Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• PRESENTATION
  

  Graphics were 16-bit goodness from the store packs. They all fit together quite well, seeing as they were from the same source. There were also some RTP graphics in, but they didn't really stand out as too odd in comparison.

  Mapping was varied and interesting. It was well done and the different environments looked nice, too. There wasn't anything astounding but what was there was pretty competent and overall looked quite nice.

  Sound design was decent. There was some atmospheric sounds included which helped enhance the environments, and the basic sound effects for battles and the like were all fine.

  Music fit well and was used appropriately. There were a few different battle tunes that changed based on area, and everything sounded good. There was, however, one battle tune (the second one) that stood out as a bit weird due to the instruments used. It was pretty bad in comparison to the rest of the music used in the game, jarringly so.

  Writing was pretty good, too. There weren't any spelling or grammatical errors that I picked up on, and the story and characterisation was pretty well done as well. Characters were a little thin but they were different enough from each other to stand out and what was there was likeable. The story was rather cliche but that was pretty much the aim of the storyline so it worked well.

  
  

  GAMEPLAY
  Gameplay was very jRPG in that there were battles, and interacting with events.

  The game was a bit weird when it came to costs and items sold. It was kind of refreshing, to be honest. Weapons and armour were at a set level and all cost the same for each level of gear. This meant that any light, medium or heavy armour cost the same, and you could outfit your characters pretty cheaply. And yes, when I say cheaply I mean cheaply - end tier armour costs 1000G. This is in comparison to getting over 5000G each battle.

  Item costs were, too, pretty cheap and inns only cost 10G to sleep in, so you didn't have to worry about running low on cash. HOWEVER! Money had a purpose - to purchase stat increases and beef up your heroes.

  Now, you might not have needed to do this in order to progress, but it certainly made the game a lot more fun to blow through enemy groups and get up levels fast (due to the large amount of EXP enemies gave).

  That said, it certainly helped in some areas - the forest, for example, where healer girl would die in one hit despite being a level higher than the two main characters. The level after that would have been a pain if we hadn't gotten access to speed stat upgrades and her spells hadn't been super effective against the enemies there. Thankfully, with speed she could at least last a battle to get some experience and the town after that dungeon had health boosts which meant I could take her paltry 100 HP (in comparison to the 400+ of the other two) and boost her to an equal amount. Also, defence boosters helped so that she was on a more even keel.

  Enemies were sprites on the map and disappeared forever when killed. This meant that if you had some characters not go into battle or die, they lost that experience. Thankfully, the stat ups helped to rectify that (I swear, healer girl lasted two fights in the forest).

  Battles were fun, fast paced and enemies were interesting. Each area had a weakness and strength, elemental-wise, and the character you got before that area tended to have the weakness as part of their skillset. There was also plenty of rewards for beating the enemies.

  Skills were useful for the most part, though there were some that just didn't make sense or just didn't get used once multi-enemy spells came in to play. It would have been nice to have at least one buff spell by the forest (just so girl could have survived a bit) but otherwise, a good job was done with them.

  One issue that the game did have, bug-wise, was that it asked you to input a name at the start of the game, but used the default name anyway. At the end it used the name I put in, weirdly.

  ENGAGEMENT
  ...I played all the way through and had fun. Being able to choose your own challenge after a while was a nice touch, and frankly, I quite enjoyed it even before you got the stat ups. I do feel that giving them was a bit of a cheese out from having to balance the end part of the game, but at least it was thought about.

  I liked the characters and the story, despite being cliche, was at least entertaining in a very meme-like way. It was fun without trying to push 'funny' at the player and I appreciated a lot of the design choices made when it came to areas and enemies.

  THEME
  The theme was pretty much cliche-laden adventure and the story aspects did a good job of reflecting that. The mechanics themselves were pretty well done and you could pick up and play the game without trying to figure out what you were supposed to be doing or wondering how to do things. Being that it was based on every jRPG ever, it used the basic jRPG mechanics and they worked fine.

  60/80
  

• Theme 

  Kill Dark Lord, save princess. Some kind of parody for JRPGs I guess?

  Gameplay 

  Boring and turns broken balance. Standard JRPG. Petunia dies so fast in the forest she’s just dead weight when you get her and you have to go past the forest to make her useful.

  Presentation

  Inconsistent art style, the writing is terrible as it relies heavily of self awareness or parody. I also have issues on how from the beginning you know your best friend is a Seer and he can avoid a lot of things if he would just speak but later it's revealed he just didn't feel like it? Any sense of tension is just not there that would drive the game forward. Level design needs work.

  Engagement 

  I wanted to strangle Takehiko since he was seriously annoying me. It's definitely not the game for me.

  Total – 44/80