Project Oscine - Build the Perfect Team!

[Arkecia]

Thanks ChaoticLapras, and I'm glad you're enjoying the game so far. My two personal favorite classes are Specialist and Gunner; they also compliment each other pretty well.

I have updated the download for hopefully the final time in a while, guarding would crash the game because I forgot to take out a common event with things I am no longer using. Truth be told I had to take out a few of my planned features because I didn't want any script hiccups, but it's probably better for it.

I also fixed the "equipmet" issue haha, but from now on all grammar issues will be taken care of over the next few days and will be uploaded once I've caught them all with a clearer head.

 

[Bonkers]

Very happy with things thus far.  My initial impression was I was going to take 10+ mins on just character creation, but it was kept moving.

Spoiler

I've created a group of Reverent, General, Berserker, and Specialist.  

This way the Berseker can go all out.  Right now the Berserker is a glass cannon more so than the Specialist, or Reverent.  Against the undead dragon boss they kept getting killed.  Glad I took that celestial element spell.

I'm currently Rank 5, but I see no way to backtrack to get to that door that wouldn't allow me access till I was evaluated.

It's easy to steal items, and grind for money which is a big help as during simulations I am at the mercy of drops and chests if I am poorly prepared.

 

[Arkecia]

I'm glad you're happy with it thus far; I'll put my responses in a spoiler:

Spoiler

That's a really balanced group you've got there, covering every defense and attack stat for use. Specialist might be my favorite class of them all because of the potential; can excel at just about everything bar attack, not to mention the ability to steal states and throw the bad ones right back at an enemy that might have been immune to it.

The bosses are completely randomized, and I love dragons even the undead ones, so they are all pretty powerful. 

Anomaly battles are meant to be reserved for another playthrough as an optional thing after the main game. You could try for the rest of the anomalies after the first dungeon in one playthrough, but you'd have to be double the rank you expect to be. There's a forbidden program somewhere that won't execute until the anomalies have bit the dust.

I'd always have a Berserker, Hunter, or Assassin in the party since they can steal items from the enemy, which unless Augments are involved, stealing comes pretty easy and can expand how much money you make + get next level armor ahead of time. The junk drops from enemies drop 100% of the time, and can be held to quantities of up to 200.

 

[ChaoticLapras]

Sigh. I'm probably being stupid, but I can't find any clues as to the colours for the door in the first dungeon with the colour unlockey thing. Help?

I'll probably post the feedback when I finish this dungeon.

 

[Arkecia]

Hint: The puzzle layout is the same as the first area of the dungeon. The clues are found on the notices placed on the wall.

Answer:

Spoiler

Gray   Blue  Black

Red    Blue  Green

 

[ChaoticLapras]

Thanks for the hint (and the solution as I was still useless) for the puzzle thing! Right, here is some feedback!

Likes:

Spoiler

A good amount of treasure to find.Enemies that don't just drop gold, allowing for a more fun experience.

Bonus areas.

Bits in the map such as the captain's log.

Nice mapping style, along with custom resources, that shows effort put into the work.

VERY nice class system, which is customizable, which is awesome!

Good skill system, especially with the different ones for each class.

Variation of monsters in each area. A good amount of monsters, I find, is good. It makes battles less repetitive.

Funny character things.

Different types of maps. For example, from spaceship to forest.

Enemies at the right difficulty (at least for the regen setting!), that aren't too easy. I find a battle challenging enough to keep me enthralled.

Different difficulty(ish) settings.

Dislikes:

Spoiler

The encounter rate is often too high.Deathblow is one hit too often. This makes bosses die easily. Possibly make it have no effect on bosses?

Maps sometimes challenging to find the way around. However, sometimes this is a good thing, but needs to be toned down a little.

Chicken? are overpowered. Probably the point. But I get pwned every time I do a battle with them and have to escape.

The likes heavily outweigh the dislikes. This is an excellent game so far! I might leave some more feedback when I've finished the game!

Oh, and being useless (as always) I can't seem to find the way out of Sim Forest. I've found three maps branching off the main one, but none of those have any branches, and the bottom one won't let me in the cave till I get a rank. Is this a bug or am I useless...?

 

[amerk]

This seems fairly decent. There's not much from what I can see in terms of a story, but everything else about the game seems fairly appealing. The battlers, however, really crash with the artstyle of the game. I think that can be easily overlooked, of course, and if you ever decide on purchasing the set Tyler's Battlers might fit better aesthetic-wise, though I don't know if it has specific battlers you might be in need of.

