Dead Content Apotheosis

[Gabriot]

***New Demo Available***
DEMO V0.2
Estimate Playtime  :  ~3-4 hours

(Rated Teen for mild language, mild blood and violence)

Spoiler: Plot

The land of Gaia has been in turmoil for the past century.
It all began when the three most powerful city-states
each formed their own empires. 

These three empires began to be
known as Oriango of the North,
Ilduia of the West,
and Rogwel of the East.

Around fifty years after the formation
of these three superpowers,
a savage war erupted between Ilduia and Rogwel.
Rogwel was all but destroyed before Oriango stepped in
and defended them
against the Ilduians.  From that point on,
the fighting shifted from
being between the Ilduians and Rogwelans
to the Iludians and Oriangonians.

Eventually as the years went by, the hostilities died down
and it looked like perhaps an era of peace was about to be at hand. 
But that all changed a few months ago
when the emperor of Oriango issued a
full-scale invasion of the Iludian empire.
Iludia has been crumbling quickly under the fist of
Hakoth, the emperor of Oriango. 
The Capital of Iludia is in ruins, the
palace has been breached, and the entire royal family
have been murdered.

Our story begins following a group of
Iludian parliament survivors that have escaped the
destruction of the palace.  They are being viciously
pursued by Oriangonian troops and dogs. 
They are trying to make their
way toward an old Iludian war hero named Warren Khalevi
in order to
seek an escape from their pursuers.

Spoiler: Disclaimer

The story may seem to cliche.  To a certain extent, it is.  My favorite RPG's have been these medieval style of Epics with empires and magic and swords and shields and adventures.  To me, they are the purest form of RPG.  I've always loved these style of games, so I've always wanted to make an RPG in that style.  So if this isn't your cup of tea, sorry!  But this is what I wanted to make.

That being said, this is not going to be as cliche a story as it might appear.  The focus of this game is not about warring empires(really any big wars have already been fought and lost/won by the time this game starts) or dragons or peasants that turn into superhumans.  The main theme of this game is the exploration of human desire, morality, and the dreams of divination.  My main goal is to create very interesting characters that you can identify with, and create believable personalities.

Spoiler: Screenshots

Spoiler: Characters

(Revealed so far in the demo)
Gabriel Lindstrom

One of the best warriors in all of Iludia.  He served as High Templar while in service to Iludia, and now with the death of General Rockenbock he has become first in command of the Iludian conscripted troops (or at least what's left of them).

He is a childhood friend of Brian.  He grew up in contact with Morgan, Peter, Warren, Aleena, and Cecil(Not in the demo)

Brian Shamrock

The most famous ranger in all of Iludia.  His
exploits have made him both well loved and hated by all just the
same. 

Aleena Osterwise

The beautiful sorceress, who is also assistant to
the recently deceased Arch-Mage Illidan.  She is close friends with
Brian and Gabriel.


Morgan Stonewall

A veteran in the service of the Knights of Iludia. 
She and Peter are the only living witnesses to the murder
of the King and Queen of Iludia.

She was close friends with the
royal family and one of her mentors is Warren Khalevi.

Peter Sherlock

Not only the Iludian Church's head priest, but also
Chancellor to Iludia.  He has always opposed the war, but he
serves his duty reguardless of his personal notions.

His brother is Cecil.

Bea

A mysterious orphan raised by the Archmage
Illidan.  She is only a child, but her untapped magical power has an
infinite potential.  She has trouble controlling her power at times.

No one knows exactly why, but as Archmage Illidan was dying from
a mortal wound, he made sure to get Bea to a group of
survivors.  His dying words were to "...get her to Rogwel at all
costs".

Warren Khalevi

An old war hero of Iludia.  While only spoke of highly in Iludia, he has always been thought of as a vicious villain in Rogwel and Oriango.
As he has lost much of his strength and agility with age, he has also gained much wisdom and new insights on life.

Spoiler: Features

Sideview battlescript
Character Trades
Crafting
Blacksmithing
Equipment Skills(Not currently functional)
Character Biographies
Beastiary

Spoiler: Downloads

New Demo Apotheosis V0.2: http://rapidshare.com/files/264223842/A ... 2.exe.html
Old Demo Apotheosis V0.1:  http://www.megaupload.com/?d=H5DDY60Q

While I am making this game for myself, I want others to enjoy it as well.  I truly do want to provide users with a fun and engaging gaming experience, so please feel free to leave comments, criticisms, and questions either in this thread of to PM.  Especially tell me specifics, such as what you think of the difficulty of the game, theme of the game, characters, dialogue, artwork, music, etc.

