Hey l33tpie 6. I've played your game and I've really enjoyed it!
I felt the battles were really fun to play through, the story/plot did feel very cliché to me and I got bored of it fast, but I did like the characters you had and the way you worded the dialogue.
The ending took me by a huge surprise and felt like a complete twist to me. I thought that was very cleverly done and has given me some ideas.
Anyway is just the basics of what I wanted to quickly mention. I won’t really cover this in the feedback, since I feel feedback should be given to help suggest how to improve the game rather then anything else.
I’ll quickly go through all of that now. Hopefully what I say will be useful and help you with your sequel.
I’ll start with the battle system. I really enjoyed how you were using the ATB system in the game. It felt really fun and made a difference from using the default turn-base system. By default I think the ATB sucks and requires the user to take great time to test the battles and balance them out. Your game certainly did that! Your enemies felt balance, the bosses felt challenging an the characters that joint and left the party were balanced well with the enemies. The guard system was a nice touch too and I really enjoyed the fact it served a use this time instead of just being there. So congratulations on that!
I really enjoyed your final boss too, those different forms were really exciting and it felt a challenge to beat. I think it may have gone on a minute or two too much, but otherwise it was good. You made great use of Naomi in that battle too!
However, while I did enjoy the battle system I did feel the KGC Passive Skills script you were using was almost completely useless. Most weapons I came across didn’t give the characters additional skills and the characters couldn’t swap weapons to master one another skills. The two characters that could swap weapons at some point (Gwen and Naomi) couldn’t learn each other skills so I found this script just be there to look fancy and completely useless.
While I think it was a great idea, I didn’t feel you thought much of this and as a result it didn’t really serve a purpose in your game. I do believe the script would work well with the rest of your battle system, but you will have to give the weapons more skills and sort out which characters and wield which weapons a little more to make good use of this.
The CP script was very similar. I felt this script did fit a purpose in your game and you did use it to some extent however I still felt it was limited. The characters usually just needed to level up one or two more levels to be able to equip all of their skills.
I think the main problem here was with the skills. I didn’t feel you had enough skills to make good use of the CP system and Passive system in your game. I think the skills you include in the game were brilliant and served well in balancing the battle system and making it fun, but I felt you should of created a whole new bunch of skills.
If you are stuck on ideas for skills and that was the problem here, well you could be unique and create things like fire poison, blinding ice…..etc etc. Some skills should become more worth mastering and equipping then others and so on and so forth. That is what makes good use of the CP and Passive systems.
The dungeons in your were quite fun to start with but then I felt they were all the same and I got bored of pressing switches to open doors or keep going through long mazes. I felt they were better then what I’ve seen in most RPG Maker games (which is the exact same dungeons just without the extra switch puzzles) but I’m getting really tired of seeing these now.
As a player I would really love to be able to CHOOSE and MUDDLE which characters can get which skills and do some experimenting to find the best combinations. -hint-.
Ways you could improve the dungeon is by adding interaction into them. For example if your in a cave dungeon, maybe it’s crawling with spiders each time you touch a spiderweb, so you have to avoid touching spider webs. Or if you are going through a forest dungeon maybe there is a fairy blocking your path who is upset and you’ll have to find a way to cheer her up before you can continue. These are some simple examples of how to make dungeons more exciting or fun to play through.
The music you used was all very good, everything fitted very well here.
The mapping of your towns and the forests mapping were very well done. I really those most of your maps. Especially your world map! I thought you did a marvellous job with that. I can’t recall exactly what it looks like anymore, but I remember it stood out to me and something mapped well.
The dungeon mapping however mostly felt very dull. I enjoyed your last dungeon (I think it was) with the entire space theme, but the constant mazes areas felt dull to me. If you look at the pack of maps Enterbrain gives you with the software and try to make dungeon maps more like that I think they’ll stand out a lot more.
I don’t see any problems with your mapping at all, I just see ways the dungeon can be improved.
The story was very interesting. I felt it was quite dry at the Pandora Box points. It might just be me, but I found it to be too cliché without a twist. I think clichés are fine in games but if you are going to have them you should try and be a little creative with the cliché and add a twist. I.e. Perhaps the world is full of terrible monsters and Pandora Box in fact releases light into the world. It doesn’t fit for your game, but I’m trying to give a quick simple example of twisting a cliché. Apart from that I really enjoyed your plot/story.
I felt each character had different personalities and it was played out very well with your games dialogue. They felt very emotional at times and it made me laugh at times. Though they played out very well I did feel the characters had even more potential that could of cause more conflict if it was played out. I.e. I could have seen a certain characters personality changing even more darker and mad then it was expressed in the dialogue.
Finally the interaction in the game felt very limited, but the type of game it was it did feel necessary. But the interaction that were there was really fun. I enjoyed having to collect 10 soandso, helping a NPC open a chest, gaining logs to cross a bridge etc.
So overall the combination of the story and character made the game fun and kept me (the player) wanting to finish the game. The dialogue was well written which kept me (the player) entertained, the mapping was mostly good and the battle system felt balanced very well with an epic final boss so it’s definitely an RPG Maker VX game I’d say succeeded!
If I was going to rate the game I’d give it a 4/5. The reason for my rating is, it’s something a lot better then the average RPG Maker VX game but the dungeons at points felt very dull and I felt there was something missing in the conflict. It did feel very creative but either the plot wasn’t strong enough due to all the clichés or the characters didn’t quite reach the right level of conflict for what was at stake.
Perhaps all you had to do was put some humorous dialogue in the dungeons or more cut scenes in those and they would of turned out a lot more entertaining.
Anyway, I hope this feedback helps you. Good luck with the sequel.
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Mokensen: The Swordsman, Team Gaia side project by l33tpie 6. *FULL VERSION*
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Jul 27 2009, 02:16 AM
