Thanks for the answer. I was mostly afraid of having to start over again because this path would just have lead me to death.
Sorry if I read that wrong but I was sure the fire/air path was exclusive to fire and air while water/earth path was exclusive to water and earth while necromancy was just earth. At least now I know each paths still have access to the other magics.
It doesnt lessen the bitter aftertaste of being forced in an affinity I didnt want but at least its not going to ruin my whole playtrough. Thats very forgivable for a first game when you compare to some.
If you really want to do an earth mage without necromancy, the strength spells combined with a magic weapon (there are only a few chances to get one so grab it first chance) can be viable so long as you take some time to improve your fighting skills.
is the Firemanās jacket not meant to save you from the fireball? I bought it and immediately died to the first attack i had hoped not to need the fire immunity spell with that.
If you bought the firemanās jacket . Then, you would need the other coat (to cover it) as well. Otherwise, the baddie will figure it out and proceed to not use fire spells.
@Drakeye, @LanaRose, I thought I had corrected this bug (for sure it was already reported, but maybe the fix didnāt work?) Anyway I will look into it and correct for the next update (not sure how long I should wait for that, at the moment Iām still collecting typos and bugs through this threadā¦). But, thanks for reporting it!
Just a little question, about how many words is this? I love me some 200k+ words stories, but ones that are interesting, Iād like to reread even if itās short.
Total word count is 144,000, with average play through of 31,000-32,000 (if I remember correctly). I think repeatability is not so bad as there are three different branches that start to split off around 1/3 into the game. There are also difficulty settings, though this is mostly for those interested in the combat/maximising stats component of the game.
Iād love to see a sequel to that, but itās a closed ending, so probably not.
I felt like the only satisfying ending for me was the Lich one, MC gets chased by Phantom Samurai, beats him into submission and use the same Samurai Guardian to steal the secret to immortality? Couldnāt help but feel it was funny. Also laughing at my ex-senseiās death (and his possible reincarnation as my minion?), that was priceless. But still, i liked all the other endings, even though i was a bit disappointed at having to break up with significant other. There should be an option to disobey Arcanus. Like @LanaRose said, it felt railroaded.
Glad you liked the different endings. Obviously the story is self-enclosed, and the epilogue would essentially just be just another story in the same setting, though I have some ideas about it, if enough people are interesting. It would be more difficult to do an extension of the lich story, though who knows maybe I could even do that one day as a separate story?
Apologies once more about the break-up, as I said it was a consequence of the CSComp, which then became too difficult to change. If I were to go back Iād do things differently, and Iāve learnt my lesson. There is the option to get back together, have you tried that?
Iām glad to see a finished official release! Congrats. I hope you made it a little easier for scrubs like me since the demo but i like forward to doing a full playthrough
@gamesrgreat the difficulty settings were indeed greatly tweaked, so on super-easy you should walk through the game (even if you choose to fight at every step, which you donāt have to) and easily win at the end. Thanks for all the feedback then, as it made me realise many people werenāt enjoying that side of the gameā¦
@rialta you need to have the levitate or fly spells, though levitate will only allow you to save yourself as itās less powerful
@cyanide I am curious about your experience building a purely Earth mage, how did you feel about it in the end? (I am toying with the idea of writing another game in the same setting re-using this āengineā, (i.e. using the same spells, combat system, save system, etc). However, I realised that I should take your comments on board and always offer at least one spell from each elementā¦ any thoughts on other improvements that could be made?
I will finish my playtrough and send you in private. I stoped my playtrough because of classes before the holidays and now well, holidays so I got lots of other stuff.
Great game btw,there is a bug with the melee weapons,if I buy the knife along with the axe it only shows the knife,also in the final battle i used my katana and it said I was using my axe
I am very sorry to be the one to say something bad about the game, I really am. I try to never write negative reviews unless I have to face some bugs or the game is THAT bad that I cannot stand it at all. And I really hate criticizing someoneās work because I appreciate every effort made to create something.
However, in this very case, I would like to discuss a few things that I did not like at all and which I would not like to see in the next games/books written by the same author. I was quite interested in the theme of the game: Japan, magic, romance, evil warlocks, spirits and etc. And all of these just in one book! Amazing!
BUT!
Dialogues. This is the main thing that made me frown all the time while reading the game. They are so repetitive, short and uninformative! For example, Arcanus says āExcellent, excellent!ā all the time. We hear this phrase in almost every dialogue with him. First of all, the words themselves cannot but remind me of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons (my mind always created a picture of him while reading about Arcanus). Secondly, not even a single person can say the same things every time you see him or her. Such repetitiveness makes the character less believable, less alive, I dare to say.
And the same goes for many other characters. Another example is our partner. We meet them 3 or 4 times during the game, if I am not mistaken, and each time they greet us in the same manner (with the same words). It becomes annoying and I cannot feel any kind of regret while breaking up with them. I do not want to date a robot, after all.
