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 It's even in the store banner. Oh god, what am I doing Well this is going to suck Indeed, I've recently started playing some RPGmaker games that I had floating around my steam account. And while there are some that do an impressive job of creating a world and believable characters, there are some that are.. well... bad. Victim of Xen is one of these games. First and foremost, it only uses the RTP packages for graphics. That means that there are no custom tilesets, no custom character sheets and no custom portraits. So you'd think that would mean that the writing would be stellar? Yeah nah. You will find out literally within the first fives minutes of the quality of writing that you'll be getting. So why are you picking this? Because I can. Also because the "developer" is pretty thin-skinned about this product. I'll get into why that is when we reach the problem elements but that certainly won't take long at all. What is an RTP? The RPGMaker RTP is essentially the default graphics, music and animations that come with the creator. Generally speaking, only using it is not a good sign of quality. Why giving them a hard time for using the RTP? You've gotta use what you've got Because RPGMaker VX Ace comes with a Character Generator built in and there is no lack of character sheet generators available on the net. Fact is if you're using the basic poo poo for all of your main characters then that's a problem, I wouldn't be giving them as much poo poo for it if they just used it for NPCs. Why the Steam Icon? Because it sells on steam for three bucks. On Spoilers While I doubt that anyone is lining up to play this, I'd prefer people to be shown Victim of Xen first hand. Once we hit where you want to talk about then that's cool but until then just hold it in. Our Cast  Will We know nothing about him except for he likes to sleep in and help people.  Will-but-now-he-has-boobs After an encounter with Xen, Will has the added character trait of now having girly parts. Doesn't change him/her from not having very much going for them.  Kael He seems to be a job broker but other than that I've got nothing. Is now a butterfly  Granny Get crunk all day everyday.  Xen She's a bit of a jerk. However we don't know very much about her yet.  Markus Markus is pretty shifty in my eyes. UPDATES! Update 1: In which we are told nothing and are forced to make our own assumptions. Update 2: The mail always goes through Update 3: Yes being turned into a butterfly is an analogue to trans issues, please don't kinkshame OTHER JUNK! quote:"More importantly, our game features body-changing. Some beautiful goon delivering the smack down on the developer Testekill fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Jan 6, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2014 07:36
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Part One: In which we are told nothing and are forced to make our own assumptions. The most original thing that we're probably going to see is the developers credits. Yep.  Holy poo poo, even the title screen is RTP. I know, limited by what you've got but how difficult could it be to find something anime-esque within the public domain?   Why hello Professor Oak, yes I do know this this world is filled with Pokemon. Although seriously, this is all a tutorial for how to use the menus and how to interact with things? Why does this need to be told at the start of the game when you could have the tutorial fairy somewhere to the side that you can talk to.   Oh don't tell me.  Oh they did, they pulled the hero oversleeping cliche. Not even 10 seconds into the game proper and we get something that was popularised with one of the most highly regarded RPGs of all time which was done to death within a couple of years. Also, standing on the bed instead of using the unconscious sprite because why not. Still has the whole problem with him sleeping in his armor but little steps.   So this is our bedroom. Grannys bedroom is on the other side of the hallway. But let's clean up this wine bottle that someone spilled. Now you can interact with most things. That would be applauded if Will would say something descriptive. However for example, if you examine a pile of wood then you'll get a dialogue box that says wood. Which just makes me ask what is the point. So they put in some effort there but it's entirely misguided.  Examing our cupboard gives us food. Food restores MP because why wouldn't it? Well, let's go downstairs to meet with Granny.  Oh hey Tutorial Fairy, why are you here?  No I really do not require a tutorial.  Grandma, why are you wearing a monocle? You don't seem eccentric enough for that. Don't tell me you forgot about that job, 'cause Kael's outside waiting on you!Who is Kael? What job are you talking about?  Granny want's to get crunk.  So welcome to the town of the unknown name. It does have a name but you actualy either have to talk to a random NPC or walk out of and back into the town in order. To quote one steam review "it's the first RPG that begins without a story of any kind. No intro, no set-up, nothing to indicate who you are"   :Why do you always have to be late for everything? Why are you always so early?Will isn't good at this whole sass thing.  Oh it's that job that we have to do. That I still have no idea what it is all about.   So here is the pub. It does publike stuff such as selling food and enabling drunken grandmothers.   