So far I've finished Sasara's sprites but I haven't gotten the other sprites done yet.

Okay, so aside from work, let's go for a detour: playing another RPG Maker game and this one's pretty famous because you definitely heard this game before. OFF. Need to say more? No, I don't. But I have played it's fan game sequel to it, NEW. I should note that I've not beaten these games at all, so take my opinions with a grant of salt of someone who hasn't gotten to Zone 2 yet in the respective games. Or not.

If I had to pick which would be the better game, it had to be OFF and that's because of multiple things: NEW doesn't feel like it's a sequel to OFF because while sure, it takes the same place as OFF, it feels more or less a repeat of events that happen in the original game with some alternations here and there. There's more bosses to fight and while that's not really a bad thing, what IS a bad thing is the lack of puzzles so far. You see, you probably know that, assuming if you're just reading a Wikipedia page of the game as your own research and that's it, OFF is a game loaded with puzzles, and that's for better or for worse.

The puzzles for OFF is okay, albeit I have complaints for it. I know I hate puzzles and not a particular fan of them, except I do enjoy some like but for some reason I can't particularly remember them well, so let's talk about ones that I hate: the fucking maze before fighting the Zone 1 Guardian. If there's anything I hate, it's goddamn mazes that teleport you back if you pick the wrong path and backtracking isn't allowed. While sure, it's not that bad because enemies simply won't throw your progress out of the window (I'm looking at you The Denpa Men 1.), it feels annoying just having to play these things because you barely have any hints of what's the right path or what's the wrong path, you're essentially given a blind 25% of getting it right. And lack of hints is what I hate in the post office password puzzle. I get that each note corresponds to a certain digit in the 6-digit password, but could you really blame me if I thought initially looked the notes and thought they were lore important? What doesn't help is that The Judge won't likely tell you this because his hint doesn't reflect your progress at the office so you can't get any hints for that puzzle either. NEW doesn't have any of the puzzles (so far) that I like, such as the Alma 6 questions puzzle. I like the whole questionnaire thing where you can reexamine the posters to check if you're doing something wrong and this isn't one of the puzzles I had to check back to a guide (As a last resort if I don't know how to progress further.).

But combat-wise, NEW's difficulty in Zone 1 can FUCK OFF. That zone encouraged me to run more than fight because half of the time I just don't wanna fight the enemies due to not enough resources or I just wanna solve a goddamn puzzle. While NEW's enemy encounter is superior to OFF's random enemy encounter, at least OFF wasn't so intrusive to the point that I had to run because NORMAL enemies would pick me off faster if I didn't have to use healing skills and/or items so often compared to my experience in OFF. That's not really bad on paper but NEW loves to introduce assault in x ways because there's barely any equipment for me to buy to basically sustain less damage. I HONESTLY preferred OFF's equipment because while sure, it's not as strategic as say NEW's equipment like the Auras, at least I have more of a reason to equip SOMETHING rather than "I don't wanna equip this because this prevents me from using this skill(s)."

So yeah that's it for ya, see you on the next devlog.