BOOS405'S PROFILE

author=thesacredlobo

But, by the sound of pianotm review about the 1000 years ago war, it seems there a few parts of the game that weren't well thought-out.

Oddly enough they do explain why humans have fought so many wars with the dragons over the years. The reason for this is because who ever can gain control of most of the dragons will become the Dragon God and have the ability to usurp Aura and become the supreme god that rules over all of creation in the game's universe. In order to prevent this people have waged war on the dragons time and time again in order to make sure there would never be enough dragons around for anyone person to control in order to meet the requirements for this power.

Still it sounds like it has a few charms and character dialogue is a strong point. Is that all correct?

The character bits are rather good early on, but the game really starts to hit the drag shoot after a while. So much so, that I actually had one person tell me that they couldn't even watch my Let's Play for this game anymore.

And this is a really long game too. I'm over 75 parts into this game at this point and I'm still not done. And each of those episodes is generally between 20 to 30 minutes in length.

And the game has two dumb stats. You don't actually get any benefit from raising your mind or defense in this game.

Oh I see, that does sound better thought out then my first impression. Still I'd need to see it in the game itself to know if it played out good. Did you think the reasons were played out well?

Sounds like the game could do with more work with both mechanics and at least Siddon's character arc development, from the impression I'm getting it sounds like it has more cons than pros overall, but still has some good points, which is good at least.

I do not like the sound of heavy amounts of backtracking though, is it really bad in that aspect?

The Aquarium thing reminds me of Animal Crossing, but it's really cool to see it in an RPG Maker game!

All those new features sound good, hope they turn out well when the game's finished! Best of luck with that. :)

author=Milennin
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Hey Milennin, thank you very much for responding, sharing your advice your views and everything else. I'm going to try a be a lot clearer with my opinion in my response to you.

My issues was more with the balance of the game with many combinations of different classes I tried. By balance I mean the damage formulas of healing, of combat skills and damage output they did, and of the amount of damage they'd receive from the enemies.

And I based that based on the visual HP gauges I saw and HP bars on the actors. I didn't check exact numbers but could tell roughly it was not balanced with those formulas.

That was the main issue I had. I understand you want each battle to be challenging and it's own fight, forgot to mention that in the review, but that idea is fine and would work well with the short type of game you have, if it was not for those balance issues again.

You said even with bad combinations you can clear the game? Well can you in the way I tried, where I purposely kept fighting more ghosts in the town? Or skipping that, then purposely fighting the next bunch of enemies in the grassy areas? Because I couldn't see a way during my first four playthroughs with v3.01.

In my first playthrough, picking classes at random 2 different times resulted in a game over if I tried to fight a ghost of three twice. 2 times when I thought I was picking better strategy (Assassin, Warrior, Cleric) and (Assassin, Warlock, Mage) I still couldn't beat the game trying to fight three ghosts twice. I then picked similar combinations and skipped the first lot of ghosts then tried the ones in the grassy area and still got game over.

You said the Warrior and Cleric is a good combination? Yes, I admit it is a lot better when you have the Alchemist and those two, as that was even the combination I had when I first beat the game, but otherwise just the Warrior and Cleric with let's say the Assassin, or perhaps the Warlock? I don't see a way it's still good with those two? Yes the Warrior can counter attack a turn while the Cleric keeps focus on healing, and in theory again it's a good combination, but it's not enough against two battles of three ghosts in a row if the third party member can't restore the MP enough. I remember that's how I felt at the time.

I also would like to point out now as well, during one of my playthroughs of the game I started the game with the Warrior locked in a cell. After getting out to the cell (Liked the eventing you did there, I mean how you had to get out, it was simple but a fun idea!) next to him was the Cleric, and the narrative dialogue I was given suggested it wasn't possible to get her out. I tried and couldn't see a way, so if I'm right there it's possible to start the game with the Warrior and have it impossible to add the Cleric to party.

If the Warrior and Cleric was always meant to be a good combination, it's not exactly good game design in my opinion that the player can sometimes not pick it.

