THEDJT'S PROFILE

It's be clever if you were made to work and unlock later classes in quests giving you a incentive to keep playing so you can get a new Class which ironically will make the player keep playing to level that new character up.

I was peeved at the reviews for HG and SS when they criticized the old Game boy chip growl sounds. Those sounds make the game. Back when those growls temporarily stopped the music.

post=128718
Okay, uh...what's R4.

Its a DS Card that lets you download DS Games which means i can import US and JAP games.

I'll probably buy it. I've never been interested in the peripheral as I've never noticed exactly what It can add to it other than some kind of magic exersice moon money.

Righto..

First off I have to say It is not bad at all. Overall until the part where I just got but raped by lack of money and dead party I'd clocked up around 45 minutes in my save. Even though I found I had to play it all in one playthrough due to the glitch noted bellow.

Replaying it a couple of times I found that the mages were useless to pick at the start. They would almost certainly be picked off within at least the 1st attacks from the enemy and in the end I just made a team of Warriors so I could go further.

Once my team starting killing things and getting to grips with the gargantuan amount of skill customization (which if messed up at the start will pretty much cripple your party).

My first playthrough I for some reason thought it'd be smart to just work on base stats and not the masteries in which case I was stuck with weak attacks and Mages with no spells. More of my own fault but at the same time could use some tiny small guidance to give the player a rolling start and not die and instantly quit like the others did.

After I finished the Guild Test I took on the side quests for the mining and the kill 5 troops mission. First off the guard giving the player money and items in the dungeon was a good idea but unnatural in the sense that I automatically then left the dungeon to go back to the store. It could possibly make more sense if someone in the Guild Office gave you the items then casually pointed out the directions to the items shop as even buying the axe at the start made a profound difference on my party's ability to kill the monsters without being wiped out. This is just personal preference it's just I'm not sure many others would turn back and try and improve the character's equipment when they are already in the dungeon.

The Quests were easy to understand and really intuitive especially how you trigger the quests by making the conversation rather than talking to them and the quest giver automatically knowing why you're there.

Also don't ask me why but it took me bloody aaages to discover the priest in the church revived your party and instead I kept pestering the women in the grave yard. And checking if the potions were available to revive them instead.

The mining quest was in itself was a rewarding quest. Although it'd be nice if the EXP was a tad more generous as still the monsters on the first floor could beat me if I missed 1 or 2 moves. Still more loot would be nice everywhere as it keeps the player engaged and gives them a glimmer of hope to improve by buying awesome new gear. Add more chests, more random hidden loot!

The Menus and interfaces were amazingly well done. A bit daunting in terms of the multiple menus and switches and choices. Like Craze said although I found it alright it might need a slight amount of guidance when making a party. Obviously as an Etrian Odyssey player I assumed I'd make a party until I fill up the spaces but other players might not know that.

The design of the main hub town is nice but unnecessarily big. If I was constantly going to a from the Labyrinth to the store it'd be a pain to haul myself aaaaalll the way up the map every time. Take an example of games like Diablo's Base Camp or even Craze's Geondun Base Town. The map is compact enough to have everything you want at a quick and easy distance.

Mapping could use some work in a lot of places. Interiors are fine but the actual design for the Labyrinth was just sort of uninspired. a lot of trees on grass. I'd mix up the visuals at least a bit, use a mack tile for Tile E and use the assortment of trees just to add variety and also variety in the terrain level.


Okay so a few mistakes I found so you can fix em up:
Rune says 'are you an Adventure?'

In the abandoned building with the cloth door you can walk up the bookcase in the middle of the room.

Saves did not work at all for me. Loading a game from any of my saves which I'd left the game to come back to later came up with an error for the caterpillar script (Script '* New Caterpillar' line 159: NoMethodError occurred)

And that pretty much wraps it up. I wish I could play more and see exactly where you got up to but I basically got to a point where I was getting my arse handed to me with little money to do anything about it but I enjoyed it as I love these sort of games. You've got the engine set out great, you just need to polish it and make it a bit less steep in terms of difficulty to start otherwise you will get alot of players simply leaving becuase they can't be arsed...

Unless you really are trying to be like Etrian Odyssey. In which case that game gets cripplingly hard.

There's nothing stopping you from releasing little bits of information every week even though your game is done. I guess in that time you can beta it to a small amount and still gain that 'Snowball effect' on other members who await the day when you actually release it.