I don't know what they're talking about. Remember what the review said? No story, no intro, no set-up. Also, grammatical errors within the first five minutes.  Xile has hot chicks, good to know. Also what is Xile?  So above us is the weapon shop. We start with no money or weapons which is a minor problem.  Okay, I've been harping on about it all update but if you come into the game then you have no idea what the hell any of this stuff is. Would it have hurt for him to say "You know Gryvan to the north east? Jobs there generally pay much better."  Might as well do whatever this old bloke needs.   Two questions. Why do you have a gigantic hole in your floor and why does a random old man have a portrait? That is probably a minor gripe but as a RPG player it's really jarring for people other than major/recruitable characters to have portraits.  The geezer doesn't have anything to steal so we'd best jump down the hole. Here's another oddity that I'd like to point out. Why not have you climb down a well to get under his house? The old man is living with a seriously OH&S hazard and it makes what's down there hella confusing .  You'll see emoticons a lot. It's like they're not using different portraits or animations to show emotions or reactions.  Our hero is stupid enough to jump down a hole without a way to climb back up or a light source. Although it's bright enough that the walls can give off shadows without any light source.  Yeah, that'll be super helpful when I'm done in here. So we're going to head west from here. It's mostly just to show something after you take care of whatever is down here.  It's nice how the wall just kind of juts out in the top left corner like that. Almost like the guy was using a paint tool.  An Imp is the critter causing the disturbance here. Although I should honestly be more preoccupied with the pit of blackness under the old mans house that must lead to the underworld or something.  It runs to the cave just across the gap so we leap across and pursue it.  Is that a loving dinosaur skeleton? Or just a crocodile? And of course how did this all get down here when the only way down from the surface is through the hole in the geezers floor or it would have to come up from the crack of darkness.   I think the critter is confused. And soon to be deceased.  The fight starts and the little poo poo will always get the first hit. This is a problem if you've had bad luck with random encounters as that means that you could theoretically be killed before the battle properly starts. Thankfully the Imp isn't too strong.  Double hit lets you attack twice. This is good in that the attack is naturally stronger than your normal attack and it's bad because accuracy and evasion is borked so everyone is about as capable as a first level D&D character.  But I'm hitting for about 70 damage a pop so the Imp dies pretty quickly. It has about 250 health so two double hits or a couple of turns of wailing on it with basic attacks will kill it.  It turns to bones afterwards which yield a surprise.  Drinks are your basic health restorative. No clue where the Imp was keeping it but it's probably best not to ask these questions.  Nothing on this set sadly. But I for one would love to know what's the deal with it.  So here is what I was setting up when we first came in here. If you exit and enter out of the left path then you can't leave.  You have to head down the right path so that the codger will find a rope which will let you climb out. Why? Because why not.   Why though?  Whatever, doesn't matter got paid. Now I'll be able to buy some gear.  I've already bought armour and weapons. You'll see why next update. No thanks to you. I thought you were a recruitable character since your character set and portrait are for the default cleric character. But nope, you left me high and dry down there. Yeah ..... Oh Right. *Gives Kael 25 gold*Now I don't have enough for a military sword unless I pawn Grannys wine. As I said before though, I preplanned and did some stuff beforehand that I will explain in another update   Not now, something original could be happening.   Oh no, it's the default Witch charset! Cower before her generic brand of meanness.  I don't know what that is. Also she is from a place called Opress, might as well call her Villain McBadGuy  Shock and/or Horror!  Now someone is speaking for me.  Or not. Seriously, would a loredump have hurt? You're just hitting me with places that I don't know of and don't care of.  I do kinda like how she's just all "That's cute"   Don't know, probably don't care. Seriously game, tell me what all this poo poo actually is.    Okay dude, look at how many guards she has. She is probably the main villain, has bodyguards and we're just a PC and three NPCs. It's far too early to be taking her on.   The witch is the titular Xen. We don't know what her deal is and who her father is. Things just happen and we're told names.   Welp, home village is about to be torched and everyone killed. Way to go boys, you did good.   That has to be one of the saddest hexes that I've ever seen. Are you talking back to me? Look, you can't just co- Boom! Butterflied! Clearly Will doesn't echo my sentiments.   Well games over guys. I can't believe that they're selling this for three bucks.  Oh... dammit. Guess it's still on.  If only. Something's different. Oh no.  I just pray to god that this isn't going to be fetishised.
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Nov 25, 2014 07:37
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Of course it will be. This poo poo never happens but that it is.
