You know, I think I am inclined to agree with Palxan here, more or less.
This really does feel disappointing. I'm not trying to be rude or ungrateful here, but so far the Season Pass DLC is woefully underwhelming.
First off, we had the sound effects and music. I (and probably others) expected a set of brand new songs to fit new themes, but instead we just got a bunch of remixes from RM2k, which are not necessarily bad, but I think that we all expected something NEW, you know? Then there's the sound effects and... I'm sorry, but they're terrible. They're just terrible. I personally could not see myself using 90% of them in any game for any reason, except maybe some of the system sounds. A lot of them are just blaring loud noises that don't seem to really sound like anything you might expect as an attack or something.
But then... we have this.
Now, don't get me wrong here, I like the RPG Maker 2k3 characters. The first RPG Maker I ever used was 2k3 way back in the day (way before we were supposed to be using it... but let's not talk about that
) so I have some nostalgia for these characters in a way... But... Not like this...
First, let me just be up front - the art of the face graphics/busts is bad. It's just bad. Comparing it to the default MV assets is like night and day. In fact, it rather reminds me of the difference between Ryukishi07's original art for Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and the remastered version art:
It isn't of the same level of quality as the MV default assets. It also doesn't match them at all, so it's pretty much impossible to use them in the same project as the default asset characters. The sideview and field sprites look okay, but the faces/busts are just... bad...
This brings me to my next point... I think we kind of expected... more than this, from the Season Pass.
Of course, because the store page details of the Season Pass are so incredibly vague and don't even give so much as a preview of what is coming (even one of them is just listed as "Surprise!"), we couldn't really know
what to expect, but given that the default assets of MV were so good, I think most of us probably expected more of the same high quality assets... and I don't feel we are getting that.
Some of the things
I personally expected to
potentially see out of this hyped-up Season Pass include:
1. Original music. Not remixed music from a previous maker. And more of it, not just 10 tracks. Potentially music fit for an entirely new theme of games, such as Samurai style games for example.
2. A brand new set of character graphics (including generator parts - very disappointed those aren't included. I don't suppose it's too late to add those in, is it?), either made for a new theme (like Samurai for example, or... anything different than Fantasy/Sci Fi, really) or an expansion of the existing themes. For example, adding a new page of
original actors, or adding more monster sprites for the field, or a larger variety of townsfolk, or more animals, or more action sprites for existing characters, or including sideview battlers for the existing default assets townsfolk/animals/monsters. Or just completing the default assets (but I'll get to that in a minute...). Heck, I might even have been kinda-sorta satisfied with the 2k3 characters IF the faces and busts matched the other default characters... but they don't. At all. I also wouldn't have minded more content in the Cover Art Characters style. But... instead, we get... this...
3. Original tileset(s) matching the above potentially new themes, or adding new types of area tilesets that match the original default assets, like a Ship tileset (seriously. I NEED this
). But given what we've seen thusfar, I'm going to take a shot in the dark and assume that the upcoming tileset DLC will end up just being remasters of the 2k3 tilesets. Which... might not be so bad if you include a ship tileset (which 2k3 had), but the quality of the upcoming tileset DLC is called into question. Will it match the existing artwork that people who use default assets will be using? Or will everything clash like the busts/facesets do? Based on what we've seen so far from this season pass, I cannot help but be cynical about my expectations for future updates to the Season Pass content.
4. I kind of expected there would be some more enemy battlers. There's quite a lot of "traditional" monsters that aren't available as enemies in MV... Maybe that will be the surprise...
But, I think all of this kind of dances around an existing problem that hasn't really been addressed.
Why are the MV default assets still not complete?
I know, I know. There is apparently a reason why they aren't complete, and I've even heard some people try and handwave it and say "But it IS complete! You're asking for extra content that was never promised to be in the program!", but it's obvious that there are assets that were clearly planned to be made, yet did not get made.
It's already been mentioned here, but there are a number of characters who are classified as Actors who do not have sideview battle sprites, when most other Actors DO have them. There are a number of characters classified as Actors who do not have enemy battlers, when most other actors DO have them. So my question is - why is Kadokawa (or whoever they're commissioning) releasing things like these little weekly update tidbits instead of
completing the default content? Because it's clearly NOT complete.
So... I'm sure you're asking... what does all of this have to do with the Season Pass content?
Because this Season Pass update kind of underscores the whole problem. Instead of giving your developers something they can easily incorporate into their existing games which use the default assets, you're giving them something of lower quality that doesn't match with what they're already working with. I could possibly understand if the assets didn't match and you were giving them enough content to make an entire game based solely on these Season Pass assets, but I don't think that's going to be the case because you've not stated anything about including things like townsfolk that match these characters.
Actually, now that I think about it... As I'm writing this, I kind of came to a realization. I know exactly what I expected out of this Season Pass.
I expected something akin to the DS Resource Packs.
I think that most people will agree that, whether they liked the style of the DS Resource Packs or not, they were among THE most complete, fully-feature and high-quality official DLC packs released for VX Ace. Each one came with a full set of actors, townsfolk, etc, each with facesets and busts (and I bet if Sideview actors had been a thing then, the creator(s) who clearly put so much love and effort into those packs would have made those for every character too), matching tilesets for fields, towns, and multiple dungeon styles, a full set of brand new battlers (in fact, TWO full sets of brand new battlers if you bought all the packs), original music AND to top it all off, if you bought even just the first two DS packs, you could make a brand new game in a brand new style in Fantasy, Modern, Samurai or Sci-Fi. For around the same price as the Season Pass content for MV (the first two packs combined). Granted, I believe pretty much all of this was based on the RPG Maker DS games, but someone still had to redraw everything since the original assets would have been tiny.
So the question is...
why is something like this not what we are getting with an official Season Pass DLC pack?
Could you imagine if we had something styled in the Cover Art Characters art style that offered us THIS much content? THAT is what I think we were expecting. We were expecting this Season Pass to open up a new world of development assets for us, and I think that all that we've gotten thusfar is disappointment.
Sorry for the long rant, and I'm sorry if I come off as rude or crass. I don't mean to be, that's just kind of how I am. I'm trying to give you guys honest criticism on what I personally feel to be a severely lacking product, and I hope that in some way, the developers of the Season Pass content can at least consider that perhaps what has been offered thusfar is unsatisfactory, at least in my opinion.
