itch.io

I'm still playing the game as of now. The sheer complexity of the battle mechanics blew my mind! You managed to make a lot of intricate things work. Some of the things you implemented already were things I was struggling to figure out. And yet it seems that you never used a single plugin! You have my highest praises.

I just noticed that you streamed the game lol. Thanks for giving the second part a chance despite your misread. Rest assured, I read the rules properly.

So, I only self-inserted myself for the sake of battle testing the trialist's skills easier, which is one reason why they're so unbalanced.
The reason why your first fight (Novice Trialist) was easy was because Ari was there, the second one (Skilled Trialist) seemed unfair because the idea was to fight her again after you leveled up a bit.

About how the lady changes into Ari, I meant for that to happen, she's supposed to be skilled with illusion magic, and I put it there just for the fun of it. What I did not expect was for Fleur to change into Erun when you talk to her on the left. As for movement speed,  I meant for it to be a Pokemon kinda deal where you wouldn't run in the house. I see now why this would be a disservice.

Going back to the first part of the game, I will consider making it clear when you've run out of dialogue options. You just kept saying No to the voice and you thought there was going to be something after 7 times lol.

okay thats all

thanks for testing this so extensively! 0_0
not sure what went wrong with the calculations for ari's skills (which are copied from the trialist herself), i feel like i did exactly what you proposed i should do. and yeah i definitely forgot to set the TP to be displayed, sorry
a shame i wouldn't be able to fix this stuff till i buy the software. ill come back to this for your parallax tutorial

fascinating, thanks for the pointers

i actually meant that being to simply make the bridge and not make the island. the traps were quite the hassle, i spent a good time of those 3 days just trying to figure out how to make them work. yes, it did kinda bother me a bit that there was no depth to the puzzles visually. hehe

thanks, man. i took a look at your game, too

that makes me real happy

I won't mention the same things CruelGamer did, so here's my review without repeating what was said.

• Battle
  • If you're going to use a Active Time System without the option to wait, I suggest a tutorial. I'd want some kind of way for me to learn about their movesets. It doesn't help that I needed a full party before going off into the meadows. Though, it's good that each character has a specific role to fill.
  • Moon uses up all her MP with a single Darkness attack, and I didn't bother buying potions. I shouldn't have to rely on those to live.
    
  • Moon and Lila dont have animations for when I select attack, but Ale has ice and Marcus has fire.
    
• Overworld Graphics
  • You put quite some effort in the drawings, gives a new flavor, but the characters look inconsistent from one another. Using Ale as a reference, Moon's head is tiny, and Lila has irises twice the length of everyone else's dot eyes.
  • Ale's grandma has eyes twice as wide as Lila's, which are, again, twice the size of everyone else's eyes.
  • Their walking cycle looks robotic,  especially Lila. She doesn't even sway her arms. Try taking reference from a living body next time.
  • Wait, Lila is supposed to be a monster? She looked like a dark-skinned human in her sprite. Unless the white witch is supposed to be racist? Funny how Ale isn't mentioned.
  • One building is just a giant brick slab, what gives?
• Events
  • Uh oh, someone forgot to place a FadeIn after beating the Witch and Knight. (picked Ale first)
    • Wait, that's the ending?
• Other
  • The music choice is odd. Ale is an ice witch, implying that she is a cold and unfeeling character, yet the music in her house implies that she lives in a happy bustling bedroom.

Great job on using the plugins to their advantage! The music being different is a nice change of pace. I really liked how you used the SV Battlers to create the illusion of third-person battles. Those are also some decent drawings!

Here are some issues:

• Title screen layout needs work, you could learn a little about the rule of thirds and related info about design.
• Don't really like how the trees in the forest dungeon are represented
• Some enemies managed to walk in the wall, check on the layering.
• In the final level, I managed to walk through and into these blue panels and go inside the walls
• Characters in battle could use some aligning. Garrett is taking on the pixels of another sprite on some frames, too. And his hair is miscolored in his idle animation.
• In the credits, no one is credited under Graphics
• Character movesets don't make sense (I played Hard mode)
  • Elrod is a melee unit that somehow has a stronger MAT than ATK with the spear equipped.
  • Elrod has a skill that says deals 20 damage, but it still scales like any other skill.
  • Rane has the same spells as Drago but more, despite him being the healer.
  • Maybe Drago should be given Cure instead of Elrod.
  • Why is Garett the first to get AoE Magic Attacks? The whole party is at level 6 at this point, btw. He even has stronger healing than Drago.
  • Garett overshadows everyone with his moveset being way too diverse and powerful compared to the rest of the party.

Thanks, I had fun here, 4/5

Glad we could understand each other, hope you get much better!

• Direction Fix
  • The guy by the piano needs a Direction Fix
  • Haha, I talk to Joesph from the top and he become a clown?
    
  • Scratch that, you should check on almost all the NPCs if they need this option turned on.
• Battle
  • First off, nice work on the battle system.
  • Just a small opinon of mine, but I would think sucking blood would do more damage than 22.
• Other notes
  • Interesting how Junior makes a Spider-Man reference
  • Look for the "you're"s in the dialogue. Some of them should be "your". Ask for a proofreader's help sometime.
  • There may not be a need to remarks in parentheses unless you're dealing with a system message or tutorial, etc.
  • Joe's chin guard isn't aligned to his face shape.
  • How'd I get to an inn behind the fireplace?

• I wonder if its okay to submit a project made in MV, this is a contest using MZ, after all
• Dialogue needs some serious work in terms of grammar, and punctuation, and as for the shouting guy, some small screen shakes or him jumping could make him "scream louder" so to speak.
• You might wanna turn on the spikes' direction fix only when they can be interacted with using the action key.
• No intro cutscene or some sort of paralogue?
• Very sorry, I didn't feel like staying to play the whole thing...

Notes for review:

• Battle
  • The final battle can be started over and over again lol
  • Also kinda anticlimactic, a cutscene might have served the purpose better than a battle for what it is.
  • A place to heal up would be great too, I was starting every battle with 1 HP ever since I touched the first asteroid without a weapon.
    
• Story reads like an outline or something
  • Setup could use work. The characters seem to do important jobs but its not highlighted well.
• Dialogue
  
  • Lara keeps starting her text in the middle of the screen while everyone else seems to be fine with the bottom part
  • Could use some pauses between sentences or something

• Map design is unnecessarily large
  • The city map is so huge, that it makes no sense, because all I really needed to do was go to the gallery. Maybe design a smaller part of the city for what is necessary next time?
  • I didn't need to walk all over the place just to find Lara back home after meeting with Tony the first time for some reason.
• Music choice could be better.

Still pretty neat for a first game, though! I hope they aren't planning on destroying the sun