Review for Abyss of Oblivion
We are quickly drawn in by the beautiful custom title screen and music. I noticed that there is no options command in the menu, I hope this won't bring any problems later on. The idea to put credits into the beginning sequence was good and very well done. Already I can feel like playing a professional game.
However, due to the fact that there was no option menu in the title, I ran into an issue right after beginning. As I'm writing this review (with the menu screen open) I can see that the game runs on over 60 FPS, which leads in the play time to increase faster than in seconds. This is a recurring issue with projects without Yanfly's Synch Monitor FPS plugin when they are played on a monitor with higher frame rates than 60Hz (I'm playing on a 144Hz gaming monitor). Because the FPS is so high, most animations run too fast. There's even more of a reason to do so in this entry as there is a 30-minute timer each time you enter the Abyss. The time counter runs faster than normal due to a single frame being less than 1/60th of a second. This is easily fixed by applying the plugin, though, so I sincerely hope you consider this.
As I mentioned the menu, I must say I really dig how clear and intuitive it seems to be. I also like that you include a reference for important things, such as status conditions, over there.
After some time spent playing, we learn that the story has us trying to resolve a curse which makes no one remember us. Although the setting is pretty general, it is well played out and the silent moments in our flashbacks put more emphasis on the feelings you're trying to convey.
The combat flow feels natural and it is executed brilliantly. The basic rock-paper-scissors weakness element feels good and somewhat prevents 'press attack to win' situations. Since MP is so important in combat, I liked how you are able to choose what bonuses you gain after battle, however I mostly set it to recover MP and left it there.
There are little to no errors in the game. Brilliant work! The only typo I found was that both blessings of life and mana had the same description when selected after you have obtained four blessings and must use or discard one. The typo was not present (at least I didn't notice it) when using the blessing in battle.
I played the game for two runs of levels 1 - 10. The difficulty felt rather good, although after learning on how to play, I felt like it was a bit on the easy side. I guess I lucked out on the RNG as I got Rain of Pain (the AoE arrow attack) rather early on in both runs (I only learned that you lose unlevelled skills after beating level 10) and most normal combats changed to "take hits, use skill and win, recover HP and MP as result" after that. The bosses were a tad different, but the patterns were a bit too predictable. However, it's all good as this allows for more newcomers to pick up your game and not suffer with balancing issues.
I really enjoyed this game, and for me personally it is already a winner. (although I said the same about LuizCubas' game last year) Great job, hadecynn, and thanks for making this!