so im playing through black ribbon

[Karr Lord of Chaos]

i was rooting through old posts at the pav and came across a game called black ribbon. its rumored to be excessively long but im willing to give it a try.



playing notations:

-very hard begining without ring information.
-more healing needed at the start, 10 potions need to be sooner.
-make sure you set the move location to a spot above the return event else problems happen.
-next char story line i was stuck on a door but could get off, looked weird.
-i didnt like how i couldnt talk to the shop keeper. i had missed an item and had to try again before i could go forward.

-new party now. found the battles to be ridiculously overpowered. forced leveling around a save and heal point is a game breaker.
just feels cheap rather then adds to the game.
-i dont think i can stress enough this point. this would be the place where most people would pack it up and play something else.
i was trying very hard to stay alive and i encountered a game over every two battles just because of the number of enimies.
i am glad flee worked at times but without healing first or giving me a steady supply of healing items (i got less then 10 potions) it was tough.

-the battles just before the town where happening quicker which couldnt of came at a worse time. i was out of healing magic (you really need to add
more magic for that part or healing items to cure mp) and items, so i was fleeing everything in a dying hope that id not have to do it again.
-made it to the town. had a hard time finding a shop or inn, or save point. most business like to advertise so more then the locals can shop there *cough*

-first game boss blew me into tiny bits. if your auto char dies then you might as well walk away because your not beating anything this try.

play time: hour and half roughly

day 2

i am angry, angry at the disrespect given to the player. no game, not commercial or otherwise should force the player to die cheaply and continuously for no other reason then to force them to level up endlessly. i can understand the blatant disregard given by most designers who just dont play test but it somehow worse when the effect is directly intended. i am playing your game because ive become interested in it, not compelled, not driven. anyone else with higher tolerance for being raped by face bashing spells, by poor healing items, by lackluster attacks might enjoy this game but i however find it soul crushing.

ive played a huge amount of the games on here but ive yet to come across a game that forces so many consecutive game overs. i really do not want to strategise every battle only to die minutes later to some big group of enemies that i cannot take out because only one of my members can do any form of damage and that damage results in him taking big damage for using his spells and is killed without possibility of revival by some low end enemy with half hp hitting spells.

for the love of all that is holy, dont make games like this or you wont get people to play them. im tolerant, but god some things are too much. ill keep trying to play this but even i have limits.

-kept at it and i got through the hellish nightmare, almost stopped playing it entirely (will see if that changes)
-just discovered a major bug. i ran strait from the save point with leon to the town in hopes of getting equipment. at the inn i suddenly received a new character which confused me. now after reading the guide it looks as though i should of traveled left. i guess that didnt work out. im curious if i can get this char twice now.

-the elevator door opens to reveal a nice wall, oops!
-praise the lord i made it to a save point! i would of quit for sure had i wasted that hour just getting there. nearly outa potions too.
-something wrong at the tombstone, the move location activated after i went fully up then back down for some reason.
-so many trips in this dungeon, im glad to finally escape it.
i think im starting to believe the rumor that this game is 200 hours long.

serious bug 2: as i predicted, as soon as i went back into the forest and took the path i never chose i was able to replay the missing scene with falke. the bad news is i had to restart the game because it canceled out my current progress.

-where the hell is the point to switch story? i got outa the factory with my 4th member but i cant find where to go. i am really getting tired of fighting battles, i may choose to cheat and upgrade myself some benefits.
-i read that this game was improved from its earlier predecessor. is the game on our site the one that is most up to date? maybe im playing the hellish old version? god, if this is the new "balanced" version then i never want to experience the unbalanced version. i bet he gave every monster 9999 hitting ultima and forced you to 1 hit everything naked.

playing time: 4 and a half hours.

day 3

[Duel]

I wonder if anyone has actually finished that game.

