WCOUILLARD'S PROFILE

Impressions incoming!

Admittedly, I did not get too far into playing this project before being completely turned off by it, stopping just after reaching Damcyan (I am a little more judgmental of FF fan projects than other projects, I confess), but I was extremely bothered by the following:

• The downright lazy recreations of the FFIV maps. There are literally dozens of tiles missing, like the edges of water tiles. A good example is in the screenshot of the dancer above in Addit's review. It can also be seen above in the screenshot of the throne room. Those carpets should have edges, you know. Those tiles exist. The saving grace here is that Sphere does say in the game's description:
  
  "The maps themselves are similar to, but not exact, replicas of the original maps from the SNES version."
  
  But, personal opinion here... this is akin to saying, "Hey, use my product, even though the other product that came out over 20 years ago is probably a little bit better."
  
  
• Speaking of graphic problems, the sprite style of the character sets do not match the environment at all, and are very poorly animated to boot. A lot of the characters walk as though they have just broken an ankle. If you're making an FF4 clone, it might have been a good idea to at least try to edit actual FF4 sprites to fit the new character designs, or simply use the actual rips. There are instances where the characters are twice as tall as the doorways they are entering. What? This is my biggest issue with the visuals. They don't look like FF4 characters or NPCs. They look like RPG Maker characters and NPCs dumped into FF4's world.
  
  
  
• The encounter system. Oh boy. It is poorly coded, which is probably not Sphere's fault. But, in using it, he or she is ignorant to the problem and accepting of it as a "feature." The problem I'm talking about is that you can still get "randomly" attacked by enemies by standing still long enough! In addition, standing still is the only way to avoid encountering enemies every six steps, regardless of the radar. If you're providing a mini-map to show enemy encounters, shouldn't there at least be a viable way for players to avoid them, if they so choose? Sphere would have been better off using the built-in function of the RPG Maker software to allow players to avoid random encounters altogether if they wanted, either through the use of an options menu or an equippable item.

On a positive note, the changes to the game's plot didn't bother me, and the effort put into cloning FF4's battle events and the game's original cutscenes was admirable. It's a shame the same passion wasn't shown in some other areas of the game in favor of a shorter development period.

I would score it at a moderate 3 out of 5, based only on my impressions of the first few hours. Do not take this as a full review of the entire project. If and when I go back to it and finish playing it, I would submit a lengthier official review.

author=Kiren
I always liked the idea of fighting summons that you can never have :)

There will be a few sprinkled throughout the game. Ozma is one notable example.

Oh, I almost forgot! The digits for a character's HP and MP will change to a different color when they are 100% full, giving the player a visual guide to let them know whether they should heal or not.

Also, the color for MP is a bit dark here, so I made a bit lighter after posting this.

An in-game milestone is awarded for obtaining 100% completion of Maechen's Collections. It's one of the most difficult Milestones to achieve. In fact, a similar achievement in Final Fantasy XIII remains as the only one I haven't yet gotten. ^_^

I'm also happy to say I've fixed the alignment and clearing bugs (they've been fixed for a while but I figure I'd state it since my last post here highlighted those bugs).