RMMV Path of the Martyrs

[KazukiT]

If this is the wrong thread for this, feel free to move it where it needs to go. Anyway, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in playtesting my game. Any sort of feedback is appreciated.

Link to game: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7hws86nqz5o2sp8/Path of the Martyrs 1.3 -Game-.zip?dl=0

Path of the Martyrs was loosely based on a dream I had a few years ago. This boy lost a baby sibling and had to some ancient ruins to revive them. They lost many of their allies on the way to the bottom of the ruins where the treasure lies. However, each person willing sacrificed themselves so the boy would be reunited with they baby sibling.

Genre: RPG

This dream made me come up with the framework for the game where the "treasure" is at the bottom of a laboratory. The theme of sacrifice from the dream carries over into the game's story as the main character journeys to mysterious laboratory on his own to resurrect his friend. The gameplay focuses on battles fought in the lab and going back to the past to see what led the protagonist to go on such a dangerous quest to such a mysterious place.

Story
After the passing of the princess of the peaceful land of Delma, her retainer Saiyato Ichia goes to Lidoffad Lab. This lab houses many deadly foes and secrets within its walls. Will Saiyato be able combat all foes and revelations that come his way?

Screen Shots

Spoiler: Screen Shots

Features
Exploring the Lab
Each time you enter Lidoffad Lab the order you experience each floor will be different. Along with experiencing all the labs floors in a different order each time you play the game, some of the treasure will be randomized as well. So each visit to the lab will be completely different than the last.

Trading
You can trade any unwanted items you have and trade them in for something else you may need.

Skills
You can also pick how some of Saiyato's skills will grow. You can pick which path it follows, you can either make a skill more "Offensive" or more "Defensive". This allows you to cater Saiyato's skills to your playstyle.

Visit the Past
Periodically, you will visit Saiyato's past to experience his life and the events that led him to go to Lidoffad Lab.

 

[ImaginaryVillain]

So after a bit of testing...

Graphics:
Your custom art really sets up your world, a welcome refresher as it makes your world more memorable. Though your early cutscene appeared to have full panels of custom art which might have been enjoyable, except they flashed by so fast I only got to glimpse them. Maybe make an invisible window appear so the player can click when they want the page to advance?

Sound:
Not going to lie, I kind of tuned it out after awhile. It's probably fine and definitely not annoying just not really memorable.

Combat:
You have well... An insane amount of skills. It's true you have a tutorial, but the player starts with what looks like an end game set of skills. Add to that the weapon switching and items giving me more skills, levels giving me more skills.... After awhile I'm not going to lie, it didn't take long before I didn't bother with them.

It wasn't very hard to simply loop specific skills and go infinite or at least infinite enough to win any fight. Even the mob before the lasers that seems like a mini boss in comparison what was before it (no real clear indication, could just be wildly random mob strengths) just died to Staff/Heal/Frost Heart (or Spark Craft, Blazing Will)... No items required, I finished all the fights (except the first 3) with full health and MP. Which reminds me, I noticed I couldn't heal outside of battle if the Rod wasn't equipped but it can't be equipped outside of battle.

Also worth noting some of your attacks have unique ways of activating them, but with no real warning to the player so they just have to guess. Double Attack and Z-Strike being prime examples. So as a player I figured them out, but they were definitely an awkward surprise.

You also have a very large number of status ailments, but the explanation of what each one is, isn't very clear. Though mobs applied them like crazy even at the start of the game. Also the mob damage was very, very high the second mob in the game did 40% of my health in a single hit. To be clear I never died once, but heal looping quickly became the only way to play.

Map:
Seemed pretty serviceable, mobs seemed to refresh a bit too often though. I get them refreshing if I change rooms, but when I opened the menu for upgrading skills they also respawned. I get that's because it's a map that's been repurposed as a menu. But you may want to add a switch to prevent that.

Progression:
Lots of options, I kind of wish the information about the skill appeared when I hovered over it instead of having to click. But that's not super necessary. I did notice the stat upgrades were listed down by the "Offensive" word on the menu, kind of makes them hard to read or notice at first. Probably going to unbalance your game allowing the player to buy stats like that. I know that's basically all I bought since I already had so many skills and didn't see a huge point in the new ones.

