Review for Out School
Okay, so first thing I noticed was that the game title is bugged out and reads #{text.title} which doesn't bode well for the entry. I like the title screen, however I feel like the light particle effects are too much. I am also happy to note that I finally find an entry that has the Synch FPS plugin embedded, so excess frame rates should not prove to be a problem.
The look of the menu reminds me of old SNES classics like Final Fantasy VI or Chrono Trigger. I like that.
In my opinion, having the game use the WASD control scheme and no way to change it is a fatal flaw. Sure, most keyboards allow natural movement via these controls, but I think French keyboards use the AZERTY scheme that becomes inconvient when playing with this scheme. Was there a real reason to move away from the arrow keys or was it just personal preference? If the latter then I hope you can consider re-implementing arrow key movement, and perhaps give the player a chance to rebind the keys as they see fit?
Once the game starts I am already receiving string errors: DANG learned '# {SKILL_ID: 14}!' etc. I also heard that the game suffers from bad grammar, but, honestly, I wasn't aware it was this bad. The game should seriously go through a proper spellcheck by a person that is proficient (or even better if a native speaker) in English. There's also some weird debug-like messages like "Playing footsteps_08_mono" shown briefly.
The main character looks like Kiriyama Rei from Sangatsu no Lion anime, I hope this is just a coincidence. After the short introduction, I enter the menu to see that I'm suddenly accompanied by two others, I think the other is my sister? No idea about this Tuan fellow however. I also noticed that there are no icons for menu categories. (Nevermind, the icons loaded after I closed the menu once and reopened it)
The graphics seem to be a mixture of custom and RTP. The music is somewhat smoothing.
The controls seem to really favor mouse movement. I noticed that you use pixel movement, which is a daring thing to do, but I cannot use the WASD keys to use in anything but cardinal directions. I also noticed that it seems that the mission (quest) log on the left doesn't register mouse clicks below it, rendering mouse movement to the left somewhat moot.
Aha, after talking to some random girl in the courtyard I am familiarized with the game buttons. From there I will finally see an option to change keys. However, my earlier point stands. You should bring this option to the title screen and probably use arrow keys as default.
I entered a fight with a policeman when riding the motorcycle. There I caught a glimpse of the interesting SRPG battle system, however there were issues where my healer could not travel forward as his route was blocked by the tree sprite that had no passability despite logically being so. I also did not find out how to exit the motorcycle and couldn't progress that far into the game. The lack of instructions didn't help either.
Sadly I only noted that the developer acknowledged this in his comment below after trying out the game. Therefore my game time was cut pretty short. In my opinion, having us waiting while playing is a questionable practice and should usually be avoided.