Thanks for making this game, having a good time so far.
I'm currently just about to start Ayn's quest, but I just thought now would be a good time to share some thoughts, not a review as such, just some feedback for you that you can use or discard however you wish.
First of all it's a cracking effort and is very faithful (warts and all) to the original despite the MZ rtp used throughout. Have to admit it's a small stroke of genius on your part to utilize MZ stock for the project - the mix of fantasy and sci-fi assets are PERFECT for a PSIII fangame/remake.
My favourite moment so far was when I first heard the battle music change when I got down to the last enemy. Holy smokes that was good! It was one of my most loved mechanics from the original and I was happy to see it make a return here. Did you use a plugin for that or was it tied to battle events?
One beef I have is that for every melee attack, a special animation is played like a spell or ability is being used and is it to be fair a bit jarring and slows up the battles a lot. I think one QoL feature would be to remove those JUST for melee attacks, I think techs and special it would be fine for. IIRC there is an option to remove it in the settings - if my assumption is correct and you are using the VisuStella stuff for MZ.
Other than that it's hard to find fault unless of course I were to pick anything that is at fault that comes from the OG itself LOL. I love the fact there are no criticals or misses in combat as per the OG and laughed hard when Wren came naked into the party just like in the OG, I even fell for it by not buying his gear in Hazatak prior to recruiting him xD.
Incidentally I did plan on doing a remake of PSIII myself in MZ and was out to refamiliarize myself with the story by playing the original but then I saw yours and thought let's give this a go and see if playing a faithful remake in MZ will help move the game along quicker by having better movement etc and it does a great job of that. Honestly, I have a love/hate relationship with the OG. For me, the story was ahead of it's time with a lot of politics akin to a watered down Game of Thrones and is really cool along with the generation mechanic. But honestly, the OG's pacing with the snail-like movement speed, high encounter rate and endless backtracking knocks the stuffing out of me sometimes.
That was the plan but now I have played yours and also the cool one by Lys that covers the first generation with the fleshing out of the gameplay but not as faithful to the original as yours, I think another fan remake of this game would probably be pushing it. I think I may just do a fanfic with some of my original characters set in the same universe, maybe a few hundred years after the inital Laya/Orakio war possibly?
That being said, do you have any advice for me? I plan to use MZ RTP tilesets, but then rip and reformat the graphics from the Japanese RPG Tsukuru games for the sprites and battlers, I plan to make it sideview like Final Fantasy with animated monsters etc which will be a lot of work.
Can I ask you about damage formulae? The default MZ pushes more for starting HP at the hundreds and damage in the ten's rather than starter HP in the tens and damage in single digits. Do you just take the original MZ formula and decimalize it? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Anyway, I'll crack on with Ayn's quest and see what's in store for me there. Good job overall and inspiring that the game is almost 100% complete - keep at it!
