Review for the Secret Santa forum. (Oh hey cool, you got our game this round and I got yours.)

To start this off, I'd like to say that I played this a day or two ago. I wasn't able to write out the review until now, so please forgive me if my memory makes any mistakes.

Allusion - I'll admit that I haven't looked into the background of all the characters, but I know that Eremiel is a real biblical angel, (though a different version of her name is more popular.) And your game is based off of biblical themes, like heaven and hell, what the angel did, the Christian God. It gives everyone a chance to know more about the story by knowing about the bible or get a chance to research it, so that's pretty cool.

Pixel Movement - I think it's good and bad. For movement it works really well for an action game, but the collision system suffers because of it. I understand that it's mainly a problem with RPG Maker, but a developer should be careful of what his tools can and can't do.

Movement speed - To start, I don't actually know if you can fine tune the movement speed for RPGM MV. I'm personally in the mindset that the walking speed is too slow, but I see the argument that sprinting is too fast. One of the biggest problems I had with movement speed is how it forced me to play the game. Every time there was an enemy with more than one health, or even a swarm of enemies, if I wanted to fight them I'd have to constantly run away and turn around for a second to take a quick shot and keep running away. When you factor in the range of the shots, the time between every shot and that it's easy to be swarmed by enemies that can take a few hits you don't have much choice but to keep your distance. And because the enemies move only slightly slower than you, it often turns into you constantly running away because you can't make enough distance. The speed, felt a lot more balanced and appropriate for boss fights, but wasn't quite right for the random enemy spawns.

Zoom in - I really like this.  Zooming in during cut scenes and inside shops gets rid of all the negative space. Well done.

Maps - Your individual rooms are well designed. Your large caves and rooms have good aesthetics to them. The artistic design is good here. On the other side of the coin, the map layout isn't super great. The large open areas don't offer a reason to explore beyond the spirits, and the route to the actual path is obscure and you're just as likely to find the exit as a dead end. Without any variation the cave or ice theme looks identical between every room, bringing into question why you need more than one room. Especially when considering the walking speed and the size of the maps, you can take 3 minutes to walk all the way back to a boss, and that's only after you've memorised the route.

Power Ups - These are great, they really help to keep the game from going stale, all in all I really like this feature.

Random Spawn - Mostly not great. They can help to keep things fresh if you need to cross an area more than once, but the enemies can really stack up. Sometimes while going after a boss I'll get blocked by 6 enemies who can take plenty of hits and after cornering me they'll drop me to a quarter health all at once leaving the boss fight significantly harder than a run where almost no enemies block me. 

Save Points - The system is sort of cool, but the 3 minute hike back to a boss fight was not. 

Boss fights - These were of course the highlight of the game. On average they were pretty good, though they can be pretty tedious if you don't position yourself to avoid the projectiles, because you won't be able to dodge them with the slow walking speed. I enjoyed most of the boss fights, though the teleporting one was the least fun. I could only get a few shots off at best or miss entirely before he teleported which made the fight very slow. Some of the fights had a small amount of scrolling, which was jarring when you crossed over the middle of the room as the screen shifted. The last fight was okay, as all of it scrolled, but it then made finding the power ups hard as they didn't always spawn on screen. Though I found that some boss fights could have been easier with certain upgrades, but you don't know which ones you'll need until the fight comes up, like projectile speed being almost useless until the second last boss.

Cutscene Character Movement - This is my all time favourite part of the game. Having the characters move deliberately during conversations brings out their emotions. Pacing back and forth, turning away, all that; it's great. It's not a common thing to see done, let alone done so well. I'd love to know what your inspiration was for this.

Overall I liked the bossfights, but didn't enjoy travelling between them or walking from my last save to the boss fight. It's good but those parts really took away from my experience. I hope this review is helpful.

Hey Frogboy!
Just wanted to say that I enjoyed your game :)
It's a bit unwieldy (as one can expect from a one month game with more complex systems) but fun nevertheless.
Thumbs up!

Hey there! Secret Santa review incoming:

I'm actually glad I got the chance to play your game. I enjoyed how much different it was from the other games (no turn based combat)! The combat was definitely super unique.

That being said, here are a few points I'd like to make:

• Disabled dash in place of a "speed" buff: I'm not too keen on this. It makes moving through your maps begrudgingly slow. I think having a dash option--especially with a sort of action-based combat, is much more handy and will make the game play smoother.
• I liked the save points. I actually might take some tips from you on this--I enjoyed that it opens up the save screen for the player and that it's clearly presented.
• Pixel movement was very cool, but it actually works against you here. I noticed it's actually more difficult to line yourself up with enemies and hit them, and I think the pixel movement is responsible for hits not registering on the enemies (I found sometimes I would hit an enemy, and it would take no damage!) If you really enjoy pixel movement, I suggest offering some sort of "strafe" option so it's easier to line up attacks.
• The shop view change was a nice little detail. I think people take for granted how awkward a small shop looks on a big map, so this was refreshing to see.
• Enemy quantities/Balance/Rescuing Souls: Enemy quantities are insane, I found myself getting trapped by droves of enemies which was really frustrating. I think you should reduce the amount of them, and more enemies should drop crystals. Rescuing souls, conversely, seemed to have no real incentive. I found myself getting 1 or 2 crystals for rescuing them, and was surprised that there was no HP recovery. I'd definitely make it more worthwhile for the user to rescue them, since it seems to be a primary mechanic in the game.
• A status menu to explain buffs, current effects, etc. would do wonders.
• Cracks in the wall: Make them treasure! So much potential here. Let me break em down for cash and crystals!

