YELLOW MAGIC'S PROFILE

Thx alot for reviewing this! I'm really happy that almost 10 years later, people still occasionally play the stuff I made.

author=Max McGee
Keep in mind that Focus takes a turn to set up and the party's got to keep the very fragile Lin alive for that turn plus however many turns she flashbangs which isn't always easy because two solid hits from just about any enemy will kill her.

Besides the various buffs here and there, Alexis has a move called Falcon Shield (which can be learned fairly early IIRC) which strengthens all characters defense/magic defense quite a bit for a turn or two. Did you ever try using it?

One of the tricks to balancing games where the players can customize the characters' skills as they wish is that the player might miss out on skills that are greatly important. I think this was definitely an issue for me with To Arms!. In this case for me it looks like it was at least Focus and Multi-Cure that I really should have taken.

I think you're right - it's pretty easy to miss out. However, in that case it's probably best to try and pick skillsets that'd work universally rather than aiming to predict what lies ahead in the next couple of battles...if that makes sense.

To satisfy your curiosity:
In the Kilroy fight I tried to set up as many buffs as I could on everyone to keep them operational. I had Dirk Haste everyone and I had Alexis Strengthen herself and Dirk. I had Tyrell try to keep everyone healed, but he only had Cure, Revive, Shell, Protect, and Prayer. I tried to have him Protect Lin at the start of the fight but after that he was locked down putting out HP fires. I wasted one of Alexis's turns using Cover on herself hoping that she could help tank hits for Lin and Tyrell to keep them alive. I had Lin "work the rotation" of her elemental magic trying to find a weakpoint for Kilroy after I had her use Multi Flashbang a couple times and noticed that it was doing 'NULL' damage off of the scantily clad ice lady and with random targeting I didn't want to risk it being wasted like that. Anyway it was going...not good...until Kilroy used an ability that hit literally dozens of times for about 70 damage each leaving more of my party members dead than I could possibly re-up.

Oh, I see why you found it impossible then: (Battle spoilers ahead)

I also noticed in this battle as in a lot of battles that when I Phoenix-Downed an ally very frequently the enemy would re-kill that ally and/or another ally the next turn, which was very frustrating as again gold was scarce and revival items were rare. That phenomenon is a frustration that can happen in any RPG, though, it's definitely not specific to your game.

Yeah, in hindsight I should have increased the amount of HP recovered by a character when they were revived.

I admit that your knowledge of the game's battle balance is probably much deeper than mine. However, that is almost certainly part of the problem here.

Well, yeah, I made the game. However, interestingly enough, there seem to be strategies players took that even I was not aware existed! NeverSilent is a good example of this apparently, as I'm reading his comments here and am just like "That was a thing???"

If you take nothing else away from this review, definitely be aware that I skipped most enemy encounters because it was possible to skip them, and I felt severely underleveled in subsequent fights. Basically, understand that "forcing" the player to fight can definitely have its benefits.

I think you already know my feelings about this 8) The amount of levelling needed to beat a boss should be entirely up to the player - if they feel they're underpowered they have all the freedom in the world to do something about it. If they can't be bothered and want to do a low-level strategy of something, fair play. We're gonna have to agree to disagree here.

Just a point to add regarding the conversation you two are having (which is pretty damn cool to see, by the way):

Outside of Burn status (because of which Dirk's Ignite exists), I never really intended for player-induced status effects to be more than a bonus. Yes, there was the incentive in the 50% effect chance for the higher-grade element skills, but I wondered whether players would accept this risk trade-off instead of the Multi-Flashbang. Now, funnily enough, I can't help but wonder if NeverSilent understands my battle system more than I do LOL



EDIT: By the way Max:

My only other comment about the story is that I wish that other apsects of the game design

Just curious if you had anything to add to this line?

It's cool - I don't mind the review and score as they are. They made me think a lot about my overall style, so I'd like it to just sit there as a reminder of myself being silly.

And yeah, I didn't change much outside the ending.

Hmm...actually, you've got me thinking about the battles: Namely, wouldn't they be better off as (at least mostly) touch encounters rather than all forced ones?

That way, the player could either choose to battle if they were more fight-oriented or just enjoy the world around them instead, as they pleased.

Ah, it's arrived. Thanks for this! I've already said everything that needed to be said in the main game page regarding the ending, but your views are appreciated. As a general point of interest, I'd like to add that I came up with the general concept (medieval warriors in space) first, then the ending, and then all the mysteries up to the ending.

I'm guessing you enjoyed the battle system (at least somewhat), which is a great success in my book as I spent most of the development time worrying about balance.

author=review
...and you do say, twice in fact.

If by this you meant this message box appeared twice then I'm sure I've had a build mix-up. Embarrassing. Can't do anything but apologise, unfortunately :(