oooh you're not gonna like me after this post man ahahhah
VACANT SKY Volume 1: CONTENTION
by
Sailerius (wellllll
project BC i suppose but Sailerius certainly seems to be THE FACE)
note: i write my reviews/critiques as i play the game (i think this will also be a great benefit because i'm playing the beta version of the next releast) so because i'm writing AS I GO, this is going to more or less be a chronological compilation of notes and comments that will seem largely unintelligible to anyone but
YOU, the developer (but at the same time ideally it serves as a kind of review). i'm also probably going to be unreasonably harsh on some things. but note that I do have
very high expectations of this game or else I wouldn't be playing it.
note 2: i didnt read much (or any) of the thread or your first post. largely because i'm lazy but also because i want to just DIVE INTO IT without any kind of idea of what to expect (other than knowing that you've got lots of flashy graphics and a massive multi-page thread on multiple forums)
so i open this up and right off the bat i'm impressed. a projectBC logo and a little splash map thing. cool. also FANTASTIC haunting title screen music and a pretty pro logo (i dont really get the "Welcome to Halo Locks."—is it another subtitle? but im sure it will make sense later on) so far so good.
as for the title itself: this is VOLUME ONE
and ACT ONE? i don't really get it and think that your titling system seems like it needs a serious restructuring.
what@choosing difficulty. this seems stupid, but whatever. the brief description implies that BEGINNER will have lots of tutorials and stuff, and while I would rather have easy battles, i dont want to sit through tutorials, so i'll go with veteran.
YOUR INTRODUCTION
i see that the sprite has FLIPPED HAIR when she walks. LAZY! really, dude, that is
not the first sprite that you want the player to see.
OKAY MAJOR PROBLEM!!! voice acting is cool and all, but
PLEASE find (or make) a script that STOPS the sound effect when i click away from the game's window. yeah, i know: the easy answer is "well play it fullscreen and don't click away dummy" but you don't want to force your player
how to play the game. something like this makes a difference to only a small number of players, but it makes a HUGE difference to them.
the voice acting sounds good enough, even though personally i think voice over is totally annoying and has no place whatsoever in a game with text dialogue (especially a game that uses pixel graphics which just clashes).
the dialogue is vague and uninteresting.
hemmingway's advice to new writers is "cut your first twenty pages" (or something like that idr the exact quote). if you don't want to cut everything before "i'm going to kill him" (which i'd personally use "i will kill him" instead), then TIGHTEN it up and make it shorter and snappier. the whole waify vague dialogue thing is offputting if you have no idea what the context is.
that said, your introductory cutscene is VERY pretty (which im sure you already know)
ACT I+ "death & rebirth"
ugh okay. in the VERY FIRST DIALOGUE BOX of the game you give me
FOUR new names: abraham, ranksmith, Virad and Delphon. this is a problem that seems to be present in every single fucking rpgmaker game. you just THROW names and shit at the player with the idea that it will help get us acclimated to the world but it does just the opposite. this whole conversation with abraham and michael is ummmmm. i dont want to say bad but i mean it seems about STANDARD for rpgmaker, in terms of writing quality. in other words, it's very expository. VASTALE SANDARGA. just WE DONT WANT THIS NOW.
"Oh God. Don't kill me! NO! STAY AWAY!" really?
well okay so now i have control of the character (after a horrible unnecessary message telling me information that already know (telling me to press enter to go through messages is stupid because i've already been doing that or I wouldn't have gotten to this point)). the main sprite is pretty cool—i've always been a fan of facelessness—but the map is too dark to really get a good view. maybe that's intentional?
there's a map on the wall, and when i check it out I am TOLD that it's a map but I don't get to LOOK AT IT? dude MAKE A MAP, and let us see it. if not, take out that event completely. it's like taunting the players "hey here is some information that i'm not gonna let you have"
okay so there are a bunch of doors that I can't get through. why have them at all? or PLEASE give me a better reason than "THERES NO REASON TO GO INSIDE". i mean this just seems lazy bro. this game is fucking GORGEOUS but the writing is a real turnoff. and i've only been playing for like ten minutes.
okay so i'm in the first battle with the guards:
the battle system is badass. i love how the enemies fall on the ground and just lie there after we kill them. what I
don't like is how the enemies have an "E" icon with no way to tell which icon goes to which enemy.
another critique is that i have to use the up and down arrows to select my enemy target and the right and left arrows don't work. that seems counterintuitive, especially when you consider the horizontal target display at the top of the screen.
what is the purpose of selecting a party member at the end of the battle? doesnt seem to do anything.
why is it that I can interract with every dead person EXCEPT the two on the floor in E-block?
the cutscene fight with Weapon is cool, but Weapon's sprite is at the very bottom tile of the screen for most of the fight. it makes for a strange effect where we can't see EXACTLY what's going on and we're not sure who we are supposed to focus on. center the screen on the action.
THIS IS LORD VASTALE LIVING AVATAR OF DICK (Torklemmor is a HORRIBLE name)
When Weapon joins the party, he just DISAPPEARs. it would be very easy to have him walk into the hero sprite.