 

[Arkecia]

@ChaoticLapras

For the response to criticism:

Spoiler

First off it's awesome that someone is able to have fun with my creation. I was a little iffy at first, one of those reasons why is in the dislike section (encounter rates), but it's good to see people enjoying the game. Anyway:

The encounter rate is 30-50 steps in most areas; I might just use 50-52 or something so that people can move those extra 20 steps if the game doesn't like them. If someone goes after the chests I won't have to worry about the rank being too low to take on the Anomalies later.

Out of the 30 boss battles, 6 of them can be killed with deathblow fairly easily; you must have encountered at least one of them so far. I gave the player the skill and usually don't like restricting them, even to bosses, but obviously it would be pretty bad if ALL bosses could be one shot lol. I might reduce the number to 3 or 4, as it's odd that one of the enemies that can die with deathblow is undead.

Most maps are straightforward; the third one has a lot of fauna, but isn't too hard to navigate (then again I made the map so I should know where I'm going). The fourth map is easy to navigate as the paths are straightforward, but there are more choices in direction in said map. After that the rest of the maps are easy to move around in. (except the 9th dungeon, but that dungeon's puzzle is part of why people might get lost. Once it's figured out it becomes the shortest dungeon.)

Yeah the point of Chicken? is to make an enemy similar to the spores in the first dungeon that explode, in that they need to be taken care of before enemies get the chance to attack, but sometimes that's not the case like if you wanted to escape or if the enemies went first. Their chances of both should be reduced since the chicken is slower than molasses. If not being able to run away is a lot more normal than actually escaping the enemy, I'll have to take a look at the calculations again. 

And getting out of the third dungeon:

Spoiler

If you opened all the chests you should have gotten two key items Fertilizer (on the left side) and Special Growth (on the right side). There's a patch of dirt where a vine is trying to grow (on the bottom), one of the two items when used will allow you to reach the top. I should probably make that more obvious if only because I usually make interacting points in this game obvious.

@amerk

There isn't much in terms of story besides a couple of hidden areas that explain what's going on + the endings. The meat of the story comes in the form of growing the bonds between the main character and his/her team mates. The game is primarily gameplay based mainly because I wanted to test out to see where I stand. I've made stories before, but never RPG battles, so I wanted to tackle it before making a full length game.

As for the battlers, I actually think they blend pretty well with the backgrounds, but I had to stare at them for hours while I made the enemies. Tyler's battlers look great, but I'd need 200+ battlers since I put at the very least 15 normal enemies per dungeon plus made 30 bosses and a few optional ones. For my next game project I'll actually be making them myself, so blending or numbers won't be a problem.

 

[amerk]

I meant they clash with the actual tilesets, not the background, but as I said, that can be overlooked. It looks pretty decent for a dungeon crawler, so I'll give it a go when I can shave off a bit of free time.

 

[Arkecia]

Just posting this to say I updated the main download to fix the remaining spelling errors and a few bugs, like:

* Weapon Element augments can now be equipped.

* A portrait of Kairos that hanged during his third conversation is now fixed.

* In the first safe zone after beating the game the player can now talk to their allies if they chose to forego class changing.

* Cleaned up text that referenced stuff I took out of the game.

 

[Dalph]

How the hell I missed this one? It looks awesome, great use of the DS+ resources.

I love sci-fi games, I will post my thoughts soon as I complete it.

 

[Chaneque]

Was enjoying it until I hit a bug after a battle. The file in ME called "Nicé" is missing. Otherwise, I'm really enjoying this game - I love the mechanics of it and I think having such customization with the classes is great fun. 

EDIT: So I checked my ME folder and it came up as "Nic" rather than "Nicé", but that might just be my computer.

 

[Arkecia]

Is it possible to rename the file? I'll have to change that later on since it poses a problem.  I wanted it to be the actual spelling instead of the brand name Nike, but really both are accepted, so I can change it when I'm back home to make sure no one else also has the same problem. I know my old computer wouldn't let me use accented characters.

Edit: I updated the download so no one else will have a similar problem; if you're having this problem with the old download and can't fix it, then re-download the game from the link in the first post.

 

[Chaneque]

I edited myself, so I'm fine. I'm really enjoying this, by the way~

 

[Dalph]

So far I'm enjoying it too, I particularly love the customization of the classes at the beginning, the music choice and the awesome use of the DS+ resources, but I've encountered an annoying bug:

Spoiler

Don't know how the hell this happened.