Overall I think with a bit of tweaking it has potential. I'd put a little bit of time into making the maps and the combat handle a little more smoothly. I look forward to seeing where it goes from here :)

Hello!
So, I'd say the game is so-so. Not so nice, not so bad.

Let me explain. I was quite surprised of the pixel movement and the combat system. It is pretty nice, but pretty buggy too. Sometimes you walk on drops but you don't reach them, so that slime hurts you because you took risks to take it, but it was useless, and then it disappears. It's quite frustrating, honestly.

Some enemies were attacking me from really far away (two-three blocks ahead, I don't know why), and I lost some parts of my life because of that. So, hey, nice, you can drop healing items! Erm, I probably were lucky, as they are really rare. And I'd rather see a system were only drops would heal you, but they'd be dropped a bit more than this save & heal points. Like, why? You lose all the fear of game-over, as they are unlimited. Just farm in front of the shop and that's okay.

Oh, and that leads me to two other points. First, why would you have save points into shops but not before bosses? Like, I agree some RPG system can be modified, but they have to be modified wisely. I do not say I would say it wisely, but saving points often say "Be careful! something may happen in the next few minutes!". Second, errmmm, bashing, again and again, for only little parts of stuff that aren't that useful. Like, attack speed boost: I farmed like 5-7 minutes for that, and why? It just doubles my attack rate, but the default rate was sufficient enough. And items are way too expensive to start. Maybe having a "level boost system" where you can upgrade all caracteristics a little bit at the beginning, then if you want a real upgrade, you'll need to save more money, or wait for late game? I admit I've been bored too fast because I didn't see the point of fighting.

Talking about combat, why do these monsters pop from nowhere? I hope it is explained in the story, as I didn't see why they would pop like that. But okay, that's not much of a problem. Though they spawn way too randomly. I like randomness, but it sometimes messes with the systems. Like, I've waited like 1 minute to encounter monsters, then the minute after I was surrounded by 15 enemies. Ugh, not something I enjoyed much.

Then, that speed... wait, you cannot dash, you should've removed the "always dash" option. It may be just me, but I've been frustrated to realize you cannot move faster, unless you pick-up that speed bonus. No, I do not want to drive a formula 1, I just want to dash. It's way too fast for me, I need to control my character, not suffer its movement. Okay, I won't pick it up anymore, let's be slow but control our char. Wait, what did I say? Not picking it up? It was without counting on these bugged monsters... yaaaay! I hide that perfect speed power-up! Nooooo why would you do that to me.

Though I must admit the game wasn't that bad. I enjoy finishing on a great point, so let me tell why I played 54 minutes.

I enjoyed the bashing a bit: I like farming monsters, but for a few minutes, I won't spend hours on that. And the game seems to lose the dynamic it could have gotten because of that: it mainly is bashing monsters to have a proper stuff.
Fights were actually fun, even though bugged: I enjoyed the multiple attacks, I enjoyed the "not so fast" monsters that won't let me one-shot them. Though I did not enjoy the lack of ability to aim at the monsters. The way you have to shoot at them is pretty weird and not that fun. A bit of strategy would be nice, too, even though I'm very bad at strategy: it was just run and shoot, and I hate running away. After all, I'm a f***ing badass angel that sends souls to somewhere I don't really know where.

So, I guess the game deserves a not-so-bad 5.5/10. It is pretty decent, though it could be exploited a bit better than it currently is.

Very fun RPG, the music appeased me very much. 

Also, very nice history and game mechanics! Reminded me a lot of bomberman, don't know why! haha

Good work, bro!

I was pleased to play this action RPG. I did not have a game controller, but I managed well enough with my keyboard. On the control configuration, it mentions a "dash" function for its assigned key, but it seemed to make no difference. Is there or isn't there "dash" functionality outside of the speed power-up?

Running into an enemy's prolonged death animation/reskin seems to increase likelihood of drops, at least at the beginning. Was this intended? I liked the enemy variety, including the bosses. I liked that the fire attacks from the final boss actually razed the surrounding trees (and walking through those fires did not hurt one bit).

Some prior explanation about the health and money meters would not have gone amiss, nor would a more exact definition of the "holy" attack discussed in the shop items (Was it the star attack or just Eremiel's generic attack? It seems to be the latter). This is quite forgivable, though.

Sometimes entering doors can cause Eremiel to glitch onto the periphery of the area. At the shop it was OK since I was able to make contact with the door to exit and re-enter, but I had to fight the penultimate boss (I cannot remember that creature's name) twice since the garden literally locked me out of its boundary upon exiting the yellow door.

For some reason, only on the garden map did I notice Zepar's dialogue mislabeled as Eremiel's several times.

Perhaps the biggest problem was the initial loading, which took well over a minute just to get to the title screen. Even opening it a day after first playing was quite slow.