I actually like Weapon's dialogue so far. Saying "Suck it" when inspecting a dead guard is pretty rad. A guard says "Oh Christ". is christianity a thing in this world? RUN OR HELL EAT YOU ALIVE ahahahaahhah
There's an open door in the top right corner of A BLOCK that doesn't lead anywhere. in the other top corner, there's a really really stupid scene where weapon kills a guard who is begging for this life. the dialogue here is horribly horribly unrealistic.
after the battle with the guards: "what about Weapon?" *explosion noise* "nevermind" uhhh what? did he just die offscreen or something? i can't even open a menu to check if he's in my party. that part needs work it's confusing.
there are bathrooms that I can't go into... UM WAIT. the reasoning being turning off the power is so that cameras don't see us do our magic. bathrooms do not have cameras (and for that matter, i'm sure there were plenty of places that don't have cameras). why not open our gate in the bathroom? it just seems like an arbitrary device to make us wander around in the building.
"this door requires a code. its a waste of time" no, the waste of time was coming down this corridor. why have it there in the first place? i just don't get the logic of most of this area. it seems like you're trying to encourage exporation but without letting me actually go anywhere.
what is with this blond guy? i never really see him arrive because the lights go out and it seems like we're just suddenly in the middle of a conversation with him.
TWO WEEKS LATER
okay so now we actually see the hero, which renders everything that I've done for the past fifteen minutes a complete waste of time. thanks for that. i never really understood the rpgmaker trope of putting us in the badguy's shoes for an intro dungeon. it seems like every game does that and it only ever feels like a waste of time. cut the entire thing, or turn it into a short cutscene. this is an RPG, which means that playtime should equate to powering up the characters that matter.
anyway, now i'm banivia in barette talking to zomeone named zaqris and now i have to go to Ciel. PLEASE STOP THROWING NAMES AT ME ALL AT ONCE. i am not going to remember them and they are all going to blend together anyway.
wait what. now sudenly i have enough exp to level up? but i didnt even DO ANYTHING YET.
"might i suggest that you continue voicing your complaints as we travel. i have no desire to be ambushed at nightfall." dude PEOPLE DONT TALK LIKE THAT. this is a problem in pretty much every rpgmaker game (and fantasy movie, comic, etc): there's this horrible unrealistic dialogue because there's this idea that fantasy people talk proper. no dude. EVEN if you give me the "well its his personality" excuse, i have a feeling that there's going to be a lot of this kind of dialogue as the game goes on.
passability with the stone well is awkward. i should be able to walk behind and in front of it.
leveling up system is stupid in general but you get a free pass because this is largely personal bias.
Why can't I level up my other party members? I choose "level up" from the menu and can only level auria.
please tell me the COMPASSION/INTELLIGENCE etc chart has a PURPOSE and isn't just there to look cool. the menu is bombarding me with a ridiculous amount of intormation all at once. in fact that seems like what the entire game has been doing so far.
I have a journal entry for Barette telling me about the village BEFORE i've even explored it.
there are THREE DIFFERENT KINDS OF SKILLS WHAT? again, dude, too much at once. it seems like this is one of those games that just
piles on feature after feature just because you can.
i like cameos on gravestone markers.
ohhh duuuude i can walk to the VERY EDGE OF THE MAP and not teleport off of it? AND THERES A PATH THAT LEADS THAT WAY TOO. this is a seriously rookie mistake, bro. this game keeps telling me "HEY YOU CAN GO HERE" but you actually CANT.
why would a woman tell a random stranger to get her husband "and tell him to help store my valuables". that's like inviting theft: "yeah lady my husband's gone and all our valuables are strewn haphazardly all over the place and aren't scure in any way." just say "hey if you see my man tell him to come home"
passability issue: i can walk on the cracks in the houses.
and now there's an ARROW CLEARLY MARKING THE MAP'S EXIT? that's so lazy man. but i'm not gonna sit here and be a dick about it without explaining WHY.
your maps are very pretty but you CANNOT FORGET ABOUT FUNCTION. really, using an arrow to say that "these two tiles can teleport you away" tells me that you made your maps to be pretty and then decided at the end how you were going to piece them all together. even if this isn't true, the game is sending that message. immersion into your world is totally shattered, and the result will feel like a set of loosely-collected individual (and seriously linear without room for exploration) pieces of tile art. when creating a game, you HAVE to think about PLAYER EXPERIENCE first.
hey so before i leave barette i'm gonna check out the hall of legends. is this supposed to be like the "end of time" in chrono trigger? because remember that they didn't introduce it until like halfway in the game. this whole hall of legends thing seems like even more "throw heaps of information at the player all at once". my diary tells me i'm a random lost highschool girl, but i have the ability to teleport to this MYSTICAL CASTLE REALM WITH MAGIC ORBS. ummmm ok. and YAY. more menus, more stats, more arbitrary customization.
When I tell the guy I want to "leave" he doesn't teleport me away. instead i have to walk all the way back down to the teleport point. i don't really get the purpose behind the hall of legends except to say "it's a game feature" and rack up playtime hours.
one thing that i really do like is the enemy encounters and how they are shadows out on the map.
what do the boots and shields floating abot our heads signify?
so I die after two consecutive battles. the enemies all have priority and i don't have any useful skills (despite having "reactions", "passives", and "techniques"), so they slaughter me. after this i have no real desire to continue playing because i've been bored out of my mind.
i do plan on finishing this, so i'll give it another go whenever i feel in the mood but dude, seriously. this is the bottomline on
Vacant Sky: Contention Act I:
This game is truly among the most beautiful RPGMaker games, but discards legitimate gameplay or story in favor of extraneous information, menus and "features"
hopefully the game gets better as it goes on, and i'm willing to bet that it probably does. but if you bore or—even worse—overload a player right in the beginning, then he's probably not going to stick around long enough to get that far.
