EDCHUY'S PROFILE

OK. I have actually gotten to play the demo, but for some unknown reason, the game crashes when I try to enter Rocky Road (I could send you the screenshot and savefile if you provide me an e-mail address so that perhaps you can fix the problem)! I also got a couple of crashes along the way right after battles in Charcoal City, but was somehow able to play through those eventually ... Here go my comments, which I am sorry are a bit of a mess, but hopefully will be helpful feedback about that can help you decide what to improve or keep as is:

Regarding what I have played so far, I thought that your maps within your cities are good, for the most part. Within the cities, there have been a couple of places where you have are supposed to have stores (you even have the signs outside the buildings), but for some reason these are missing as well as the interiors for them. You can actually enter these buildings, but you are not taken into a building, but are somehow inside the building (your character disappears behind the door!). If you turn around and reopen the door, you can actually get back to the town map. About the stores within the towns, it seems to me that they don't have much variety of items as I am use to in other RPGs ... Of what I have bought, in terms of healing items, the only useful ones, so far, have been to recover Hp. Obviously, weapons and armor are always useful.

Regarding dungeons, interiors and people, you seem to be somewhat inconsistent: in some places you can interact with items and people, you get the minimap of the city, dungeon or interior you are in, while in other you can't or don't. There are some towns which are large, but you can barely find anybody around (what are these, ghost towns?)! It seems to me that some of these places you haven't finished putting all the things you intended and need for them.

A couple of bugs I found inside buildings were: if you happen to open a door and there is a character behind it, you get stuck if you try to interact with it (this happened to me when I talked to the guy regarding the guild quest and when interacting with the cat at the old lady's house); if you stay too long in somebody's house you might get stuck since somebody's blocking the main exit and are no longer moving at all (happened to me in both the boat captain's house and in the house of the old lady with the cat)!

About the forests, etc., that you have to cross, not only you don't get to fight, but no treasures are to be found! About the World Map, you seem to have to walk very far to get somewhere, sometimes with no help to find where you need to go next; although the white circles around the places you need to enter (when not looking for a city) do help (you just need to find them!).

About fighting, some of your characters are way too overpowered and you get extremes in points gained after a fight (ex. Glacian soldiers vs. all other non-boss enemies). For example, I had a character gain 5-6 levels after each fight vs. Glacian soldiers! Battles have been relatively easy, with the only time a character of mine was killed in battle was against the soldiers. Also, I should comment that this has been one of the games in which I have had the least fighting despite of having to travel very far to get to places.

An annoyance I find in your menu is how your submenus within Item, Equip and Party when they are selected obscure some of the information displayed when there is plenty of empty space where these submenus could appear (granted you attempted unsuccessfully to make the foreground transparent for Item). One submenu that I think is probably not working well at all is the Item -> All Items since it doesn't show anything!

One thing that I haven't seen in other games though is the bestiary, which I feel is well implemented and has some useful information that could help, if I were to meet the more dangerous enemies in the future.

The quest menu is well implemented and does provide helpful information. However, even though I completed the Slime quest, I wasn't paid at the Guild Hall and cannot get another quest if there is another one! The party menu also works well, although I have no idea what the purpose of showing the A, B, C and X keys for each available character is.

And I still haven't figured out the Skill Slots submenu, which hasn't mattered ... perhaps you could put some sort of tutorial somewhere along the way. That because even though many skills are shown in the menu, few are actually available during combat or in the menu. And yeah, the fact that a Skill is highlighted or not doesn't help me know if it was actually available for use or not.

Regarding the tileset, I guess for the most part, are standard. Although, for the battles, so far, the enemies have been less so. Same thing can be said about the music you used.

Regarding plot, I guess it is linear and generally slow-moving. Also, the game is not driven by dialogue at all and your characters don't seem to have personalities that are too distinct.

That's all I can think about for now, 2 hours into the game!

Downloaded and installed. Needed to download and RTP, but it works!

Shouldn't the GOY be limited only to completed games? If so, there should be another award just for Demos ... That way, you would actually reward those who actually COMPLETED their games, because it would be sad if a Demo were EVEN nominated for the GOY. Sadly, there are many demos, but few complete games ... What don't you guys think about this?

CR,

I actually did manage to download the game from rapidshare. But upon installation, it would hang up before finishing. ??? You might want to check your file, since I don't recall having this problem with any other game. ::)

Interesting preview. It reunites many of the characters we have met in the previous arcs (probably will have to replay the earlier ones to refresh my memory as to their roles in the storyline!). Interestingly our heroes and their sidekick are nowhere to be seen in this video ... I guess we´ll find out once it is released! Hopefully, it won´t disappoint us, in the manner The Way did. Can´t wait to play it!