Ah, well I didn't use Retribution the first time I had a Paladin. Have now since reading your comment. I did work out and realize some classes had skills that changed into other skills, but I never thought of using the one required on the Paladin. That first skill in and of itself did not look useful to me, increasing damage by 25% when I was already losing too much damage each turn. So I didn't use it. I suppose the Paladin does have an extra combat skill then, but it requires the Paladin to have a good amount of health left for it to have use and that's not always the case, you can start a second battle against three ghosts and not have enough to cope with 25% extra damage on top if it gets hit. At least that was what it was like for me. sometimes


Where I said "classes with weak combat skills", I could have written that better. I meant after using a powerful move, the other options are very weak. I'd agree that other skills should be less powerful than the strongest skill you get, of course, but here they are just too weak. Here are some examples that I found through my first few playthroughs.

1. The Mage has a strong water skill, add that with the Rock On buff and it does a good amount of damage. I don't see other combat skills here, though, and attack doesn't deal enough damage.
2. Paladin I've explained already. Retribution does make a huge difference though, but even then you can run into the problem I mentioned above, that if the Paladin isn't at a high amount of health it can get KO'd before using the other combat skill.
3. Cleric has a good skill that deals more damage after recovering self or other allies a bit, but otherwise I don't see other combat skills. I know the Cleric is a class that is meant to have less skills, but in this case healing needs to do a little more and some buffs might've been good. Halving the damage of the enemy sounds great, but that alone wasn't enough when you have another 2 enemies attacking with higher damage.
4. A powerful kill that kills the Berserker the next turn? How are you meant to revive him, or if not, why would the skill be good idea? Now he does have another skill that increases damage but it reduces the HP too much against the attacks it can get hit with. So again, a useful combat skill here without a disadvantage would be useful.
5. Assassin with Slice and Opportunist is good, so is Backstab. The problem is even with that combination it can possible KO a single ghost but then your stuck for a long while, as it costs 8MP to use Backstab, the other 6MP, and the first takes two turns to work as well. So you can't do much after your first KO and there are still two other enemies without Alchemist, Warrior or Mage.
6. Warlock. Bloodbath is useful, with Assassin it's great, but it's still not enough to take down the enemy. Again it's 8MP and you don't have other combat skills worth using while your waiting for MP to return.

My biggest problem here is 1. It takes too many turns for the KO of three ghosts against the MP pool the characters have, and on top trying to take out charge and the other state they do attacks.

2. Bleed and Poison do very little to the ghosts and the second bunch of enemies. I don't see the use of them, they are too weak as they are, again just a balance issue not an issue with these particular skills themselves, but they count as weak skills as they are at the moment.


About the 50% Heal.

I didn't realize properly that nearly every class had it on skill 2 specifically, but I did realize most classes could restore some HP with certain skills that they only gained when using other skills.

This wasn't explained in the manual though? I think? Is it explained somewhere in the game that I've missed? It would be very useful to tell the players there second skill can be used once and then it would change into a different second skill that can heal 50% HP. There is nothing in any of the second skill descriptions that even remotely suggest that is possible right now. You could add an icon or a word next to the skill for the player to know that's a skill that can be swapped with a 50% HP one.

Even with what you're telling me now though, the 50% HP healing would require 2 turns. Yes that is very useful, but if I went back to the game now knowing this and utilize it the best I could I'd guess it would still not be enough. Thinking here, not when you have to keep an eye on the two extra states the enemy gains that greatly increases it's damage output if you are not careful and able to take the stats off in time.

But yes, knowing that now is a bigger help. Was that stated in the game somewhere, because I didn't see it in the manual?

I said full recovery as an example because the amount between two three ghost fights in town was not enough with the first 4 class combinations I had. It just wasn't working.

I felt with the Warlock character, on two of the 4 playthroughs I had, that the Minion Imp was too weak. I did use Immortal Bones and found it was a little handy for me, but the Imp remained weak and would die the next turn. So I thought I might as well use it up to heal the Warlock that very next turn, if the Warlock isn't focused on other game mechanic changes. I remember when doing that the Warlock still died soon later and the game remained unbalanced for me during those 2 playthroughs.

I did though found Mage more useful that either Assassin or Warlock separately.

With the Angel Strike example, I just felt it was too limited. You don't want strong skills spammed every turn, yes, but they have no other combat skills and attack does nearly nothing. So in that situation being the only combat skill available for the Cleric it is too limited.

Actually Slice deals no damage the first turn while Attack in two turns can deal about 3-4 damage. In two turns the Bleed DoT effect is 3 damage from a ghost. So Attack can potential deal a little more than Slice. Both options are still very weak when you are fighting three ghosts twice in a row, and they're the only none-mp costing skills for the assassin. During my first few playthroughs I didn't find 3MP enough.

Now lastly, onto the list of things I said I think could improve the game.