And here comes the second problem, which was quite important to me. Why is there no option to choose our romance preferences? Why do we choose our nationality, which will not be mentioned even a single time during the game (I do not remember any words about it after the first chapter), but we cannot choose Yukiās gender, for example? I am female, a straight one. I do not want to date a girl, not to mention to kiss her, even in a game. I tend to place myself in the shoes of the character I am playing, but how can I do it if I cannot build a proper romance through the game and I am forced to stay with Yuki as the only available romance character? I tried to stay with one of my characterās friends (Daisuke, to be precise), but if I build my friendship with him, I lose a lot of stats points as far as magic is concerned.
Secondly, the romance itself is so abrupt! Just one kissing scene, then a bit more hugging and kissing in the end. And that is all? What kind of romance is it? Yuki says that she is an independent soul, but I cannot see it at all while I am not provided with any scenes showing it. Or that she loves the character.
The third problem comes from the first one. Descriptions in the game are really nice, it was interesting to read about something new. But while the dialogues were not fulfilling at all, by the end of the game I felt like reading Wikipedia, not a book.
The forth problem comes from the second one. It is not only romance which is a bit (OK, quite, not a bit) shallow, but friendship is absolutely the same. Who is David? And what about Nana? Why am I friends with these people? Because they write me short messages from time to time? I know almost nothing about all these characters, so why would I feel anything towards them during the game?
And the last problem, the one that I also faced while playing Unnatural. Extreme repetitiveness of characterās actions. You sleep, go to Arcanus, hear his āExcellent, excellent!ā, copy new spell, learn new spell, sleep again, go to Arcanus, and etc. and etc. From time to time you kill something or somebody, but that is all. Even the change of the town did not help at all. You still do the same things with Yuki.
All in all, my gaming experience was not pleasant and I am very sorry to inform the author about it. I was expecting a lot from the title and when I bought the game, I was ready to enjoy hours of gameplay in magical Tokyo. Instead, I got a highly repetitive story in which I cannot feel the character I am playing with. Description of blood types does not help at all, while they are short and do not correlate with my stats that much (I selected Air affinity, but ended being a Water mage).
Donāt be sorry to say bad things. Criticism is always welcome, even the negative criticism, when it comes in a nice email that clearly formulates your thoughts. I have always said that I welcome such criticism, and it is clear from your tone that you are being constructive, and I am very happy about that
Now, obviously it is difficult at this stage for me to really address all of these comments (though I will try to tweak things here and there in the update, if possibleā¦ but anyway major structural changes are difficult at this point). But, I will try to answer your comments one by one:
The repetitive nature of Arcanus saying āExcellent, excellent!ā was actually something intended. I wanted the MC to identify him with this phrase, and to start to realize that he uses it especially in certain circumstances when he wants the MC to do things which are not all that nice. I am glad that this evokes memories of somebody like Mr. Burns, I didnāt have him in mind, yet that was the effect I wanted to create However, I do take your point that I might have overused this strategy. I also might have overused this with the partner, and this was partly due to coding reasons, while still trying to give them a little bit of personality
Yes, I agree that nationality is purely cosmetic. Somehow this is a complicated issue, as some people like the games to have lots of customisation, even when itās purely cosmetic, while others are happy just to imagine things in their own minds. Like many other authors I struggle with this, and generally lean towards less of these cosmetic choices. Same goes for the characters, I offered a range of six, but allowing for full customisation might have had other people complain that these were not real characters, just customised robots. It is a difficult one, and Iām not sure I handled it well at all. Actually, the entire issue of this forced romance and forced breakup was a disaster from the beginning, poorly handled by me, and which many people complained about. After receiving much negative feedback I tried to improve things as best as I could, but everything by then was too āhard-wiredā into the structure of the game . The end result is better than the original versions, but still I agree that it is not good. But, I have learnt much about all this, and I wont make the same mistakes again (I will make different ones, to be sure, but that is life!)
3)Indeed, at some point too much goes into the description of the magic system, and that as a result character development takes a second step. If I ever make a second part hopefully I wonāt have to go through all this again and concentrate more on the characters, but anyway still not 100% sure I will write this second part. Before that there are a couple of other projects I would like to do, including using the code from this story and completely re-writing it into a fantasy setting, improving solving many of the flaws in this story.
Yes, some of these are a bit (very) shallow. Somehow it was even worse in the first drafts of the game, and somehow I tried to improve a little bit on it. But, Iāll try to improve in the next games, and never make the mistake again of assigning previous friends/partners to the MC from the start (so many of the problems that you outline start from this, as highlighted by many others before alsoā¦)
Mmmmmā¦ I did also realize this at some point myself, though by that time the way I had written the story was kind of structured that way. I guess that maybe that is the way that I see life, as highly structured sequences of learning and research (I am a researcher in real life, so maybe this is the way that I see my life, and hence the way in which I approach studying is something like that?)
Anyway, I am sorry that you didnāt enjoy it and that it didnāt live up to your expectations. As I said, I believe that much of your criticism stems from a VERY BAD structural decision I made early on in the game, and which later became difficult to address. I have learnt from this mistake and I am definitively not making it again (as I said, Iām sure Iāll make different ones!) But, I really appreciate your comments, knowing that many people feel similarly about certain aspects of the game reinforces this notion that I made some poor choices regarding structure and story. Iām still happy that some other people are liking it for what it is, and despite its flaws.