Concluding thoughts:
Honestly I did find messing with the skills fairly interesting. But I love finding OP things to do in games, so I'm probably a minority. Still it's far and away too many to start a game, you just run a risk of people ignoring skills due to so many options. I liked the weapon switching mechanic, even if it quickly turned into Rod does everything, other weapons just regen MP. Balancing can fix that.

The character graphics were charming, and instantly memorable. Definitely underused. Menus were well done, and honestly it seemed very polished in that regard.

As for the randomized dungeon, I know it's supposed to be random but if you hadn't told me that I wouldn't have known. If you want the randomized dungeon to matter more maybe allow the player to leave and have it change? Otherwise it just seemed like a regular dungeon to me. I did create a second game just to see the difference though. Definitely cool once I saw it change, but a normal player will probably never see that.

Oh and worth noting, the only bug I saw is that Chrome Dev Tools opens when the game does. Other than that it seemed bug free.

Anyway, seems like a solid foundation. I'll keep an eye on it in the future.

 

[KazukiT]

Thanks for taking a look at my game,I will definitely apply some of the changes you recommended. As for using healing outside of battle with the Rod, you just need to change your weapon to the rod to use it. What did you think of the game's story?

 

[ImaginaryVillain]

Ah, yeah for some reason I thought the weapon switch skill would also work outside of battle. I suppose changing the equipment manually to heal works. Either way it's very, very tedious especially given how often you have to heal.

So I had a friend of mine play the game as well. He got the exact same layout as I did, so the random dungeon didn't really work. He also ran into the same things I did... Mostly enemies that are way too strong (even being level 6 mobs in the first room could do 25% damage in a hit) for where they're at. Combine that with the constant respawns and it turns into a slog. He got exactly as far as I did before simply stopping which is right up to shutting the lasers off.

This leads to way I didn't comment on your story, I was already level 7 by the time I turned the lasers off... There was that many forced fights (mobs run too fast to dodge). But by then I'd only seen the meeting the princess cutscene. But the constant grind was so much that I was bored before ever having time to be invested in the story, the same happened for him (and he's a story buff). So I didn't feel right commenting on your story because I honestly don't know it.

Best advice, tone down your combat a lot. Monsters in the first room shouldn't have multiple status ailments, shouldn't do 25% damage to someone level 6 plus, shouldn't require 3-4 hits per for a character greatly higher level to kill them, nor be forced fights because they're too fast to evade. At that point it's worse than random encounters because you're forced into more encounters than the default 30 step random RPG Maker has.

This advice is really just because few people are going to make it past that kind of grind wall just to learn the beginning of your story. As exampled by the two of us.

 

[KazukiT]

Ah, yeah for some reason I thought the weapon switch skill would also work outside of battle. I suppose changing the equipment manually to heal works. Either way it's very, very tedious especially given how often you have to heal.

So I had a friend of mine play the game as well. He got the exact same layout as I did, so the random dungeon didn't really work. He also ran into the same things I did... Mostly enemies that are way too strong (even being level 6 mobs in the first room could do 25% damage in a hit) for where they're at. Combine that with the constant respawns and it turns into a slog. He got exactly as far as I did before simply stopping which is right up to shutting the lasers off.

This leads to way I didn't comment on your story, I was already level 7 by the time I turned the lasers off... There was that many forced fights (mobs run too fast to dodge). But by then I'd only seen the meeting the princess cutscene. But the constant grind was so much that I was bored before ever having time to be invested in the story, the same happened for him (and he's a story buff). So I didn't feel right commenting on your story because I honestly don't know it.

Best advice, tone down your combat a lot. Monsters in the first room shouldn't have multiple status ailments, shouldn't do 25% damage to someone level 6 plus, shouldn't require 3-4 hits per for a character greatly higher level to kill them, nor be forced fights because they're too fast to evade. At that point it's worse than random encounters because you're forced into more encounters than the default 30 step random RPG Maker has.

This advice is really just because few people are going to make it past that kind of grind wall just to learn the beginning of your story. As exampled by the two of us.

I just updated the file and I fixed the respawning so they only reappear if you leave the room. I also cut down how many monsters and slowed them down on the overworld. I also did some balancing, so if you feel like giving it another try you are free to.