1. Is it still meant to be 15-30 minutes if you decided to fight even a few of the other enemies in each area along the way? And what if you want to fight them all? I think both those options would make the game longer than 30 minutes.

I don't understand why not add a save option. That way anyone can pick up a game and come back to it later, even even even if it became 30 minutes I would still highly recommend a save feature.

Autosave works too, I know there used to be a plugin for it in MV but I don't think it still works on the newer version of MV. If you can't have autosave though, I would recommend save. I don't see any cons against it.

2. I don't think all new players would find it easy to beat the way it is right now, depending what class combinations they end up with. And I say that from my experience.

For some, sure it could be easy if you end up with Warrior, Mage and Alchemist for example, as that can be a great help, in fact Alchemist probably is the best of them alone for it's MP ability.

I guess I can say when you have Alchemist it balances a lot better but when you don't it doesn't. So I can see a lot of players picking bad combinations at random and some of them getting game over with the game in it's current state. My opinion on that then remains the same, that it could do with more balance.

3. If you gave them a bit of a description of what each class can do, like the profile description you have after you add one, then it can make a difference to the players. I do strongly recommend letting them pick and choose classes. But, if the first remained random, you do give the option to let the player pick the second two, so making it easier for them to know which class is which would remove a unknown factor from the game. I still think having the player pick there own classes over having random ones is better, I think more players would enjoy that then having to be forced to go a certain route, so I personally still view this as a note worthy way to improve the game further.

4. Ah ok. I do agree with you that just adding the items won't make the game better. But I think with little effort a few treasure chests would be fun and some items that have advantages to be used would make it more fun, definitely. It can always been fun to find items or gain them as rewards and then they can aid and help out more in some battles, making some of them a bit easier but as a result of gaining a reward. That can leave a great feeling to the player when handled right. Of course you don't want to overdo it either.

5. I will edit my review and make it clearer what I was trying to say. Anyway similar to number 4 here, but with the default designs as they are right now it would require a few changed in stats and formulas for the equipment to work, but it could be fun equipping different parts to different characters and having a choice variety with what they equip. Since the game essentially only has 3 dungeons I'd imagine this be quite easy to balance out.

6 & 7. Ok I can agree here that more then a few pieces of dialogue can become tiresome for the player in a game you want them to be able to replay over and over. You could still do a bit of randomized dialogue, where one of the characters in the party says something after defeating the boss or getting to the final dungeon and other moments like this. It can still be randomized who ends up speaking, making it different during different playthroughs, and then with the ghosts and boss they an only have one or two quick dialogue messages. I don't think that would get tiresome.

8. I was thinking of the current balance when I said this, if those issue I had were resolves, then I do see a lot more classes would naturally combine well together with the setups you've done, so I do agree with you here and in fact think you did a very good job with them (if it weren't for that main issue of balance that I keep saying), so I will delete this point from the review.

Hope this time everything I have said is clearer for you Milennin. I will replay the game a second time purposely picking all sorts of random combinations to see if I can actually beat the game under your new advice, and depending on my experience I will edit this review accordingly and try to make each of my points clearer.

But even so, a player like myself shouldn't have the type of experience I had when starting the game for the first time, and I did still check skills descriptions carefully the first 4 times I played.

You are welcome about the review. :)

author=thesacredlobo

Does he really back stab the heroes three times though?

He only manages to technically back stab the heroes a single time, but he does get in their way in order to aid the villains on several other occasions.

I mean sure he could change dramatically at some moment in the game as an believable excuse to look past it

The problem is that Siddon never really does change. He just finally comes to accept that Drake and his minions are never going to allow him to rejoin the fold. As he such he offers to let the party kill him for his misdeeds, but for some unfathomable reason Kersh decides to offer Siddon a chance at redemption because they think he has really changed his ways at this point.

what's the excuse to have him part of the group?

That's my question as well, since Siddon really doesn't bring anything to the table besides a lot of baggage.

Yeah does not sound that well thought-out to me from first glance. But this type of character when done right can leave the player with a great experience. So if Siddon had a much stronger motive and development to turn from an enemy to an ally it would have made a huge difference I'm sure.

But, by the sound of pianotm review about the 1000 years ago war, it seems there a few parts of the game that weren't well thought-out.

Still it sounds like it has a few charms and character dialogue is a strong point. Is that all correct?

Nice to see a lot of skills, that goes very well with a JP system.