ARGH'S PROFILE

Hi, late to the party.

I think I agree with most of the other commentators; the mechanics were fun, but the game was very poorly balanced. The entire spire was incredibly easy; regular encounters were usually over within 2 rounds, and I was often shocked and disappointed by how quickly bosses died. Even with the double-bosses in the ice and magic sections, I was like, "Oh I get it, that was the easy fakeout boss and this will be the real challenge oh I've already won." In particular, Ooze vastly outpaced everyone else once he got his combo forms -- I thought dragon form was overpowered when I was oneshotting every encounter with Dragon Breath, then I switched to mystic plant and woah, five-digit damage! Elsa and Alma couldn't hold a candle to that. I beat the final bosses with two shots of Maelstrom and nothing else. Am I correct in assuming your battle system uses subtractive or asymptotic defense? Small changes in attack and defense stats made worlds of difference, and I think that's probably the reason why Ooze is so powerful, since his combo forms start with very high offensive stats.

Then I had the audacity to venture into the optional dungeons and the enemies wiped the floor with me. Even once I had enough health to avoid being destroyed in the first turn, I was completely dependent on Ooze to kill them, because everyone else was doing about one-fifth the damage. There's just too big of a power gap between the tunnel enemies and the lake enemies, you can't really level up in a nice smooth curve. The superbosses were still pretty easy, though.



A few bugs, also: the tunnel and mountain rest spots don't actually heal you, Ezekiel's defense spell only grants 1 stack of Protect instead of 5, Alma gets inspiration for Ooze's special attacks after the restaurant scene instead of from the tunnel plant, and Ooze's mystic form only gets 3 skills instead of 4 (unless that's intentional?). Typos, too: most of Ooze's equipment gives different stat boosts than what's stated (the mask, in particular, seems to give twice the MAT), and Alma's Metal Plate skills mention the Desert Rose. (And, nitpicky, but "father" is incorrectly capitalized most of the time; when used in place of a name, as in "But Father told me to do X," it's supposed to be capitalized.)

Story-wise I thought this was pretty good. The characters play off each other really well, and I enjoyed their banter plus Ooze's adorable naivete. It seems like a lot of people hated the NPC dialogue, but I didn't; it wasn't anything spectacular, but it did its job, especially in establishing the cultural attitudes of the town. And I actually disagree that the characters are totally static; I felt we got to see their depths and facets through stuff like the inn scenes. I liked Elsa in particular -- I want to play Grumpy Knight to see her origin story now. Preston and Beatrice were pretty meh, though. That's a natural consequence of their short screentime, of course, but I just find it really hard to care about bumbling ineffectual villains in general. If the heroes aren't impressed by them or whatever threat they're theoretically presenting, why should I be? The dramatic ~dark shadowy villainy~ scenes felt like they were building up to something...more, I guess. Is this like an Ezekiel thing where they're featured in another Arum game? Or do you plan to have them show up later?



There was the general sense of being lost and confused that I usually get with Arum games, but greater lore doesn't seem necessary to understand the plot so it was okay. I imagine someone who didn't play In Search of Immortality would be pretty confused, though, especially about Ezekiel.

Oh, and, uh...personally, I cringed at the scene where Elsa said Ooze was male. There's no point to it other than reinforcing the annoying idea that male = default. It's an infantile formless blob monster, how is that more masculine than feminine? If the characters just passively referred to him with male pronouns that would be one thing, but making a point of it is just extremely awkward.

I am sorry that my, at times lewd, humor has offended you.

I think joking about a man raping his daughter goes a bit farther than just "lewd" humor. If that's the kind of thing you want to make then fine, but at least be honest about it, please.

author=JosephSeraph
i haven't played this (yet) (mainly because it's 700mb AND the download broke) but its not like the mere fact it talks about sex makes it a porn game.

It does if it has no bearing on the plot and only exists to titillate viewers. I understand there are nuances to this -- A Song of Ice and Fire is one of my favorite book series, after all -- but I think stuff like this falls squarely in the latter category. Relevant to that...

The game at is core is the age old story of good vs evil.

Are the nearly-naked and objectified women in the game vitally important to that story, or would the plot be fundamentally unchanged if they all had clothes?

THIS GAME CONTAINS ADULT CONTENT

tale of a young boy

Uh.

This looks interesting but I reeeeaaly do not want to get bombarded with surprise pedophilia and gratuitous porn. (The anime fan's dilemma...) Can you clarify what's potentially objectionable about the game?

Oh hey, I just realized something: how does the railway station connect to the chasm? It's miles to the north of the mine!