[Karr Lord of Chaos]

im halfway through the first scen and its taken me about 7 hours. i dont even wana know how much lost time on game overs (does it record that time?). i predict the game to be 85 hours long of play time (oh good lord thats long).

most of the playtime is eaten up by leveling which is excruciating. i can handle just attack until it dies but to stratigise every low end exp monster is just painful. not being able to hit all monsters all the time is owy.

im also reminded of the distance rule between mages and knights. i had my knight naked with a weapon and he was taking no damage, and my mages had full sets and where getting clubed to death in two hits. the gap for def was just too wide. same with the attack. only two of my chars really did any attacking, the rest either used magic till they ran out in 10 shots or healed with items which was their usual roll. ironic they where the slowest of my members which made their healing abilities happen too late.

i doubt anyone has finished this game. most people would of given up by now. other then the half decent story there isnt as much creativity as id of liked to see. nothing in the way of mini games, no real extras so far, chests are feeling uninspired, equipment rudimentary, and scenery boring without detail. the hard battles could end even a game with square level graphics though. im hoping there will be a strong finish in here somewhere.

given the length im going to have to break from it to do something else at points. no way ill play it in a single go.

[Valkysas]

Sir, you seem to hate yourself.

EDIT: just checked. 234 total downloads. 233 probably gave up. the other one, is obviously Karr.

[MRevelle83]

Black Ribbon... oh my, I remember this game.

Yeaster once said it had about 200 hours of gameplay. The description says 30. I hope the 30 is the 'updated' and more accurate description.

[Karr Lord of Chaos]

i really am not looking forward to playing even 30 hours but id rather play 30 then 200. i just wana get as far as i can to see if my view improves of this game. often its just the first bit that isnt too great because designers get better as they work.

[Perversion]

Originally Posted by Karr

no game, not commercial or otherwise should force the player to die cheaply and continuously for no other reason then to force them to level up endlessly.

I'm not gonna say cheaply, but what you just typed is basically Etrian Odyssey in a nutshell. Unless you continually poke around in the dungeon for 15 minutes, and then head back to town, and hope that you can afford at least two healing items, and pray to god that nobody has died, because you'd not be able to afford to bring them back to life.


Oh, and these games (the Etrian Odyssey series), at least within that genre, are fairly widely considered to be one of, if not the best modern-day dungeon crawls on the market.

[Karr Lord of Chaos]

and thats why i wont play games like that.

ive given up on black ribbon. the rest of the game is nothing but the same stupid slow leveling up and ridiculously tough battles. in this one part you have crapy chars and run into this ant monster that you can only destroy by magic and drops 20% of the exp anything else thats easier drops. i needed to gain 8 levels just to survive an upcoming boss. thats the end for me, its not worth anymore of my time nor anyone elses.

the creator should be ashamed.

[Valkysas]

the creator should be ashamed.

You should submit that as a review.

[Karr Lord of Chaos]

dont worry, ill submit something for my lost time. i just cant belive anyone would willingly make a game this tough and keep the highest level of pain imaginable the whole way through. the game is balanced, but its balanced for a party that should be getting far more exp. atrocious.

[Valkysas]

I actually meant that line. right there. because it'd be hilarious.

but if you do something more scathing in the future, that will also be funny.

[Draygone]

I've actually wanted to do an LP of this game, just 'cause of how big I heard it was. I'd definately endure the difficult gameplay, but the game-breaking glitches would undoubtedly cause me to abandon the project, so I guess I'll give it a miss.

Which site did you download the game from? The Pav's version says "Updated Version" in the title, while the Mag's version doesn't even have a description.

[Valkysas]

The pav and mag's versions of any games we share should be the same, after the PS1>PS3 conversion effort. I told ixzion that he could take any updated versions we had.

[Draygone]

Well, the Mag's version says that the newest update was September 2005. That's the same date that the topic here was made, though maybe the topic was edited later on for all I know.

[MRevelle83]

I thought Yeaster said that it took 200 hours (on the original Pavilion site) but the only post I could find he said it was nowhere near that.

http://www.pavilionboards.com/forum/...0437#post50437

But this game does have six endings. Too bad nobody will ever see any of them.

[Karr Lord of Chaos]

its so hard and i really tried. i may pick it up again just cause i wana see the end. also id like the badge of the first to play through this living hell. i did play fairly far in edwards quest. i dled mine at the pav as the i thought the pavi might be older and i was getting an error that ended up not being one.

