WHEELMANZERO'S PROFILE

Danger: Incoming Wall of Text!


Man oh man, where to even begin with this awesome post? I guess I'll kick things off by thanking you for playing the game and sharing your thoughts. Hearing stuff like this really does make a difference in how I approach things. What's that? I say that every time? So what, I don't know what else to say, alright?! Wait, did I use that joke already? Nevermind, let's just get to it!

I certainly don't claim to be an expert on story writing or game design, but I do know what I like. I basically tailor made this game to suit my own personal tastes, with a battle system I enjoyed and characters that were fun to write. After all, I had originally never planned on releasing this game to the public, and made it only for myself. It turns out a lot of other people share my tastes as well, so things really worked out in the end.

Ah yes, the summons. This is far from the first time I've heard this particular point made, but you might be happy to know I've been working on a solution. While the summons were never really meant to be on par with your overpowered group of dastardly dark mages, they were meant to play specific roles. Draconus for AOE fire attacks, Lanith for debuffing men and healing, the Phoenix for HP regen and revival, ect. I've been tweaking their movesets so that they're far more adept at their individual roles right off the bat, and generally more fun to use.

Before I go any further I'd like to share the approach I usually take when designing characters' movesets. I personally find characters more fun to use when they have a specific skill that is easy to use while being fairly effective in its purpose. A "signature move" if you will. To use an example, Damien's signature move would be Puppet Dance, while Pandora's would be Shadow Bolt. Each character needs a move they can fire off almost constantly without wasting too many turns gathering resources for it. If a character has too many moves that require a charge time without being able to do something useful in the meantime, they end up feeling clunky and not as fluid.

I realized this was a problem with a few summons like Lanith, in that their signature moves either require too much buildup or are simply not that useful. Using Lanith as an example, I've decided to eliminate the cost for Soul Stealing Kiss, so that she can use it without gathering TP first. In fact, it now actually restores TP so that it can be used to fuel her other physical skills. Another player had mentioned that they were disappointed that the Chimera's final form lost its thunder spell, which weakened its combo potential with a certain other character. I happened to agree, so I've given that particular summon a new thunder spell as its signature move, whereas its other moves take a much larger amount of resources to use in exchange for increased damage.

Another issue that was brought to my attention is the fact that gold is relatively hard to come by. I've remedied this by giving monsters drops. Whereas only human enemies and bosses dropped gold before, now most enemies have a good chance of leaving behind something you can trade for gold. This will make it a lot easier to buy demon's draughts in bulk, allowing you to level your summons and obtain their full movesets without having to grind too much.

I guess what I'm trying to say with this long winded term paper of a post is that I've given summons more useful skills in order to make them more enjoyable to use. I had heard that some people were disappointed that certain summons didn't have evolutions, so I've given one to the Hornet Queen and Hydra Ralfessia, while the Phoenix has a new pseudo transformation. I've also taken the liberty of adding a completely new summon that's capable of evolving.

So yeah! Hopefully these new and improved summons will make collecting them again worth the effort. Thanks again for the comment and the kind words. If you decide to go messing around with rpg maker I'll gladly give you my support.