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Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.

Usually when I see an RPG Maker game, I always prepare myself for the eventual "you need something that makes your game stand out from other RPG Maker games in its gameplay" shtick. So imagine my surprise when I prepared for this... only to find you had already done this! While the game itself still has a lot of aspects that clearly make it an RPG Maker game, the use of "ranks and flanks" offers a change in the system norm that I think helps it stand out more. That said, you'll likely find a lot of my advice boils down to "do a thing to make your game feel like it's NOT an RPG Maker game." This is a suggestion I give to every RPG Maker game if it's intended to be sold and earn money. Given that this is a "demo" rather than the full game or just to where you've progressed the game thus far, I'm assuming that's your intent as well. Breaking the RPG Maker feel in all aspects will make your game more appealing, as there are people out there who dislike RPG Maker but do enjoy turn based RPGs.

With that said, let's break down this feedback into individual areas, starting with sound. The sound effects currently in use are the most stock of RPG Maker sounds. I would highly recommend changing them for more unique sounds, perhaps even getting your own sounds made. The music I heard also sounds good. I can't really comment on it as, outside of a few tracks, there's not really "stock RPG Maker music."

Next, visuals. I'm not entirely familiar with the sprites and tiles you used, but some of them I do recognize from other RPG Maker games; particularly the orcs. As such, I'm led to believe that the rest of the sprites are also from some more typical stock assets. Thus, just like the sound effects, I'd recommend either getting assets that are very uncommon or just outright having your own made. The latter would be a better idea. In addition, I'd recommend overhauling the UI to also break the RPG Maker feel. If you want some examples of titles that I feel do a good job breaking the RPG Maker feel, let me know and I'll dig around to find you a few examples.

From here, most of my feedback is actually going to be about flavour. First, the one non-flavour thing: the Wraith boss did nothing at all. Literally, it didn't attack me in any capacity. Once I took out the skeletons, the fight was easy. I'd recommend having the wraith do something that makes it the primary focus, where players want to take it out before the skeletons. Otherwise, the fight becomes trivialized. Along with its own attacks, perhaps it should have the ability to summon new skeletons when there are less than three.

Next, when I went through the character customization at the start I was VERY quick to notice what was going on with "Natures." Now right away, I'm not saying this is a bad idea. I like it a lot. The problem is the terms you're using and how they affect stats. All of the terms are identical to Pokemon natures, and most of the stat changes they provide is also the same. Luckily, this is an easy fix: just use your own terms instead of the same ones Pokemon uses and make the stat alterations more unique. For making your own terms, just turn to a thesaurus. To throw some examples, Sassy can be changed to Saucy or Cheeky, Lonely can be changed to Solitary or Forlorn, and Jolly can be changed to Merry or Happy. This sort of thing can also give you ideas on how to do your own takes on stat changes.

And to go further on the flavour, I would recommend renaming the Blessings. I don't know how your story it set up, but I'll give an idea of what you could do IF your story's design allows it: name the Blessings after friendly deities that exist in your world. So then you create it that each Blessing comes from a deity, with each being designed to make sense with that specific Blessing. I'll use the Blessing I chose, Healthy, as an example. Since the concept of this Blessing is to regenerate health every turn, this could be either a deity of Light, Earth or Water (as these are seen as the typical routes for healing in fantasy worlds). This particular deity would likely be one who is very benevolent and desires to nurture the well being of all people. Those who worship this deity would also likely follow this thinking. You could then include a system where your actions affect the strength of the Blessing. For example, if a player chooses to fight and kill the troll guarding the fungus village or just attacks the plant near the house at the beginning, the Blessing would weaken. Meanwhile, actively being willing to help others right away would make it stronger. This then allows players to define the personality of their character a little more based on who they believe in and thus what Blessing they have. Again, this is only if your story allows for this concept to work. If it doesn't, you'd need to find another way to do it.

I think that's about all I have at this time! I hope to see more of this game in the future!

(+1)

Thanks for the feedback! A lot of the stuff is placeholders for now, but all the music is entirely custom by one of my friends! Sound effects are definitely planned to be updated, and none of the blessings or nature stuff is set in stone as of yet. I definitely think I forgot to implement the Wraith skills for this build of the game haha, I’ll absolutely take your recommendations into consideration!