The second map freezes on an event where more enemies appear. It happens when I have most of the party out of the prison. Some of the enemies that appear are guards for the main palace place.
Zion is a reference to the land of Israel -- the country of the Jewish people. Perhaps, when it comes to progressive movements, I'm too much of an old guard, but being a Zionist, in the 19th and 20th century meant being in favour of the creation of a Jewish country. Given the rampant antisemitism of the times, I can't say I would have disagreed. Einstein was a famous Zionist. While I understand that current day Israel is a contentious topic, having the "Church of Zion" commit atrocities in a swords & magic fantasy setting --often associated to the medieval period-- is risky. You seem to associate the name to "Crusade-era Medieval Europe" and "American Christofacism", but to me, Zion is associated to Judaism. This is what I mean by Zion being a heavy name.
The story interested me though I skipped the intro
Level design was fairly basic
Specific things (AKA nitpicks):
To me, there's a dissonance between the title screen graphic (a map), the title "Dark Age of [...]" and the upbeat music.
I'm not a fan of liberal swearing.
In this instance, it doesn't contribute much and might otherwise discourage people who would be interested in your game
Is "fuck" even something people would say in your world? For example, in highly religious times, most swears were sacrilegious in nature.
Personally not a fan of pronouns being first.
I'd order things like "Suffers from amnesia. He/him." Or integrate it as "He suffers from amnesia."
Tutorial is done in 2 turns. Mage has no shot of seeing combat without a miss occurring. Zeb the zebra is pretty strong.
Zion is a heavy name; I wouldn't name a fictional country after it.
The battle transition gets a little obnoxious on repeat, perhaps due to the contrast between sand and black.
Map 1
There's really nothing pushing you this map.
You can take it at your own pace and the enemies patiently wait for you.
The boss not moving but having a move range was confusing.
The village where the boss is sitting is marked as "Empty"
On that I agree! I also tried to find a line where Aquila mentions having a son. He does talk about some other man, Artox, having a son named Maestus: "No, he was slain by his own son, Maestus..."
But if it's another line, and you can find/remember it, that would be appreciated! It is probably misappropriated. Aquila is indeed supposed to be young, so you're not quite off when you say he looks 17!
Wolfheart's 3rd line of dialogue reads, as copied from the dialogue, "and Mitter has come though his horse has since died.", not "through his horse has died." Does that make more grammatical sense?
Out of curiosity, when you mention you didn't stick through halfway, at which point did you stop playing? Like, what was the last level you beat? And finally, if you can bother to recall, what level was your highest level character?
This is pretty much standard fair fire emblem. Not that there is anything wrong with that. The game is plenty of fun even though it cruelly lacks polish. The game has some parts left untranslated. There are more English mistakes than I can count. Some portraits that were clearly made with transparency had the transparency removed, leaving white pixels here and there... I think the base game has potential, but more time needs to be spent getting everything on point.
The first level was brutal, but I managed to clear it after giving it some thought and testing things out. It could use some tuning. The second level was much easier. Thankfully, as there are no saves. Otherwise, this is such a creative and great entry that has so much personality to it. I wonder just how far one could push the card game system.
This admittedly isn't my type of game and after several attempts, I gave up on the final boss (though I sometimes launch the game again for another try).
The core idea is interesting. I would like to see further innovation to better flesh out the idea of bullet hell SRPG; right now it feels like more weight has been placed on the bullet hell than SRPG. Adding unit proficiencies could add some strategic depth and customization. There may be a limit to this, as longer levels of chess-boxing could become exhausting.
Something which isn't always thought of, but the audio cues were excellent. I exclusively depended on them to solve certain patterns.