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Nov 25, 2014 07:52
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I thought this was an LP where you were victimised by a playthrough of World of Xeen.
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Nov 25, 2014 08:31
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I thought it was a fangame where a guy complained about how lovely HL1's Xen was. Man though, for generic placeholder characters, those dialogue portraits look really nice. Makes me regret not grabbing RPG Maker when it went on sale.
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Nov 25, 2014 09:29
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Granny knows how to cope with being in a lovely RPG. Drink and forget.
Combat Lobster fucked around with this message at 09:45 on Nov 25, 2014 |
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Nov 25, 2014 09:40
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Kingdom of Oppress! Can't you see how daring that is? He's breaking the old JRPG cliché: kingdoms are good, empires are evil.
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Nov 25, 2014 10:37
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After having binged on a bunch of actually well-made RPGMaker games lately (curiously very few of them were in English, hmm) I cannot wait to see the worst. Well, okay, maybe it isn't the worst, I think that might fall to one I tried to make myself that I scrapped years ago. Lack of effort and all.
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Nov 25, 2014 10:39
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Testekill posted:I just pray to god that this isn't going to be fetishised. Well, gender-swapping sometimes works in comedy, like Ranma 1/2. Of course, that also requires the game to have actual characters with recognizable personalities.
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Nov 25, 2014 15:05
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I've played around with RPG Maker quite a bit, so I recognize every single one of these graphics. At least the room design isn't irredeemably terrible. Will looks pretty enthusiastic about his gender swap.
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Nov 25, 2014 15:46
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Oh boy, this looks like a loving treat. At least it's only being sold for 3€, I guess. Wait, no, that means this game also does the 1$ = 1€ poo poo, so that's another strike against it. I think I recall having said something in the Unterwegs in Düsterburg thread about RPG Maker games living and dying with their custom assets - while the story can carry a game, the art in particular is what's going to make your game stand out. This... yeah. This couldn't stand out less if it loving tried. It could almost work as a parody if done by a much better writer, it feels so cliched. Not cliche as in "standard RPG", but cliche as in "bad RPG Maker game".
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Nov 25, 2014 16:07
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I actually approve of not dumping info in unnatural conversations. The whole "Lad, your best friend and employer Kael Cursebait who you have known for all your young life of thirteen years is outside the front door, which as you know is to the south of the hallway in this building" thing is irredeemably piss-poor writing. People just don't think that way, let alone talk that way. To paraphrase the mighty Robert McKee, exposition is ammunition, not conversation. Of course, it looks as if the writer here has just stumbled onto non-expository dialogue as a form of utter laziness, as generally, if there's info the player/reader will need, you want to make sure that it's available. Just, y'know, conveyed naturally rather than vomited all over you. SSNeoman posted:Man though, for generic placeholder characters, those dialogue portraits look really nice. Makes me regret not grabbing RPG Maker when it went on sale. Yeah, they're surprisingly decent. I assume they're the only thing which is.
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Nov 25, 2014 16:26
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I can't decide what's better; the obvious bad guy faction being called Oppress or the obvious good guy faction being called Unite Them.
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Nov 25, 2014 20:27
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^ I would argue that the combination of the two is greater than the sum of its parts. Oh boy, lovely RPG maker games!  Can't get enough of them. Holy poo poo the character portraits have improved since Alex's days. But... at the same time I think the sprites got more deformed than they used to be, so it kinda clashes. Testekill posted:RTP packages I also enjoy RPG games.  Ghostwoods posted:I actually approve of not dumping info in unnatural conversations. The whole "Lad, your best friend and employer Kael Cursebait who you have known for all your young life of thirteen years is outside the front door, which as you know is to the south of the hallway in this building" thing is irredeemably piss-poor writing. Yeah, this is one thing I can't blame them for. Fortunately, there's plenty of things I can blame them for, including that dungeon. Holy poo poo it's dull. And that battle background is a step down from what they had in RM2K. What happened here? Edit: And what's up with the resolution? Does it run at like 544x416, in a 640x480 window? 
vilkacis fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Nov 25, 2014 |
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Nov 25, 2014 20:53
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vilkacis posted:
Except he utterly failed in the other direction. So yeah, you can. Hell Testekill rephrased one of those lines to sound like someone would actually say and convey the information you'd need.
