Our Dying World

Version 0.3

Hey all! I've been playing the new release of this game. First off, I want to point out the strongest parts of the game.

-Combat is fun and interesting and the boost, magic, skills, and weakness have all made it way more in-depth than most other JRPGs of this type.

-I'm about an hour and a half into this free demo and all of the flavor text, all the dialogue, and all the storytelling have been really well done. In particular, I love the attention paid to some of the smaller details and one-off pieces of dialogue that if you were to skip through, you'd miss them entirely. Little things like talking to a shopkeeper or innkeeper for the first time and getting to know them or their sense of humor deeply adds to the richness of the story.

-I really wanted to explore. I feel like, in spite of the compact feeling of the map as it is (and I've only just gotten to the first town after setting out on my adventure), there's tons of little details and secrets to find. I even felt extremely rewarded when I solved a puzzle and found a secret boss (optional of course) that was WAY above my skill level.

-Music. For some reason, some of the music sounds like stock RPG maker music, which is a darn shame because the songs that aren't are absolutely breathtaking. A good example is the hometown of the player character. I want to sit around in the hometown and listen to the beautiful melody played by pizzicato strings and gentle pads. If it didn't artificially inflate the number of hours I spent in game (and I couldn't just get the soundtrack from this gamejolt page) I would leave it open for hours and fall asleep to that first town's music. The forest, which is the first area you can encounter enemy mobs, has an extremely upbeat and fun musical shift that takes me on a whistful journey into adventure. It's REALLY that good. Download the soundtrack. Please. I beg of you. The songs in the soundtrack are some of the best I've ever heard in a game and I just want to point that out.

-I really like the Characters, the sense of humor, and the bond between pretty much everyone. There's a feeling of show, don't tell, that lets you feel like you've been dropped into this world and can fully immerse yourself in its mysteries. I don't need endless explanations of how magic works, what fairies are, or how long these characters have been friends or rivals or whatever. This is character storytelling done right, and I'm really excited to see more of those "special moments" over the course of the game. The circle of light that denotes them is reminiscent of the Tales Of series, and that's never a bad thing!

So some negatives now to point out:

-Enemy magic. I've been 1, 2, and 3 shotted really early on by enemies casting basic spells when I've been grinding for over an hour. There's no reason why the balance should be so heavily skewed towards killing the player unless the enemy decides not to use magic. I can't tell you how often I save scrubbed just to get to level 5 with each of my characters without them dying due to a well timed first level wind spell that deals more damage than a boosted, upgraded weapon "strong attack" skill from the player character.

-I can overlook it for plot purposes, but it feels weird that early on in the game, the main character is ranked by their skill level and no matter how much I do or don't train, the skill level ranking is exactly the same. It's a small thing, and I get why they did that, but it takes me out of the experience a little bit. It's one small hiccup, of course. But hopefully it's not a sign of something bigger (plot contrivances would suck in a story that's already being told so well!)

-The menu is a little bit frustrating to navigate. I wish there was a quicksave option, though mashing the select button on the save menu does work, thankfully. I also wish it was a little better laid out than a simple left to right "2 tier" menu system. A grid of options where I could navigate up and down as well as left and right would feel much more natural, since there's two lines of options and going left or right feels like you're selecting up or down. It's a small thing, but compared to the rest of the game which feels REALLY intuitively designed, it's a slight distraction.

So after all that's said and done, I'm nowhere close to getting through all the content this demo has to offer. Even the negative aspect I had pointed out in combat created a feeling of danger. It felt as though any battle could be potentially dangerous and meant that I had to put in a ton more effort to grind, which I personally really like. Unfortunately, the fact that the magic is still too strong means that I don't actually feel like I'm making progress in spite of how good my defense or attack get. Little things like that can, of course, be fixed and balanced. UI things might be unchangeable, I'm not sure, but I hope they can overhaul it a little bit.

I highly recommend this game. I love it.

This game is EXTREMELY WELL MADE!! Like I cannot believe it's free when it's so good, the visuals are nothing short of stunning and the music fits to a T!!
It's very enthralling and i think you have done and amazing job here! I really enjoyed the way you made combat too, the boost system is very nice

possible spoilers below!

I'm well into chapter 2 now and I seriously love this game!
If I have to criticize anything it would be that the start feels a little off story-wise but it sorta makes sense later, however, the choices seems a bit obvious as to what is right and what is wrong and seeing an actual aftermath would be nice (like with the chiefs, I would have loved to know what happened and people seemed quite calm about the whole thing)
The headshot pictures would be better if you used other headshapes and such too and the fighting sprites look a little funny in combat because they're so small compared to everything else

Suggestions:
Maybe add a few more NCPs to Sarton? It feels a lot like a ghost town, you can eventually just have them appearing after chapter 1 like they "awoke from a bad dream"
Just small NCPs here and there honestly, to fill out the villages
Maybe add a fetch quest for someone who could become chief in Oakheart? It seems strange that the town is just left to its own devices
Hiding monsters in the tall grass on roads is a good idea but I will be honest it scared me so much the first time because I expected them to appear like in the dark forest, maybe pick one and stick to it? Also, maybe more monsters on the roads
*The hidden paths here and there is a very nice touch and I hope you will keep that up

If you don't feel up for the suggestions, don't worry, it's more to make the game feel fuller! You got a good game going here and you should be proud of yourself!

If you haven't already, you may want to at least start encrypting the images, and eventually invest in an .exe packager, or you'll get your game stolen, like many others before you.

Great work so far though.

is there anyway to get this game as a non zip file?

so um where the heck am i supposed to go after breaking all 3 seals?