So what do you think?

[Perversion]

I'm wondering how people are playing Series 1. Are you playing as good? Evil? Did you join the fighter's guild? Mage's guild? No guild (for shame!)?
Did you find any hidden or secret items? Biggest question of all....did anyone find the EASTER EGG? Let me know. I'm interested in which directions people are taking it. Also, has anyone found the rare Almighty/Devil weapons? I made them pretty hard to obtain, but it is possible.

[AbstractOrigin]

Re: So what do you think?

Just downloaded it, will get to playing tonight.

[Jamos' Old Account]

Re: So what do you think?

I haven't played the game yet, but it is in my top 10 to play list... once I get my Max Drive over eBay (got tired of looking for them in stores.) I will be looking forward to playing and telling you how things go.

[Hedrum]

Re: So what do you think?

I played a little bit of it and although I like the concept all I can say is... the game is hard. The battles are simply unbalanced. While the enemies in East Arethema can do about 10-30 damage to my guys, I could only inflict about 0-10 damage to the enemies. That's a bit much considering I'm only in the beginning of the game, don't you think? Also, the battles took forever to beat. Since I could deal little damage and enemies in the battle each had about 30+ HP, I don't think there was one battle that I was in that took less than 3 minutes to finish. Seriously, it's kind of time consuming. So, in order for me to enjoy myself in the game, I have to run away from battles. Unless you come up with a solution to this problem, I'll be stuck at the beginning for a while.

[AbstractOrigin]

Re: So what do you think?

I played a little bit of it and although I like the concept all I can say is... the game is hard. The battles are simply unbalanced. While the enemies in East Arethema can do about 10-30 damage to my guys, I could only inflict about 0-10 damage to the enemies. That's a bit much considering I'm only in the beginning of the game, don't you think? Also, the battles took forever to beat. Since I could deal little damage and enemies in the battle each had about 30+ HP, I don't think there was one battle that I was in that took less than 3 minutes to finish. Seriously, it's kind of time consuming. So, in order for me to enjoy myself in the game, I have to run away from battles. Unless you come up with a solution to this problem, I'll be stuck at the beginning for a while.

Yeah, same here, unfortuanately. Also, I can't find the guilds (Trust me, I looked everywhere). I won't give up, and I'll try to get to the next part, but for next time try to curve the difficulty in the beginning a bit. Especially when there's no shops for Healing Items and the like.

[Perversion]

Re: So what do you think?

Hmmm...when I played through, it didn't seem that difficult for me. Remember, you also have your special skills, too, which should do 30-40 damage each. The reason the battles are the way they are is because by the time you get to level three, all the enemies do basically zero damage against you, and each battle should take no more than 2 rounds. So I wanted to make it a bit of a challenge at first, and then easier when you get to level three or so. If you go straight to the town south of the castle (which you need to go east, over the land bridge, and then back west again), you should not need more than the 10 heals I gave to each character. If you get in trouble, each character has 5 revives as well. And the guilds are in the town of Sandoz, which, as I said is directly south of the castle, but you have to take a roundabout way to get there.

[Pagerron]

Re: So what do you think?

Didn't want to double post, so I'll just keep updating my progress here.

I downloaded this two days ago. I've now logged just over 3 hours of playing time.

***SPOILERS BELOW***


I'm a member of the Fighter's guild. I'm neutral leaning towards evil.
My party members are levels 6 and 7. I've gotten a skills upgrade for each person. Cool. Found some interesting little bonuses, which have proven to be very helpful. After completing my first mini-quest, I got a very nice upgrade. I'm going on my second quest now. I think I mis-read something in my original instructions. I'll have to go back and speak to the quest giver again, I think.

Well, so far, so good. I'm going to have to stop running away from so many battles though, so I can get to level 10 to take a little blimp trip.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

At level 10 now. Played about 5 1/2 hours. I'm "Truly Neutral." I've been upgraded to a Novice in my guild. The monsters in the new land I'm in are tough, but the weapon and defense upgrades in the town help a lot.