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Nov 25, 2014 21:18
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vilkacis posted:
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Nov 25, 2014 21:19
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vilkacis posted:
The RTP has well-drawn backgrounds you can mix and match to make your own unique battle background if you want. This guy just hit the little checkbox that makes backgrounds be blurry versions of the map they were just in. Gloomy Rube fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Nov 25, 2014 |
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Nov 25, 2014 21:50
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I am personally feeling very invested in the tale of war between "Unitem" and "Opress". I seriously did not see that last bit coming, this game got worse on a shot by shot basis. Truly a cautionary tale for anyone with a copy of RPGmaker. I cannot wait to see how it snowballs from here.
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Nov 25, 2014 22:28
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Coolness Averted posted:Except he utterly failed in the other direction. So yeah, you can. Hell Testekill rephrased one of those lines to sound like someone would actually say and convey the information you'd need. I don't know about where you live, but people I talk to don't tend to mention "Location, to the Direction" in casual conversation. And it's not as if the direction tells you anything about why you should care about it anyway. I mean you could certainly make it informative in a less obvious way, but it's also perfectly fine for non-essential NPCs to make small talk without infodumping, especially if the character you're playing as can be assumed to know this poo poo already. The purpose of mentioning Location isn't necessarily to tell you all about it, but to show there's a bigger world and make it seem more alive. Grilox posted:The RTP has well-drawn backgrounds you can mix and match to make your own unique battle background if you want. So it does. The swirl still looks weird, though - like a half-finished transition.
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Nov 25, 2014 22:57
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What RPG Maker games do you guys recommend, anyway? Aside from Demon King Chronicle, Helen's Mysterious Castle, and Visions & Voices.
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Nov 25, 2014 23:43
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Exit Fate is pretty good.
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Nov 25, 2014 23:52
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vilkacis posted:I don't know about where you live, but people I talk to don't tend to mention "Location, to the Direction" in casual conversation. And it's not as if the direction tells you anything about why you should care about it anyway. I think the problem is more that every character name drops a bunch of fantasy stuff and nothing has context. This is pretty quickly off putting. You can sneak these things in if you give more context or at least have some kind of plot lined up where people are motivated to figure things out. The way the characters talk here is just an info dump with no real info. With no broader context, nothing they say has meaning.
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Nov 26, 2014 00:03
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I saw this on my Steam recommendations and I almost bought it for $3 because hell, what's $3 for a lovely stream game? I'm looking forward to seeing where this masterpiece of a plot is headed. 
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Nov 26, 2014 00:09
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Tallgeese posted:What RPG Maker games do you guys recommend, anyway? Exit Fate is pretty fantastic, it's pretty heavily inspired by the Suikoden series but it uses that to its advantage by building it's own world and story. I'd also suggest Skyborn. While the store page says that the setting is steampunk-esque, it doesn't do a ton with it outside of the main character being an airship mechanic and building some things. But the majority of the art is pretty high quality, it has custom animations and the main cast are pretty decent characters. It is fifteen bucks which is a little steep but I got it in a bundle and really have enjoyed the amount of time that I've put into it. It's super short though so that's the biggest criticism that I have of it.
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Nov 26, 2014 00:16
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I've played Skyborn myself, and while it isn't really anything special, it does have its moments- a definite B- to B+, depending (though some of the arena fights are a little difficult). That said, Exit Fate is pretty much the epitome of RPGMaker games, insofar as I've found.
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Nov 26, 2014 00:38
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Oh wow. I've almost considered buying this myself at some point, just to see how awful it is. It's already living up to my expectations.
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Nov 26, 2014 00:49
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Skyborn is good and cool, y'all should play it. I don't regret buying it in the least. It does have some dodgy mechanics ("crafting", item weight limits, agro control) and some balance issues, but otherwise it's a solid and enjoyable game.CommissarMega posted:though some of the arena fights are a little difficult Difficult until you realize that enemies are not immune to status effects (especially ones that knock them back in the turn order) so Chaska's status effect moves neuter them completely. Then just have Claret & Alda wipe them from the field with their single target nuke skills. Corwin can also become a god with just one skill and keep the enemies delayed indefinitely with another. The only difficult boss after this is the optional one, since she is immune to almost all status effects and passively buffs her speed every turn (you don't game over if you lose though, and you can try as much as you want). Then again, I never bothered to use my uber items to buff up my accessories because WHAT IF I NEED THEM FOR LATER!? Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 01:18
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Tallgeese posted:What RPG Maker games do you guys recommend, anyway? I really liked an old game called Three the Hard Way. There was an attempted LP of it awhile back but it seems to have died off, but it's a pretty neat RPG maker game.
