RPG Anyone?

[LeenaAngelWing]

Hey! Like what you have so far. I actually work in the gaming industry so I'm really excited about this. I hope you don't mind some constructive criticism.

Mostly, I just want to comment about the pace of your battles. These early game battles take quite a long time. They aren't particularly threatening but they are kind of tedious, which is not something you really want for early game random encounters, or most random encounters at all. Giving early game enemies the ability to heal up to max particularly slows your pace. By the time I got halfway through the bandit dungeon I was escaping from battle rather than fighting.

The desire to make random battles threatening is nothing new. Look at the Shin Megami Tensei series, which is known for it's difficult random battles. However, as difficult as Megaten's battles are, they are still fast, over in one to three rounds. They are a bit of a puzzle really, find the weakness, win the battle, and all that. The battles in your games, however, take upwards of 5 rounds for a single enemy (bandit assassin) and far more for any group of enemies. However, the battle strategy never evolves beyond fight, fight, fight, claw strike, fight, fight fight, clawstrike.

In short, simplify. Random battles should be quick and mostly painless. Their main job is to wear down the party before the boss. They need to be something that players can get through quickly especially since it's what they will be doing the most. It helps to think of random battles as a unit of time. Use a stopwatch to time your random battles as you go through a dungeon. In the end, if you are spending more time in battle than you are on the map or in dialogue, then your pacing is off.

Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. Other than that I enjoy it. The main character is likable and I dig how the game shifts to a less chromatic blue/yellow scale when she shifts, but then lets her see things like footprints and scents. That's really unique and I'd love to see it fleshed out more! I'll stop rambling now, but if you'd like to hear more friendly game design advice, just PM me. YAY my sucky job is finally useful!

Good work. Hope to see more soon.