The Right Path - A different kind of RPG. Feedback needed!

Platform- RMXP

I need people nice enough to play my demo and tell me what they think. It does NOT use the Pokemon Essentials base. You do NOT play a trainer catching Pokemon. (There's nothing wrong with that, it's just not what I wanted to do). There are no humans in this. It's a completely original story, where you play as Pokemon. I am fairly new to this and I need your feedback. Please take a moment to play my game. I really need your help to know if I'm on the right track. I've been a bit discouraged lately and need to know what people really think. If anyone can play it to the end of the demo (about 2 hours), I'd be very happy! Your honest opinion is needed.

Story
Arceus, the god of all Pokemon, has ordered all legendary Pokemon to find and destroy Mewtwo. Arceus does not agree with the existence of the so-called "strongest Pokemon alive", he believes that only HE can create Pokemon. Mew, who is responsible for Mewtwo's creation must also be punished. As Articuno and his friends, you must obey the Lord's commands, but is it really the right thing to do?

Characters
Articuno - Your nice guy main character. He does not agree with Arceus.
Zapdos - Articuno's quick-tempered best friend.
Moltres - Sarcastic and somewhat lazy.
Entei, Suicune and Raikou - Trash-talking rivals of the birds
Wooper - Dim-witted little guy.

Screen Shots


Features
- Original artwork during certain introductions
- SBS
- UMS
-Night_Runner's VX Window_BattleStatus for ENU's SBS
- CMS

Download

Click me. Link on mediafire.
Included is the font DraftSSK which you need to install to display text.

Additional Information
Progress
1/5 maybe?

Gameplay Time
About 2 hours

Known Errors
You need to get very close to people to talk to them. I think this is due to the size of the sprites.
Title screen and game over screen are still placeholder.
Please mention if you see anything strange or bugs or errors etc.
Is the game too hard?

Credits
Sprites from Spriters Resource
Art by me, Sapphire Luna
Scripts authors and people who helped:
Enu, Atoa, Kylock, Night_Runner, Blizzard, Ccoa

Notes
Demo is over after you've gone through the swamp.
Be honest. Is my game boring? How can I make it better? Are the battles too hard? Is it a chore to play? How can I improve? Your help is appreciated!

This looks really cool. I like how the graphics sort of seem like they are drawn like your reading a book. And can you switch pokemon and get new pokemon in your party?

Anyway, this looks nice

Sodaplant

There will be more people in your team, but for now you don't get to decide who.

Thanks for taking the time to play. Yeah, it does look weird when the sprites disappear, I'll work on that. Thanks for the feedback. Do let me know if you get to the end. I tried it with Pokemon tiles, and it was clashing with the sprites too much. The RTP tiles looked prettier.

I have been feeling discouraged because I posted this in 3 different places and only 3 people bothered to download and play it >_< So I was wondering if it was worth the effort if no one will play it :(

Aw thanks =) I hope someone can play it to the end. I had rl friends play it and they gave up halfway :(

Congratz

Hey there i just wanted to say i played through your demo and it was great! The story was very interesting, the areas were very lively, the characters felt alive and were very humorous at times. (the whooper made me laugh quite a few times :P) It was a nice change from the original Pokemon style games and i find it amazing i could play such a game you made. :) As for things that need improvement i didn't find much really... but if you want nit picky stuff i had trouble going through doors at times and had to exit then go back at a certain angle to enter. (or maybe i'm just technically disabled going through doors :P) Also when you show the art background over the screen at times if possible id make the picture a solid rather than have a transparency feel. (the birds or other characters were moving in the background through the image and it kind of distracted me) But honestly those are literally nit picky things i saw since i wanted to try to help even a little bit. Anyways overall this games great! Don't stop doing it as its really a great story and id be honored to play it through the end. :)

zomg thank you! I think you're the only person who got that far. (That told me about it, anyways.) Did you get far enough to meet Zorua too? I'm happy you enjoyed it! I appreciate your feedback and will look into it.

