Delayed reply, but no excuses.
Firstly, I want to thank you for hosting the gamejam, and for playing/reviewing my game.
If you have a VOD, as I missed the stream... It will be very appreciated if you can link it to a reply.
I'm going to answer your question(s)/provide context.
Yes, I do plan to remake the game, it never reached what I envisioned for it. The problem was my skill-set and experience with the engine.
But it's already been 4 years, and that's more than long enough to improve on all fronts.
And yes, lol. The difference between "playing a game" and "reviewing a game" is one you play to have fun, the latter you play to find problems.
0. I'm glad you did enjoy the game to a degree, and thank you for the offer. If I ever do need it, I will remember to reach out.
0/2. So, when originally making the game, I did not know what a "generic RPG Maker" was. Everything was "new" and "it's own style" when making it. Until I really got into the culture and can now agree that my game is indeed as generic as it can be (without the story).
0/3. I have everything (mostly) figured out, this update isn't good enough to show my "full power". Fixing a 4-year-old game was way harder than I thought, lol? Can't really know what will break if I touch something, the problem with working on an already "solidified" game.
1. I've never really hard-tested the basic-attack, so I don't have much to say. But it's probably connected to the plugins I'm using, which use Agility for turn-order, and if I remember right. Attack is usually treated as a "fast attack" in vanilla RPG Maker thus giving it a boost of some sort. This problem would lie with unbalanced Agility, something never properly balanced in this game.
2. I do agree with you with the audio-direction. Basic audio-design, lol? I've tried adding proximity to the fire sounds which really fixed that and made the game sound 100x better, but that destroyed the game in framerate, so I decided on the little time I had to just revert back and keep both sounds as they were.
3. "Chests should always be upgrades" is something I've heard quite a bit throughout the feedback period of this game. There are two reasons why the original didn't do it: I didn't want to make the player OP, and I didn't want to make 100 unique items.
The reason why the update did not fix this was: I did not have time, 2 months was surprisingly not enough to finish the update. And I switched the characters starting items to things that "fit them better" but did not rebalance the chests. So, I kind of made things worse in that regard.
3/2. I can't agree with the shop more than I already do, lol. But I slightly disagree, it would be good to keep a small range of "tiers" in case the player wanted to grind or not before the shop.
But I agree that the first shop, has way too much in stock. But the problem is, there's only like 3 shops? In the current game.
4. Random battles are used so when you "touch" an enemy, it uses that to randomly pick a "troop" for you to fight. Problem is, I found no way to disable this. So, I just made it "very rare" for it to happen, by maxing out the maximum steps needed to trigger one (7000 steps), but Vanilla system does it as 1-7000 steps can trigger one, so the maximum was a band-aid on a bullet-wound.
4 years later though, I have a fix. But had too little time to implement it for the update.
But I do agree with you with how it should have been designed.
5. The maze is an abomination. I wanted to rebuild it, but time constraints... The "arrows" was added because people I know got stuck in the maze... A stupid fix, really.
Why did the maze exist in the first place? The original game, I gave myself a strict deadline. And I "had to" follow it. Even if that meant having this abomination exist.
6. I was sure I gave every weapon a description, but maybe when I got into "grinding mode" I skipped over some without thinking.
I both agree and disagree with you. I believe there should be at least 3-tiers available for purchase (all being an upgrade of some sort), so players who did want to hoard gold before the first shop, would have a little more options.
6/2. The story is what is called "lightning-fast" at its current state. The good? It's not dragged out at all (except a few scenes I can think off...) while the bad, no character development, nothing...
The Queen has then come off as the way I wanted then, so I'm glad I did something right.
"Need to be intimidating, and authoritve as a political leader." is what I imagined her to think.
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So, I do want to know if a VOD is available, if not. I would like to know where you stopped, I want to know what reaction my "plot twist" gave people, if they get that far.
Thank you again for the review, I hope my reply was informative and helped provide context and/or answer questions.
My wishes for a good day to you.