I hope you enjoy it!

 

[Link in Pink]

An original RPG :D

I'm downloading this. Sounds interesting

EDIT:

This game is amazing! It's a lot of fun, really. Good eventing, fun puzzles, interesting story. I compliment you, sir. This is a great game  :thumb:

 

[Lexy]

Judging by how much LiP liked it It can't be all bad. I'll try it out.

Also send me a PM and I can help you with giving equipment skills. (Doing the same thing in my game)

 

[elder]

I tried the game and I really enjoyed it. The storyline is very good, I love the cutscenes, they are very dynamic. Besides, cliché isn't something bad.

This game include really nice features. Which script did you use for your battle system?

I really love your choice for the battle music, is it a music track from another game or it's authentic?

 

[Gabriot]

Thanks for all the replies!  It's really motivating me to come out w/ the next release.

@ elder
I use Tankentai side view battle script translated by Kylock. 

The battle music is authentic (as in not from another game) but it is not made by me.  It is made by an acquaintance of mine from freeplay.

 

[elder]

Well this battle music is really addicting, don't change it!

As said I liked your demo very much, but I think battle encounters were too frequent sometime.

Also, I have a question, during your cutscenes, when your characters are moving simultaneously, are you using a parallel event to make them move at the same time?

 

[Gabriot]

Depends on which scene.  Usually I don't use a parallel event but for things like the boat chase I did.

 

[elder]

The question may sounds stupid then, and sorry to become off-topic, but how did you make the characters walk one next to each other simultaneously during the intro? That's very strange because I did many other complex stuff with RMVX, but it never sounded clear to me how to perform this.

 

[Gabriot]

Just create a move character for one of the characters, but make sure the 'Wait for completion' checkbox is not checked.  This way that character can do the movement in the background while you keep on going down your lines in the event.  You can make another move character right after that and they should be moving simultaneously.

 

[elder]

Oh thanks, I never thought it would work. That's what I hate about RPGmaker, there's no proper documentation.

 

[Gabriot]

New demo at: http://rapidshare.com/files/264223842/ApotheosisV_2.exe

Thank you mods for re-opening and my apologies for the duplicate thread.

The new demo unfortuantely only allows playthrough of Brian's storyline and I never finished Warren's. I actually had this demo pretty much completed around 6 months ago but I ran into many glitches near the end of it (some of which are possibly still present so I'm sorry for that). I'm getting back into RPG making so hopefully I can start fleshing out the game a little more.

 

[SoulReaperGod]

dude I played your game and man was the intro long lol there's nothing worng with the intro being long but you should add in a option that would allow you to skip the intro cause not many people will sit through such a long intro and still play it, but besides that very good game hope there's more to the game.

 

[Gabriot]

Hey Soulreaper sorry it took so long to respond --

Thank you for the feedback! I'm curious though, are you talking mainly about the scrolling text at the beginning? Or are you talking about the whole game up until the opening credits roll? Because if it's till the credits, I didnt' really create that as an "Intro", but more of just the part of the game to get your feet wet before thrusting you into the world (Kind of a tribute to how the first FF on the NES began)

 

[Brickman]

This has to be the first time I have ever said this of an RPG Maker game, especially the first few hours of one, but your game is too hard. The first dungeon's perfectly fine; Peter ensures you have plenty of health to go around despite starting in media res without a chance to buy any healing items. But after that, Peter dying marks the point where the game starts becoming unfair. The mountain level leaves you with no healer but ALSO only a handful of healing items, since you still haven't had a chance to visit town; unless you farmed the sewer critters for bandages you have about enough to heal both people up to full once, maybe, and you have exactly one revive potion. But that's just enough to make it difficult; what makes it unfair is that the only save point is at the very bottom; you have to climb the entire thing twice without saving, and it's a linear level. After that (taking Brian's path) it's a bit better; the forest is huge but the enemies are more reasonable, the party more powerful, you can stock up on items and return to town to heal, and most improtantly, rather than a linear climb it's a forbidding maze and therefore exactly the right kind of level to have few save points in, both thematically and fairness-wise. I'll see which way it goes from here.

