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Battle Gem Ponies

A super-powered, shapeshifting pony RPG. · By YotesMark

Feedback/Small review

A topic by EML Games created 57 days ago Views: 72 Replies: 1
Viewing posts 1 to 2
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Hi. I just recently bought the game (kind of late to the party) and I thought I would share some feedback and I hope this is good place for that.

Graphics are brilliant

I find that graphics wise the game is pretty good; the ponies are well designed and animated. Not really a My Little Pony fan but rather a Pokemon fan, but still found some favorites from your game (Poni-Bot and Primcess). Overworld, although I find the "Arrival Story" overworld kind of small, is very is also very pleasant and pretty - I think you nailed a good retroish style that is good without being an exact copy of something else (like Pokemon).

Battle system is engaging - familiar but not samey

Battle system is also working really well; kind of similar to Pokemon, but I still kind of need to be on my toes and make some guess work to succeed. Double typed attacks are nice but I find it hard sometimes to figure out how effective double type attacks are against certain double type ponies as there are so many simultaneous type match ups. Also I have to say that concepts behind some of the attacks are pleasantly innovative (like the "Wire Whip"). I kind of wish there was at least a local PvP (online PvP on the other hand is understandably very difficult to do so no sweat if do not have it).

Audio is... mixed

There are couple good tracks in the game and SFX is fine, and it is not like other music tracks are bad, but I feel that the music as of style and instrumentation is very inconsistent. I mean, some are these chiptune tracks, but some are these orchestral things and the rest in a strange in between. Also the volume levels also feel like they jump around a lot. I hate to say it so but it feels kind of hodge-podge musically. Maybe the game would benefit if the tracks would be remixed/arranged with consistent sounds and/or virtual instruments and the volume levels adjusted - not that they would need to change a lot compositionally, right now they just sound like they come from different places.

But as I said there few very good tracks. I have heard the regular pony tamer battle theme years ago and it still works. But what really got me was the Crystal Stable theme. I mean to redo what is basically a version of a Pokemon Center which has so iconic theme and nail it with completely original music that is both brilliant and fits perfectly to the scene... I think that is the musical a high point for the game. Definitely my favorite track in the game.

By the way, sorry for all the Pokemon comparisons ^^;

Menus are not the most intuitive

They are not like terrible but they are kind of clunky and should be thought out more. On a similar note - and I have seen this also with other small Unity games - is that you kind have to constantly move between using the keyboard and mouse; for overworld the keyboard only is best, while for the pause menu and battles only mouse seems to work well. Talking of course from PC point of view but I think that committing more to a single control scheme would make the experience much more fluid.

All in all... keep up the good work

It is kind of hard to give exact score, partly because the game without the DLCs seem kind of small and incomplete. But with more development I can totally see that this will turn out to be a good game. Waiting to see the new developments and DLCs in the future.

(Sorry for a long post)

Developer

Love to see such detailed feedback!
Basically reaffirming the criticisms we've made internally talking about this game every day. We really want to address all we can in a timely manner, one seasonal update at a time. 
And you're spot on about the music thing. We basically have 3 volunteers with completely different styles all contributing different tracks. (And one of them quit earlier this year to go do his own thing.) Best we can do there is have more collaboration from the start with the next game. Get some standard pipeline and shared library stuff going. Or just pay one musician to handle the whole thing and put some serious work week hours into the OST.

(Thanks for the long post, it helps us see exactly what countless other players are probably thinking but not telling us.)