itch.io

I look forward to seeing whatever progress you make! The game has great potential, but needs a lot of polishing!

Hey man, so I played your game, and have decided to write a review on it thus far:

First impression

Immediately entering the game, I liked the story book for the intro. However, some of the pictures looked kind of cheaply edited (this being an alpha, however, isn't a big deal).  It wasn't until I spawned in my room that I noticed that the heights of the house were skewed. Some roofs were one tile high, some were too.  An easy fix, but just an annoying mapping error. After interacting with a few NPCs, I noticed the game was littered with spelling and grammar errors. Like, an uncomfortable amount. A lot of the dialog made the characters all feel the same, and that they were generic. Even the playable characters felt generic. These, paired with the broken spawn points for some houses, killed the immersion. Just exploring Hometown, I was tempted to enter the cave where the "Karrah in the Caves" quest is, since there was nothing stopping me. I didn't have any starting gear, or tutorials, or anything. But nothing was stopping me.  Instead, I went back, got my gear, and entered the tombs to kill some rats.

Infinite grinding

Entering the tombs, I fought two rats. Then another two. Then one. Then three. And so on. The rats were ridiculously easy, to the point where I got to level 8 in about 4 minutes by grinding. After the rats were only hitting zeroes on me, I decided to claim my reward.  As soon as I got my first partner, Chrota, we went back to the caves, and hit levels 9 and 8 respectively

Onward, to the plot.

Moving along, we enter the cave to kill a Karrah. The problem here? The slimes are OP. To a point where they were almost a challenge, compared to the rats. ALMOST. If it wasn't for the ridiculous grinding I did, the quest would have ended right there. Get into the basement, and get stoked, cause i'm about to fight my first Karrah! Except, there's no epic music, or anything. Just a normal size sprite. Enter the battle, it's the default mob battle music... Talk about a total let down. Oh well, I kill the Karrah (who was easier than the slimes, btw), and claim my reward. Alright! Time to take on Fort Gragovile!

It falls apart...

On my way to Fort Gragovile, I stopped in a corner to watch a Karrah that was out of bounds. Then, another one approached me, and stared at me. He stared at me and did nothing until me and Chrota swapped places. Why have battles like this in the "world map", when you could easliy use random encounters? If you run from these encounters, you end up at the Hometown gates. Anyway, easy battle, let's continue. Get to the Fort, and I enter the church. And walk through the pews. (Bow down, NPCs, I am your new god). Exploring the fort, i'm able to get Chrota to learn the elemental spells via plot, kicked some cocky guy's ass, stole 2000 G from an NPC, and met an NPC who literally only says "Side quest 105 start". Yeah, exhilarating dialog. Anyway, I talk to Token, get the swords, and immediately fight the bags. Or whatever those things were. I attack one, and my character runs off screen. Oh. Okay then. Beat the bags, and then get told by Token I have to beat the bags. Whoops. Talk again, and complete the quest. Run and get Chrota back, who now has the spells. Between all the grinding and questing, I bought a diamond ring for my character, and a emerald ring for Chrota. With these stat boosts, we became incredibly O.P. 

And now, we break the game.

So with our new elemental powers, talk to Fraxis who tells us to go to the library. Inside, some of the graphics are completely wrong. Like half shelves and such. Even interacting with a wall gave me battle advice. Talked to the guy in the library, talked to Fraxis, walked past him via walking through walls, found the unfinished Monster Arena, and then went upstairs. After battling a couple of Karrah, the quest log stopped updating. Kill the last Karrahs, and talk to Fraxis. Complete the quest, and check the log of where to go next. Looks like my next quest is taking me to "Next Town". What do I do there? I do "next step". Essentially, the quest log isn't completed or entered. But whatever, I continued, got a ton of musical and graphical glitches, as well as broken collisions on almost every map. Got to Fort Ghunim, and got told to "go sail the sea's". Board the boat, and that it. That's the game.

Conclusion:

Seems like a game with an interesting story, and has a ton of potential. The combat with elements, and premise are great. But, with broken maps, dialog, and other factors, this game is nowhere complete as a demo, or even an alpha. Some items don't have descriptions, the map and dialog need major reworking, and for caves and such, you can disable lighting effects. About 50% of the events are broken in one way or another. On top of that,  the collisions were worse than a Bethesda game. With 10 years experience in game development, I'd be glad to help you turn this game into something playable. You can contact me on the RPG Maker discord, my tag being ItsMeDeimos#6031.

I look forward to what this can be, but for now, it's not even in pre-alpha.

Final rating: 4/10