Sapphire Luna said:

zomg thank you! I think you're the only person who got that far. (That told me about it, anyways.) Did you get far enough to meet Zorua too? I'm happy you enjoyed it! I appreciate your feedback and will look into it.

Click to expand...

Yes i did get to Zorua. (i got to the point where you said the demo was finished after the swamp so i beat the entire demo really) Loved every second of it and really look forward to seeing more. :)

Oh yay! You're definitely the only one who got this far. Thank you! You're awesome. Very few people downloaded it, and I think most of them only played a tiny bit.

Ok, so I tested the game out since this isn't getting much feedback(At least from what I've seen on here.) and I have to say I do like it. The graphics pretty much blend in well with the sprites, animations are pretty good and all, as well as the storyline/characters.

The game's pretty well-built, only a couple of bugs I found. The disappearing sprites like mentioned before, head underneath the well, getting too close to the NPC's again mentioned, When becoming Lugia, if you press the menu button it still shows Zapdos and Moltres, the first pokemon in the party shows Lugia's sprite like it should, but has Articuno's name. You should get one of your member's to remove Articuno/Moltres out of the party for this scene, un-checking initializing then putting them back when the scene's done.

Another problem, is when you move too fast then the game(As Lugia) no cutscene occurs with Ho-Oh, not even when you attempt to go back(Can't since your already in the meeting room of course) I had to re-load the game and wait a couple of minutes before entering the meeting room.

I think there was another problem like above^ though I forgot for what. Besides that though, the last thing I would like to point out(Besides some absence of Legendaries, I think Regigas was missing?+Phione/couple others) is that during the part where you try to go after Zorua at night, when you enter the cave and a cutscene occurs, after you come out it's morning. I don't know whether or not that's intentional(Cause I thought it might have emphasized they kinda wandered in the cave all night before getting out) but if it isn't intentional, it should be fixed for a better effect.

All in all though, the game was pretty good(When I got out of the swamp, I thought it was a bug until I realized the game was over, had to search around and clicking to make sure) the art you placed was pretty cute(I mean that in a good way, not trying to offend you or anything) and the bosses you definitely needed to level a bit to beat Sceptile, I was kinda glad you didn't have to beat the three dogs at the beginning(Cause I was close to dying)

So I pretty much liked the game, but without that catching(Or recruit like in Mystery Dungeon) I often tried to escape battles and didn't bother to level up unless I needed to. It's kinda the point you bother catching pokemon in the actual games, you use them to make your team stronger.

Thanks a lot for your feedback! Much appreciated.
I didn't know of the bug with Ho-oh's cutscene. It never occured for me. What do you mean, when you go too fast? The cut-scene is triggered by walking on a tile, so I'm not sure how this occurs. Maybe I'll just switch directly to the meeting scene, and not let the player control Lugia at all.
I'll make Sceptile a bit less strong I guess? Overall, was the game too hard?

I agree that random battles get a bit boring...I don't think there's a way around that though :/
I don't really want to let the player catch or recruit pokemon. I just want to tell my story.

Thanks again though!

By that, I mean, when you go straight towards the room(Without letting go of the up key) you can get past Ho-Oh without the even triggering(At least for me anyway, didn't want to replicate it.) For Sceptile, he wasn't that much of a problem. I just had to level them up a bit more maybe 2 or 3 more.

I get what your saying about wanting to get to the storyline, but for me, when there was no objective necessary to attack the mons, I just thought the battles were kinda pointless and got bored with the parts. It sucks your not getting much feedback from this(Again those that posted, not counting any possible PM's) but the whole thing that attracted me with Pokemon is the fact you can catch and train them to make your team stronger. Without it, it's just eh... but you should be able to figure something out for that though.

I'm super excited for this! I'm downloading it now and I really can't wait to see how it is. I will be writing a reply/review to let you know how I think it's going and if you don't mind I'm willing to suggest ideas if I come up with any while I'm playing.