Just to let you guys know, once you reach level 4 or so, the battles are much easier to handle in the first field. Be patient. It will pay off. There are lots of little side quests and perks that you'll find once you take the blimp to the new town.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
5/8/06
All of my members have reached level 11 now. Lots of little side quests to think about. Cool! I love the whole idea of deciding which side to be on. I'm going to try and add to my "good" side for the time being. I'm having a fun time with this game. A lot of thought went into it, and it has inspired me to make some adjustments to the game I'm working on.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
5/11/06
I've made some good progress.
My party members are either at level 13 or 14.
I've been given the title of Master in the Fighter's Guild. This afternoon, I played the game for a couple of hours...I got sucked in. I've played about 8 1/2 hours so far total. I'm officially "Neutral leaning towards good" now. More little quests to keep in mind. Lots of items. I wish we didn't have the ten item limit per person in RPG Maker 3. That can be frustrating.
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5/12/06
Hello again. Have been playing this game a lot lately. I've now played for almost eleven hours.
My party members are at levels 15 and 16. I'm in the Demon Stronghold.
I have several icons of Alluria. Each of my party members learned a new skill today. I'm still
neutral, leaning towards good. Found a cool bonus.

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5/19/06
I have restored the flow of water to Fort Ayuhuasca. Nostro gave me access to Depair, and I talked with the queen. Depair has some interesting little twists in it. You should definitely read the book in the library. I turned in the ledger and found all three canisters (after defeating Wolfen). I now have one piece of the key that opens the Ivory tower. My next task is to go talk to the King and find out the next step.
Oh, yeah, I also came across "Destination: Here." Cool little clue in there.
Members of my party are at levels 16 and 17.
I have 10,000 gold. I have played for almost 13 hours now.

*** SPOILERS ABOVE ***

[Perversion]

Re: So what do you think?

Oh, yeah, I also came across "Destination: Here."

Yay!!! I didn't think ANYONE was going to find that. I kind of lined it up with a cactus so if people wanted to post where to find it, they might find it a bit easier. I hope you got the jeweled ring in the treasure chest when you were there. That hidden town was one of the easter eggs, but not the major one, although it does give you a clue on how to find the real easter egg, as Pagerron said. I'm glad you are enjoying it. Now, if anyone else is playing this (32 people downloaded it so far), please post and let me know what you think and what you've found.

[Pagerron]

Re: So what do you think?

***SPOILERS BELOW***

I'm now in the Icy Cave
In my last several hours of play I have gotten the Escape Chalice
I turned in 2 broken shards for Enchanted Armor
I turned in my ivory tower key piece and received a note to give to Baron Gerhardt.
I am considered Significantly Good.
All of my players are at level 17 now.
There are lots of hard battles ahead of me. I need to fight around here a bit to get my players ready to press on for the second piece of the ivory tower key. (15 hours of playtime so far.)

***SPOILERS ABOVE***

June 16, 2006.
I beat the game today!!!! More than 20 hours of playing time. My players were all higher than level 20. What a difficult battle the end battle was too. Get ready for a FIGHT! It's a great feeling of accomplishment to have finished this game. Congratulations Perversion. The effort you put into your game was obvious. I would truly say that is an RPG Maker game of epic proportions.

Some comments:

Battles: Many, many, many of them. In the game I joined the Fighter's Guild, and boy did I have to fight. You really need to be someone who likes (doesn't mind) random battles. Perversion did a good job of varying the kinds of monsters and their unique characteristics and special powers. Know what each of your skills do before you enter battles. That can be very helpful. [If you come across the Cobras in the desert, run!] One saving feature is the ability to always run that one of the character has. Without this feature, it would have been much more frustrating.

Field Layout: Sometimes, it seemed like I was just running and running and running to get from place to place in the fields. That's how RPG Maker 3 is, though.

Items and Powerups: Lots of them. Lots of cool quirky accessories and special weapons that can be purchased or traded for. One cool thing that Perversion did was to have certain monster drop items, which can be traded up for weapons or skills, etc. I know I didn't find all of them.

Use of Memory: Incredible. What...99.9%. The paths that I chose led me in many different directions. There are lots and lots of ways that things can turn out depending on the choices you make. Cool. Do you want to be on the side of Krato? Then make some evil choices. Do you want to be on the side of Alluria? Then choose things of which she would approve. (This is the path I chose to take). Or, if you'd like to, be evil one minute and good the next. Mix and match. Whatever you want to do. Wow. Programming this must have been a beast.

