Play Fate
Fate's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
PRESENTATION
Graphics are RTP. Maps are large empty areas with precious little understanding of map design shown. There are many errors strewn about in the mapping, too.
Sound is RTP as is music. It's okay but doesn't really stand out in a good way. It's used appropriately for the scenarios, when used at all.
Writing is solid. There's few errors, but it can read as a bit stilted at times, and has some flow issues.
GAMEPLAY
Gameplay is standard jRPG fare - battles and walking around.Battles are very long winded affairs but are at least balanced enough that they're beatable. Skills are all default but some customisation has been done with skillsetting. Items are a mix of custom and default.
There's a progression bug that ended the game after the boat scene.
ENGAGEMENT
I couldn't really find a lot to hold my interest in the game. While it wasn't really a bad game, it wasn't particularly interesting. I wasn't drawn to any of the characters, nor was I enjoying the battles or other gameplay aspects. It was just a bog-standard jRPG without a hook.The battles in particular took far too long to do - the lami battle was extremely long-winded due to her high defence and you don't really do much damage with either skills or attacking so there's no incentive to use, say, fire spells over spamming attack.
THEME
I think the theme was fate but I didn't get to experience all of the game and what I did experience didn't really delve into the theme, just hint around it a bit.24/80
Engine
RMMV
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Comments
I have some painful news coming... this game is just not any fun at all. >~< I grant you that I particularly dislike turn based battles, but I do tolerate them unless it's ridiculous, which this game just is. I take no pleasure from being harsh, but I hope this comment can help you improve.
The story is uninteresting. I know it's supposed to be mysterious, but there's really nothing gripping. The player needs to be motivated to find out the truth, that can either be by the story itself, the characters or world, or just straight that the gameplay is enough to carry it. I don't know anything about the characters, other than they're weirdly trusting. I am terrible at characterisation, but honestly these guys felt like pawns to the story and didn't feel realistic or relatable.
So the world, again, very unrealistic. I grant you mapping is hard and the rtp is limited, but I just have no idea where I'm supposed to be. Everything seems to be used a little randomly. That idea follows onto the story. I got a real sense that you were making things up as you went along. There's just no sense of logical progression, no explanations, just here we need to do this, omg we ended up here. I'm not judging you here, my first two games went the exact same way. I had a tight deadline and just leapt in instead of outlining anything, but your story is your core and it really can't be ignored.
The battle with Lucille, I just hated it. I'm sorry. Sure, if I actually liked turn based battles I wouldn't be so bias against it, but I don't think anyone will enjoy battle after battle after battle. There's no sense of achievement or reward, you just keep jamming the same skills over and over again. The battle HUD is too long and empty, you really need to use something like Hime's Actor Battle commands and hide empty slots to save the player scrolling through forgetting that it's just a useless command. I have absolutely no idea why you removed skill and item descriptions. There's no advantage to your player not knowing what they do, and I don't think anyone will say 'ooh it's a challenge' really it's just an annoyance. I have more to say about the skills you used later.
After that, we jump straight into the Lamia guards. They don't seem to be able to even do any damage? At this point, I was just screaming to actually get on with the story, which we did, for all of two seconds. I'm like 22 minutes into the game, and only about 4 of them have been out of battle. When I saw how long the Lamai's health bar was, and how little damage we actually did, I just had no willpower left to continue with this game, and quit. The two worst things you can do in battles is either balance them badly (which you managed to avoid for the most part) or to make them feel like a chore, which is really what you end up with by going back to back with battles.
Now for some other things I noticed that could be improved on.
If you the fadein/fadeout screen commands, you'll be able to avoid the screen popping up on an empty desert for a few seconds before we transfer to the first map.
You don't need the statue save point given that saves can be done from the menu. If you want to take saving via menu out permanently, you need to go into the database, system, and uncheck save from the menu commands. For temporary access, you can use the change save access command underneath system setting in the third page of event commands to toggle it. Save points are one of those things people tend to think they need, although a lot of the time it doesn't fit the games genre, and it can really serve to have people leave your game early if they die and lose a lot of progress, then can't be bothered continuing. Please give it some proper thought if you're choosing this.
After the berry cutscene, Warren doesn't return as one of my followers which looks odd.
Onto the skills, not really sure what happened, but after dying once in the ultra Lucille battle, and having 100 TP, Warren couldn't use his ranged attack, and his normal attack did 0 damage, so he was really useless. Lucille also has the exact same skills as we do, which makes the battles even less interesting. The point of a new party member is not just an extra turn, they bring their own set of skills and talents which make them valuable as a member and interesting as a character.
Your grammar can be a bit shaky. Although you've generally done well for proofreading, there's an error in your very first line which immediately makes your game look untested. Hopefully without the rush of IGMC deadline, you'll have more time to polish through the dialogue.
You could really do with stripping the project a little. Those unnecessary pictures and audio are bulking up your file size. You also left all of your character creator files in and the .png of your motivation for this project which made me lol.
Out of everything, experience is the best tool of a game dev, and there's really no way around it. We all make a ton of shit games. Behind any dev with their successful release, there's a bunch of embarrassments that have been swept under the rug. But, those bad games can be the most valuable ones of all. Failing, learning from that, and finding the strength to carry on is what shapes us.
So my advice to you is really to immerse yourself in the rpg maker community a bit more. Play loads of peoples games, tell them what you liked, what you didn't. Feed on their success and ideas, learn from what you recognise as mistakes. If you're lucky, some of them will return the favour and review your games too. If you don't want to play them, you can watch let's plays, but make sure to watch a few people so you can get a good range of opinions. You're never going to please everyone, but if you can find your audience and niche, you might have an easier time figuring out what's good and what needs a change. Hope this helps, and happy game making!
Thanks so much for the review! I will use what I have learned from your review to make better( and hopefully more polished) games in the possible near future..... Thanks again!