AMERK'S PROFILE

I'm generally not a fan of instant loss on puzzles either. I'm okay with the wrong move taking away a bit of life, but not for an instant end, except maybe in the puzzle where you have to not make noise. The ice puzzle, though, maybe just make it take a portion of your party's HP (like 10% each time you hit a spike).

author=kory_toombs
He should have thought ahead and used a different computer at a different ip address. Not only is it low, but not well thought out. I was at least use a public computer at a library or internet café to make sure the ip address couldn't be matched.

I think it's a "she", at least that was what she claimed over at RRR before being banned for the exact same thing. She never learns.

I'll need to grab the new download later, when I have a chance. In any case, I took a break after getting through Avishun, and now playing again and on my way to Balfur City.

So far, so good. Dungeons are quite long, at times quite frustrating, and other times quite entertaining. I find they encourage me to take my time and explore, grinding in the process, and I usually will wipe out a segment of the dungeon, go back to town and restock, and then tackle the next segment.

Personally, I found the Path of the Gods to be both great and extremely frustrating (especially the last area with the holes). Navigating in the pitch black is gruelling, to say the least. At least in the last area you only have to tackle the dark only if you want all the treasures, and can avoid this by going through the thorns (spikes?) instead, although that means you miss most of the treasures around this area.

The old Avishun ruins was quite fun. My only concern is for tone-deaf people who may not be able to figure out the last puzzle.

I wound up dying the first time on the trio of dragons at Dragon's Nest, but then went back and purchased the Topaz rings, and had no trouble at all at that point. Up to this point, very little strategy was needed other than to spam Cleave and fire attacks, so this change in strategy was refreshing. Also, if anybody is still struggling, having Ivy's Wild Swing attack and then raising her Attack power really helps with those dragons.

Finally, have you considered a walkthrough guide for your game? Even the most well known commercial rpg's need walkthroughs more often than not, and would help for some of the more complicated puzzles.

I really can't say either way. Like I said, I pushed through it, and now I'm invested enough to continue. However, having the switches and the doors together on that final puzzle (without being divided by the water) would probably make it less cumbersome. That way, if people open the wrong door, they don't have to go back a couple screens.

I guess it ultimately depends on how many (like me) have pushed through it enough, and how many have given up. Personally, it may not be a big enough deal to worry about for this game, and just something to take away from it as a "lesson learned" for future projects. But if you are getting a lot of complaints about it (not just from here, but from other sites as well) you may want to change it up.

The very annoying first dungeon nearly caused me to give up in the vain hope that the game would improve. Sluggish, I lingered on, and so far I'm glad I did. I've played two hours non-stop, and now have entered the forest.

So my current thoughts on this so far (will wait on an actual review until I've finished the game):

Quite intriguing of a story, well written, and unique. The game has a sort of 8 bit / 16 bit charm, which would have probably been improved upon if you had used more retro style resources. The audio is quite good. I'm not sure if they're custom or borrowed, but the fact that I can't identify the tracks (so far) makes them stand out more. The story really drives the game more so than anything else.

The downside is the mapping could use a lot of work. It's not terrible, just rather plain. The upside is it's still easy to tell where to go, so it's not like there was zero thought put into it. The battles are a bit hack n' slash for the most part. Again, this isn't really a bad thing, just that the two boss fights so far didn't really have much strategy. But the big letdown is that first dungeon. Outside of it, it's a pretty good game.

My advice:

If you must make any changes, make the first dungeon less tedious. Assuming there's plenty of others like me who didn't enjoy the first dungeon for being so tedious, there could be that many people missing out on an otherwise great game, especially if they decided not to stick with it as long as I have.

Question:

What do I do with all those animal parts? I'm thinking they're supposed to be sold, but I wanted to check before doing that and finding out they're needed for some sort of crafting later on.