But another thing that you ought to work on is the balance of enemy abilities. Enemies with normal attacks are about where they should be offensively and defensively, and poison's perfectly fair with the 300-some warnings that you should stock up on antidotes, but the man-eating plants are a bit overpowered if you don't one-hit them with fire magic--if injured they deal twice the damage of normal enemies and heal themselves to full, every turn. It's just lucky that Aleena has so much MP, because you can't kill them with physical attacks (at least not on the mountain). The wandering phantoms are completely unfair--they're so dodgy they're almost immune to physical attacks but they can drain you of a good 50 MP with one attack, which means if you're unlucky two encounters with them will leave the only character with a magic attack without a magic attack. You could probably cure that with an MP potion, but MP potions are supposed to be spent for casting spells, not curing enemy attacks. That's why they cost 200 gold. And they have the same health draining attack. And as far as I can tell the wisp enemies are completely invincible; immune to earth, fire heals them and physical attacks (or Brian's Raid ability) do one point of damage, while they can do real damage to you. Only way to deal with them is to flee.

By the way, minor bug: your Wandering Spirits seem to be capable of dodging the healing effect of their vampiric bite. Also, learning the weapon-specific skills permanently doesn't work right; with both Morgan's and Brian's, I got one point from my first use of each skill and then ceased getting any more even when I used both at least a half dozen times.

Aside from those issues, though, this game's excellent so far. The plot and writing are good, the combat's fun, and I like some of the features and special touches (the weapon-skills thing is nice, the part where you get brief control of Xerxes is cool, and the game switches up your party members often to keep things fresh). High quality all around.

edit: Went further. The forest level is very good, the plains are good, the second town is good. The puzzle with the notes was infuriating but very good; you can skip it if you're stuck after all. Impressively done. You did, however, put a comma in the wrong place, which makes it harder than it should be;

Spoiler

It says "The way to travel, is..." when that note should have no comma and the comma should appear after the word "shines".

Since the whole idea of the puzzle was combining them in a way which was first and foremost grammatically correct and then had some logical message, that's a big stumbling block. PS: I think giving the option to skip the trip back through parts of the forest that you'd already explored after visiting the heart of the forest would be better; most games let you bypass dungeons on the way out.

Going on to Oblivion... ack! What the hell is this? Random encounters inflicting mass confusion effects, with no curative spells or items? Seriously? How exactly are you supposed to defeat these guys, crossing your fingers? It doesn't even cure when you take damage! Confusion attacks are powerful things; even bosses shouldn't be able to use it on the whole party unless the player's been given immunity equipment or curing items or both. And the wisps are back, with friends. The only attack that seems to work against the regular wisps is the lightning one, and maybe the vampiric one if you're really patient, and those were both optional (I almost passed up the lightning scroll for being too expensive, and players may miss the vampirism). Actually, I didn't get a chance to try ice against them; I'm betting that'd work since fire heals them, but that's also an optional spell and anyways it's a problem when only one party member of four can hurt an enemy. The new wisp is also a bit nasty; lightning heals him, earth doesn't work, and neither fire nor ice will kill him in one turn, and he has the potential to use life stealing attack to heal to full. And he's ALSO nearly immune to three quarters of the party (the mass fire spell I bought for brian doesn't count--I can't use that without healing his friend). On the plus side, mass fireblast makes quick work of the wandering shades now, and the satyrs seem balanced, if a bit strong.

Your random encounters really, really need to be turned down in places; it's possible to make an enemy that's strong against melee without making him immune to it, and it's possible to make an enemy with an attack you want to avoid without letting him drain that much MP. And your enemy stat sheets ought to show what they're immune to as well as their weaknesses; that's even more important information. It's a shame--every aspect of your game is top-notch, except for the enemy balance on the random encounters and the save density; half of the enemies are perfect but the other half are extremely overpowered.

Speaking of save density, I think there really should be a save point just inside the entrance to Oblivion; the process of getting inside is too long to want to repeat, and it's a long area, and from how far I was able to get before quitting (since I had to waste all my items to keep going and didn't feel like making a lot of progress when I knew I wouldn't want to keep it), it's a long way to the next save point too--too long a way even if you had a save at the beginning. I think there should've been one at the start and another one right after you retrieve the orb from across the river as well, and that'd still be way on the sparse end of the spectrum if you added both.

One more thing. The satyrs are capable of dodging their own (or at least their allies') "agility incease" spells, just like the shades were capable of dodging the healing from their own life steal attack. Only one of the three did it, but that should be fixed.

edit: The last boss of the demo can also dodge his own self-buff skill. Also, at one point the game told me I had "dodged" an antidote root I used on myself, but the poison was cured anyways. And as long as I'm listing bugs, when Gabriel learns to craft the Mac Arthur armor, the helmet is craftable but you can't select the suit of armor and thus can't craft it. Also, whne crafting as Brian the sprites on some of the items he can craft change when you "use" them to read the description; the power glove turns into a crown, for instance, though the original power glove still didn't look like the item that goes in your inventory.

 

[tgman]

I enjoyed the demo, A LOT keep up the good work :biggrin: