Castle Paradox

[Ronin Catholic]

Densetsu no Okami is now ready to be torn apart by my adoring public. All the demos before this one probably should have been marked "in production," but that can't be undone now.

I'm very open to criticism. I won't necessarily act upon everything brought up, but I will listen. I want to know, especially, if any of my enemies really need an AI tweak or stat boost. And it wouldn't kill me to add a few more NPCs.
_________________
"I didn't start the flame war;
I don't know what you thought here
'Twas that way when I got here"

"I didn't start the flame war;
I can't understand a word you're saying
nor the game you're playing~"

[Newbie_Power]

Alright. I'll give it a shot. As long as it isn't another joke game with too much author commentary I'll be more than happy to play it.


EDIT: Oh, gee willikers! I must have mistaken Nintendo Quest for a joke game because of the intro. This is the exact same intro, author commentary and all. I thought short and to the point, NES style, was the goal here?

My first suggestion is that, instead of having a long commentary at the beginning of the game telling us from an author's perspective about the races and world and such, have NPCs tell you instead. That's what NPCs are for.

EDIT 2: Alright. I beat Elloel. It doesn't seem like as much of a joke game now with the intro describing the lineage (though I didn't get much farther after that yet. I'm making edits as I go along). The first part of the game threw me off last time, though, especially the boss background.

EDIT 3: I played towards the end of the demo. The game is a bit button holdish for leveling up and getting silver off of the basic random encounters outside (which I'll get to you in a moment as to why I ended up scourging for silver in the first place), but you've at least made offensive magic necessary for fighting the more challenging battles in the game and didn't have more than two enemies for most encounters except for rare encounters or a boss. This game is an extremely basic RPG with level up principles, but it is a well tuned one so far!

The story... It is obviously parodying the cliche, basic aspects of old school RPGs so I have no problem with that.

Now then... Here are my complaints.

1) Make it more clear what kind of stat gains your equipment gets! Had I known some weapons emphasize accuracy instead of attack power, I would not have wasted precious money on them, because, in all honesty, I haven't actually missed once with the Copper Axe despite the accuracy decrease it gives. Same goes for Armor (I actually stuck with the balanced armor between Evade and Defense, IIRC).

2) Diversify the characters a bit. Have Wolf learn offensive spells at later levels than Zera, and/or possibly make Wolf's spells single target only (which leads me to point out... Zap doesn't divide damage when spread, as far as I noticed).

3) Basically all of the first part of the game, from the author commentary to the map being limited to a single screen. Just... This part seriously needs to be spread out a bit more and NPCs need to be used to describe the theme of the world instead of the Author describing how he came to create his world out of the blue. I didn't even realize there was more to the game than this when I last downloaded it until I actually learned through reading your updates that there was.
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

[Ronin Catholic]

1) Done.

2) Done. Wolf now learns attack spells less quickly. And thanks for finding that problem with Zap. It's been fixed now.
I'm not going to mess with the focus/spread system for my attack spells unless it is somehow shown to simply not work.
Low-level attack spells are generally used at first to kill off random enemies in one or two hits, where normal attacks would take two to five; or else they're used to cause the same approximate damage as a basic attack, but to a larger number of enemies.
Second-tier attack spells are usually used for taking out large enemy formations. They do decent damage and spread without division.
Third-tier spells are focused; since these spells are generally only used against bosses, I see no particular reason why they should spread. That just makes them clones of the second-tier attack spells, rendering them useless.

3) I've fixed that, too. Or at least made it a little better. The Dark Lord now takes his job more seriously, as evidenced here:




Also, the game now has three treasure chests(all in the same room).
_________________
"I didn't start the flame war;
I don't know what you thought here
'Twas that way when I got here"

"I didn't start the flame war;
I can't understand a word you're saying
nor the game you're playing~"

[Newbie_Power]

Alright. That sounds pretty good. I hope it wasn't too much trouble.
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

[Ronin Catholic]

It was hardly any trouble at all(though CUSTOM seems to take about five minutes each to lump and unlump a game on my flash drive). I'm just always glad to make my games more enjoyable.
_________________
"I didn't start the flame war;
I don't know what you thought here
'Twas that way when I got here"

"I didn't start the flame war;
I can't understand a word you're saying
nor the game you're playing~"