grailas's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Epos]

A good classical RPG

As you said yourself, it's an "old school RPG", with a classical turn-based system. It is very obvious that the game has been on its way for quite a while, judging on its overall polished feel and fairly balanced gameplay. I must note that i haven't finished the game yet, i'm currently grinding along the Barubic range. (hintusefirehint)

Using skillpoints instead of rage, adrenaline or whatever works pretty effectively. It is sometimes a bit annoying having a bunch of skillpoints at the end of a battle, and having them reset at the next, but then again, that might end being a bit of an exploit, just charging up on skillpoints before a tough battle.

As some have noted, not being able to know anything about an opponent during battle, having to guess your way through their strenghts and weaknesses might be a little minus (although some opponents were obvious). I'd like if there was a skill or signet that allowed a specific hero to give more intell on an opponent. I think that you don't hang around in one area enough to make it a good aspect; longer time in the different areas would work better with the experimentation IMO.

General nice-to-know info would be good too. It took me quite a while to figure out that name below my current AU meant which month you were in, while being on the main screen. The handling of the game was well explained, but i felt that you were just thrown a bit too quickly into the action, without enough info about the setting.

Nevertheless, the game is really enjoyable, and has a fairly unique feel to it, without looking too much like all the other RPGs out there. So i'm giving it a 5/5, and a 9/10 :)

Oh, and a minor thing i noticed: The Barubic wolves seem to have yellow eyes, but when they attack or get attacked, their eyes blinks blue. I wondered if that is on purpose, or a minor error?

And a general, well pliable info for almost all RPGs: if you can't beat something, then level up! There is no such thing as an impossible opponent in a well-made RPG!

MINTGames responds:

You bring up some excellent points and suggestions in this review. I'll do my best to address a few of them now.

The inability to carry over skill points was a bit of a must in terms of keeping things fair. When you have an easily replenished resource like that, you have to compensate by taking anything earned back from the players to keep them worth something. There are methods to start battles with multiple orbs -- through signets and talents -- but not without a good deal of effort to have that luxury.

The suggestion to delegate the access of enemy health and weakness information to a signet's attributes is probably the best resolution I've heard. There needs to be a trade-off for that sort of thing, and forcing players to make it one of their three signets is a fine trade-off. It's something we might consider moving forward.

There was a good deal of push and pull with how to handle immersion and covering explanation while keeping players from hitting the X in the corner and moving onto something else. Designing an RPG as a free-to-play game that anybody can open or close whenever they want was frankly daunting. It was a battle to be as concise as possible, all while being as deep as possible. Oftentimes, those two goals would butt heads and our final decision would naturally have its detraction. For every line of explanation or every new tutorial window, there was another opportunity for the impatient players out there to give up and move on. We don't have the investment factor that a purchased game has (there's no sense of making your experience worth the money you spent on it), and therefore our audience has nothing to lose by not playing any longer. Streamlining the game for the sake of retaining a larger portion of our audience obviously caused some drawbacks. The story wasn't nearly as deep and involving as I originally wrote it, certain gameplay mechanics were removed or simplified, and some details went generally unspoken for. I think that for the most part we accomplished our goals successfully, but there's always something we could have done better.

Anyway, thanks for playing the game and leaving us this review.

[Buggle Connect]

Funny time-waster :)

I've played this at CC before, and thought it was good back then :)
However, at this moment of the NG-submission, the screen is kinda displaced towards the lower right corner. Fix it quick! ^^

CasualCollective responds:

thanks fixed it

[Poclick]

Sorry but...

... The game ain't loading as it should. After some time with a black screen, some music starts to play, and nothing else happens.
Since i can't play the game, i have nothing to rate. And nothing is zero.

GDSurgeon responds:

Some trouble in submit flash. Now it's all right. Please rate my game again.