I lost against the first boss, then I loaded the game again and the negative status effects were carried over after a battle, plus the battle music is now the background music (as much as I find the battle music awesome, it looks odd when I listen to it during the exploration). XD

Anyway, looks great so far, fix this so I can enjoy the rest.

 

[veraeve1]

Same thing happened to me, negative effects went to the previous save file 0.o
the class selection is sweet and diverse, combat is fun, really digging the whole get to know your team better and each chokepoint.
 

 

[Arkecia]

It wasn't hard to figure it out after looking through my common events; the save files autosave while in a battle if you won, so the music and status effects would carry over. For some reason it also allowed you to skip the boss fights if you lost to one of them, so I ended up having to take autosaving after every battle out of the equation.

This wouldn't be a problem if I had used Yanfly's victory aftermath to make a common event run after battle, but I rather like the quick victory screen moghunter provides, so I hope people will remember to save if they feel like they are in danger; the game will still autosave after entering a Safe Zone.

The main download has been updated to reflect the changes, and the problem has gone away as I tested it a couple of times.

Thank you both for bringing it to my attention.

Edit: Added a poll to see the style people prefer to play as; it'll help me out in future games, so let me know!

 

[Dalph]

Ok, played it for 35 minutes or so.

I'm doing a new playthrough because the previous one was complete crap:

Spoiler

Currently in the 3rd Dungeon (The Forest).

I choose the Reaper class for the main character because I like it, and because I like Scythes too!

I can abuse a bit the skill Inspiration sometimes, If I use it every turn in a battle for example I basically have infinite SP for that battle, as long as the caster stays alive, obviously.

The Boss Simulation seems to be completely random, nice touch on that one, although a certain Justice Boss appeared once and owned me very bad...but I will eventually get my revenge on the bastard.

Some bosses can be easily defeated if you cast Disorder Strike on them (it's the poison effect?), but I think it's ok this way, or else they'll be too hard.

The characters are well developed, I like the dialogues and I like Zelkas the most (even if he doesn't talk too much), I prefer mysterious characters.

The regular battles are ok, I don't see balance issues, sometimes they also require a bit of strategy (which is a good thing if you ask me).

I also have to say that you have good tastes in music, I like most of the music themes too, they feels very appropriate and nice.

A question, it's possible to go back in the previous dungeons and check those Rank Rooms? (I'm curious to see what's inside).

Anyway, I will gladly continue the game tomorrow because it's fun and well made.

 

[Arkecia]

I'm glad you're enjoying the game thus far; In response to your comments:

Spoiler

The Reaper is the best attack class for obvious reasons (Borrowed Power) and even its flaws can be mitigated with another skill to heal while attacking, so having Inspiration really helps bring out its full potential. Inspiration itself is a pretty abusable skill, but so are many others, every class can be abused in their own way. I wanted to give the player the tools to build a team that could handle anything the sims threw at them afterall, and prepare them for the stronger optional bosses if they decide to pursue them.

The boss simulations are completely random and cycle between 30 different bosses. Sometimes you'll get some of the harder ones (like Justice) but that only means that if you lose, you can get revenge later. And if you win, well I hope it'll make people feel good

Zelkas is probably my favorite too, because I did his dialogue first. He'll end up speaking a lot more once his shell is broken, but until then he'll awkwardly find things to bring up in conversation lol.

The battles do start to require more and more strategy, but can still be taken care of quickly, since that's usually a pet peeve of mine in turn based RPGs. And I'm glad you like the music choice; I wanted it to work together with the simulations, where heavier music is reserved for things that don't belong (optional bosses for instance)

As for your question, once you've completed a dungeon run once you're able to go back to the areas you may have missed because of the rank. they usually hide behind them optional enemies, but there are a couple pieces of lore in a couple of the rooms which describe a bit more about the game's back-story. It would be pretty bad if you couldn't go back to the dungeon rooms later on since you can't rank up 'til the second dungeon.

Hope you continue to have fun!

 

[Dalph]

Currently in the sixth dungeon (The Sim Factory):

Spoiler

As you say, the battles require more strategy now, but I can manage to win without problems (which is a good thing I think), this clearly avoids the frustration of the player.

I was a bit scared when I saw Justice appearing again as the boss of the fifth dungeon, but this time I was well prepared to greet the bastard and...I finally got my revenge and kicked its a**...YES! ahahahah

The dialogues with Zelkas are getting more and more interesting, I'm curious to know his backstory now.

Oh and I didn't talked about the Bestiary and the Music Player, these are some juicy additions to the game.

I will continue it (and probably finish it) tonight, it's a so nice game, I like it a lot.