Story: Simple, yet interesting. Perversion mainly focused on the player fighting through the worlds in order to accomplish the mini-quests and main quest, but there were several times when the Storyteller feature was used to move the story along nicely and give you more details about the characters. Perversion even put some of his own poetry in the game related to the plot. Cool. However, this game is not for kids. In several conversations and a few of the storytellers, there were some strong sexual references made.

Other Interesting Characteristics:
Perversion used the day/night event conditions for different events.

The levers in the dungeons played a part in the story.

Lots and lots of items. I wish RPG Maker 3 could allow players to have more than 10 items each! At least treasure items are possible. Perversion did a great job at using many of these.

Some favorite parts/characteristics:

Being able to warp out of a dungeon after defeating a big boss. That was nice. No need to go all the way back through it to get out.

Being able to run whenever I wanted from most battles.

The three girls in three graves.

The little puzzles.

The items that monsters dropped.

Gameplay Bugs/Spelling Errors: As far as gameplay flaws, I only noticed one minor one related to a certain weapon that I didn't receive that I was supposed to have. But that turned out not to be a problem at all as I could purchase the weapon at one of the shops later. As far as spelling errors go, only a couple. Seriously, I think I saw two in the whole 20 hour game. Great job!!

I can tell that Perversion spent time going through things before he submitted this game. I wonder how many hours of game creation time went in to this. Many, many, many. Good job Perversion.

Okay, so now you go and play it. You'll probably have a unique take on this game yourself.

[Perversion]

Re: So what do you think?

Indeed I did spend a lot of time making this. In between creation, playtesting, and guiding my girlfriend through her "playtest," I probably logged at least 150-200 hours...and that's even probably on the low end. Is anyone else besides Pagerron going to post their thoughts on this game? I mean 77 people have downloaded it so far, and SOME of those people have to be members here and have an opinion one way or the other...maybe if it gets reviewed in the new issue of RPGM Magazine, I'll get a better response...

[hitogoroshi]

Re: So what do you think?

I KNEW there was I game I still needed to get. And this sounds like its going to blow the pants of my WIP. (Work in Progress, for those not "in the know.")
Downloading...

[Perversion]

You really need to be someone who likes (doesn't mind) random battles.

And would you believe I had the random encounters set to the lowest frequency possible?

[hitogoroshi]

Re: So what do you think?

Yeah, I did that in Testers Gate, and there still are enough random encounters to make me want to strangle myself.

[Perversion]

Re: So what do you think?

After playtesting Series 1, I came to the realization that the random battles might tend to get tedious in short order which is why in Series 2 (search for the topic within this forum if you are interested) there are no random battles, nor do you level up with experience points. Your levelling is based on your stats, which you get increases of after the arena battles you fight. I'm trying to do something with this game that hasn't been done with RPGM3 (hell, with Series 1, I was trying to do something that hadn't been done with RPGM3). I just hope the tedium of programming Series 2 will be worth it. If it gets too tedious, I might start working on Series 3, and it might be released before Series 2. As I envision Series 3, it will be a farming/dating sim, but I haven't played around enough with the idea to know if it's possible to make this on RPGM3. Oh, well....that's what free time is for, and I've got a lot of it on my hands right now. Tis all for now.

[H2SO4]

Re: So what do you think?

Well I just downloaded this game a few days ago and began playing. I haven't had much time with it because of the holiday weekend but I did manage to do a little bit of playing.

I can't remember what lvl i was but it was something around lvl 4 or so. I joined the fighters guild and La 'handra joined me. I retreived the helmet guys family heirloom by beating up the guy who won it from him (not sure if I did the 'right' thing :P). I ended by killing the green dragon in the goblin lair and called it a night. So far, I like the story but I find some of the characters to be a bit annoying, but amusing ^^
there are a lot of battles but that's a rpg for you, and I didn't find any of the battles to be too difficult or unbalanced, in fact they were very well made! Honestly I was surprised at how 'empty' the cities were, but they still managed to be interesting. In my game I try to pack my cities full of people and buildings but after playing this I realized that cities don't have to be packed to be good. So far, so good! Gonna keep playing and I'll post more later! ^^