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Nov 26, 2014 02:04
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Ghostwoods posted:Yeah, they're surprisingly decent. I assume they're the only thing which is. The RTP has some pretty nice enemy/monster art too.
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Nov 26, 2014 02:17
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Seyser Koze posted:The RTP has some pretty nice enemy/monster art too. Oh yeah, some of the monster art is pretty fantastic. If you have to use the RTP then the monsters and parallaxes are the way to go.       Seriously, look who cool this lot are. I could honestly see the third or fifth ones in a Shin Megami Tensei game. Testekill fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 08:27
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Ghostwoods posted:Yeah, they're surprisingly decent. I assume they're the only thing which is. RPGMaker is really a decent good tool for people who are just getting into game design, the problem is that it's meant to just be a start-out aid with the graphics packages and all, you're really supposed to have an artist who works on replacing their assets with your own to give your game its own tone, instead of being instantly recognizable garbage. And that's kind of the problem, it's an easy to use tool with a lot of potential, especially if you know Ruby scripting, and that just makes it too tempting to produce utter poo poo instead. Most people just have the good sense to not publish their poo poo.
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Nov 26, 2014 08:40
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It's like writing stories, every person has a good story in their head somewhere. You just need to get the 100 other lovely stories out of the way first, preferably without the public seeing them.
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Nov 26, 2014 08:56
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SSNeoman posted:It's like writing stories, every person has a good story in their head somewhere. You just need to get the 100 other lovely stories out of the way first, preferably without the public seeing them. Doesn't really hurt if the public does see them, but you shouldn't charge money for it!
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Nov 26, 2014 09:13
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"So I'm from this kingdom and you're all ours now." "Yes, we're part of the alliance." "Right, so there's this war on and--" "LIKE gently caress WE'RE HELPING YOU.  "
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Nov 26, 2014 11:51
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I thought that I'd point out that the entire first update was less than ten minutes. Technically speaking, it could be less than five since I pissfarted around for a couple of minutes raising money.Glazius posted:"So I'm from this kingdom and you're all ours now." That's something really odd. So they're happy being a town in buttfuck, nowhere (Xen calls it amazingly distant after all) in the alliance but they don't want to be a town in buttfuck, nowhere that is part of the kingdom proper. It really would have helped this scene if the town mayor confronted her about this and she took him out. Have him complain about Oppress taxing them or some poo poo and refusing to let the town (I'll reveal its stupid name in the next update) be actual citizens. And I dunno, raise concerns that Oppress would treat them like second class citizens and there you have a reason for them to not want to be part of this poo poo. It's not original but this game isn't going to have that happening too often either. Just give us something other than Xen doing what she wants because of reasons. Or even better, establish a status quo that can get trashed after like 20 or 30 minutes. Let us get to know Will and Kael so that we feel bad about what happens to them. I'm not talking about taking as long as Suikoden V did but the LP of the original by Thanatos Mazus took six updates for poo poo to fall apart for Tir.
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Nov 26, 2014 13:30
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The game could have done better by maybe have our introduction to the characters be Will and Kael on a mission together, in medias res, so to speak, making their escape or whatever and meeting back up together in town before calling it a night and maybe letting you go around town and talk to people who are your known neighbors instead of forcing you down an old mans toilet.
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Nov 26, 2014 14:10
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People are talking about good RPGMaker games on steam but nobody's brought up Over The Moon? I can't be the only one who liked that game, can I? It was really, really good 
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Nov 26, 2014 14:55
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Looks like Will got Testekilled. Lovely trainwreck, will watch until flames get too hot and the bullshit plot rears its ugly head. Probably.
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Nov 26, 2014 15:00
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UmbreonMessiah posted:People are talking about good RPGMaker games on steam but nobody's brought up Over The Moon? I can't be the only one who liked that game, can I? It was really, really good I will vouch for it, it just slipped my mind for the time. I would recommend some others, but I think if not the language barrier would stop people, the content might be a discouragement. Which isn't bad, but not for the squeamish.
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Nov 26, 2014 15:05
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Mordaedil posted:I will vouch for it, it just slipped my mind for the time. And then of course there is the Laxius Force saga. Don't check them out unless you want to feel skeevy as hell. Just ask FirstAidKite what I'm talking about.
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Nov 26, 2014 15:17
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