!

- The boss battle's events could have been faster. Watching my party members crawl back to specific points really put a massive dent in the pace of the action.

- But then again, all of these speed issues can probably be attributed to RMXP's piddly 30 FPS on top of everything else.

All in all though, I think the game has potential but speed and control issues are really holding it back! I hope you guys work it out somehow to make this project really shine. The character interaction alone entertained me enough to keep playing before I realized that it was over.