[Mcardy]

Hey man, I actually beat Edward's Quest. I'm sure you can make it through!

I really wanted to see some screenshots of this game, since I read about how terrible it was. I imagine the 200 hours of gameplay is 195 hours of grinding, eh?

[orius]

Originally Posted by Karr Lord of Chaos

im also reminded of the distance rule between mages and knights. i had my knight naked with a weapon and he was taking no damage, and my mages had full sets and where getting clubed to death in two hits. the gap for def was just too wide. same with the attack. only two of my chars really did any attacking, the rest either used magic till they ran out in 10 shots or healed with items which was their usual roll. ironic they where the slowest of my members which made their healing abilities happen too late.

Now that sounds ridiculous.

I understand why there are combat differences between a tank and a caster in a typical RPG. I've even gladly used them. But of course the balance needs to be such that one doesn't completely overshadow the other. In a tabletop RPG, you can get away with very squishy wizards because the tanks can do a much better job of protecting them. The players aren't restricted by coding and you have a DM that can pull his punches if he sees the party needs to rest or retreat from the dungeon.

A video game can't do that. The AI running the encounters and combats is relentless, so you have to make the casters more surviveable. They don't have to be as strong as the fighters, but they need to have enough defense that they're not constantly getting killed. The enemies need to do less damage overall and have fewer HPs; about 2-3 rounds should be the max for a random encounter, at least that's how I prefer things to go.

Casters should also have a good mana pool and affordable spell costs; if they're going to be squishy or have crappy attacks, then they'll be relying on magic. They should be able to use that magic without running out after 3 or 4 fights or there should be a cheap way of recovering the mana pool. Same thing goes with healing. Healing spells that cost more a significant chunk of a mana pool yet recover only a small fraction of a target's HP aren't effective.

Also, experience gain/leveling/whatever shouldn't take forever or seem like a chore, although this is one area where I've had the most trouble in balancing my own games. The reason my games go into grind is because I balance things conservatively. I feel it's better to give a bit less than too much at once. But at least with RPG Maker, I do a lot of playtesting to make sure stuff works and doesn't take forever, I did quite a bit of fiddling on Demonslayers because I thought XP and money gain were going too slow.

It sounds like the game has balance issues or wasn't playtested very well. It sounds like the stat growth rates are a bit low from what you're saying. Maybe the person who designed the game either didn't play it enough and didn't realize how tough it was, or didn't bother to think of how the gameplay would feel to another player.

Originally Posted by Valkysas

The pav and mag's versions of any games we share should be the same, after the PS1>PS3 conversion effort. I told ixzion that he could take any updated versions we had.

I can't speak for anyone else, but my games are the same. When I added them to the Mag the other day, I just downloaded them from the Pav because I didn't feel like digging around for the backups.

[Yeaster]

Hello all, this is the creator here, returning from the depths of obscurity...


I want to apologize for creating this catastrophe. It was 2003, I was 14 years old, I -- to be frank -- didn't know what the heck I was doing. But I thought I did and it sure was fun creating this hot mess. =)


Anyways, I found this thread because I was bored and started googling myself. It's funny that I would come across this, because in the summer of 2007, I actually played through this game for the heck of it and -- as frustrating as it was -- there WAS a good story and cast buried somewhere underneath all the crap, so I started to rewrite the game's storyline as I was playing it. No, it wasn't exactly the highlight of that summer, but at the very least I got a great script out of the deal that I can, perhaps, use again later.......

Side-note, Cecilia Woodman still remains one of my personal favorites<3 (especially in the rewrite)

It sounds like the game has balance issues or wasn't playtested very well. It sounds like the stat growth rates are a bit low from what you're saying. Maybe the person who designed the game either didn't play it enough and didn't realize how tough it was, or didn't bother to think of how the gameplay would feel to another player.

Or... the creator was just an idiot.

[Karr Lord of Chaos]

i have a deal for you.

if you can edit the battles to bring them more inline with rational expectations then i will play through your game entirely and review based on the new game. there is no reason that your story should go untold simply because the battles are too steep for anyone to overcome. dont change or touch anything other then the battles.