Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

• PRESENTATION
  

  Graphics are RTP. Mapping has some pretty standard problems that most new mappers have difficulties with - making large empty maps that are boring and bland, using some tiles wrong, cliff heights, etc.

  The sound is pretty standard. Nothing really gives you much in the way of atmosphere, but it didn't jar at all so that's good too. The music is used well in the scenes they're used in but only a few stood out as good use. It all fit, but it wasn't exactly memorable.

  Writing has spelling and grammar errors, as well as punctuation issues. The dialogue is stilted and the characterisation is pretty bland. Slow text is always a bad thing.

  The story was basically non-existent. There was an intro that led to the main character growing up with hatred towards his uncle and some other guy but then suddenly he was in some guild or something and doing odd jobs. There really wasn't any explanation as to why he was with this group or what happened in the interim.

  Some passability issues exist. There were some menu issues where you couldn't see information you needed to know in the item use scene - notably, who has what status effect and MP bars.

  GAMEPLAY
  Gameplay consists of battles and puzzles and typical jRPG interactions.

  You can grab a bunch of different characters to join you but from what I saw, they all had the same skillset as the main character and while some of those skills were interesting ideas (the no-turn-use healing skills were great), it was always better to just spam attack instead of using any of the damage skills. The damage from attacking was miles better.

  There's a day and night system. Not sure why. It didn't seem to have any affect on the gameplay.

  Items gave percentage heals.

  I got stuck on the puzzle, not only because there was no hints as to what to do, but also because a bat flew onto a switch as I pushed a boulder and it made it so that I couldn't push that boulder the right direction any more.

  ENGAGEMENT
  Percent heals are always bad when not supplemented with a hard amount, or at least 35% at the lowest amount. You have to use at least three items per person if you're injured below half health and that's not great.

  The game was going so well until I hit the dead wall that is the boulder switch puzzle as noted above. By that point I was at the hour mark and a lot of little annoyances made me stop playing - there was no real story being told that I could discern, I didn't like the character/s and fighting the same enemy over and over is beyond boring.

  THEME
  The theme is probably revenge. Pity the story and gameplay does nothing to support this up to the point I saw.

  26/80