I really love your character choices and main plot though, it's almost like an anime. XD Sounds to me like Arceus is a jerk, man. Mew didn't really voluntarily create Mewtwo and shouldn't really be at fault for the creation, but that fits with the character of Arceus, mad with power and willing to blame anyone for what he doesn't like.

Herp, Imma start a list as a play through so I don't forget XD Just throwing this out there now, I'm not a grammer nazi but the game will look more professional with proper spelling so I'm going to make note of anything I find :3

In the begining when I talk to Froslass(fav ice pokemon! :D) she tells me to look out for pokemom XD silly typo but it's worth pointing out :3

If doable, I really miss the enemies having a viewable HP bar

Electrike tells me about Mt. Thunder, he says "You will find Master Zapdos here." he should say there intead.

(Mareep made me lol and zapdos has a fangirl XD LOL!)

Hmmm, At the meeting of the legendaries Ho Oh says that I would have been smitten. I think you mean smited as smitten is a word for being in love X3

When talking with buneary Zapdos says I instead of I'll or I will. Hehehe I eat you XD

HURRRR Y U HATE ME?!?! The field of bunearys is hell DX I keepgetting trapped between 4 of them, they're insanely hard to talk to cuz of their size and I keep feeling like I'm talking to the same ones since they're all moving :/

Finally found hte brother bunny and he said "sometihng"

The battle with sceptile was very doable and balanced i thought, though I have a huge lack of items and thats really kicking my put in the sea of poison and paralysis that im currently waging through XD

I'm really quite surprised that the program doesn't offer a different battle system other than random encounters, you would think overworld battles would be an offer, a vastly more appealing system

I really suggest more healing stations as it is i have very few healing resources and im avoiding battles because of it, which in turn is keeping me from getting berries which is preventing me from buying more resources. The whole thing is turning into an abusive cycle honestly :/

If you intend to have the 3 birds as your main party for the majority of the game (with exceptions for party guests) then I suggest adding more character developement to make stronger, more enjoyable characters. Right now I feel like I should like them because their legendaries but honestly I really only like Articuno and he just isn't very well established. Zapdos has an annoying attitude and Moltres is just kinda bland. I get the feeling like the relationships are suposed to be Articuno and Zapdos are constantly picking on eachother and Moltres plays the middle keeping the friendly peace but as the fire type I kinda expect him to be more of a spit fire, right now he just seems mildy annoyed with tasks and bored of most things. I know that in only 2 hours worth of game developement I shouldn't expect a ton of personality details and everything but I just thought I'd make a note of that. I wouldn't mind just having the 3 birds if I felt they were strong, compelling characters that I wanted to stand by and support, fighting through the game to see the success of their goal.

HAHAHA Mewtwo is so awesome ;D The battle goes on for too long though, I healed before I started but with so few resources I really struggled and totally ran out of PP, I did win though (lol wooper died though XD)

Wooper gets a little excited after the battle and says WHere XD

"we dont have time to waste on another shrimp." it says with in game (that might just be nitpicking though :O)

I really enjoy most of the music and the graphics are pretty nice too ^^ If you wanted I could try my hand at pixel versions of the ingame drawings just to make the styles more similar, but that is your choice (They're really nice btw ^^)

No Wooper, you cannot help and I allow you to stay dead in battle! XD He's a silly little character though ^^

I haven't finished playing but I'm tired atm, I'll pick up and finish asap though! ^^

I don't really want the user to be able to recruit Pokemon randomly, I prefer to have control over what happens. i also don't have the skills to do that, if that's even possible.

@Alina_Mau: Thank you so much for your feedback! I appreciate you correcting my grammar. English is not my first language so mistakes can happen. Shame on me for all the typos though o.o

Viewable HP bar is doable. Will look into that.

Overworld battles are more appealing? What do you mean exactly? It is possible to have battles on the map, I just didn't do it to give the player a rest. They would be the exact same battles though.

More healing stations. Will do. But I don't want to make the game too easy though.

Character development. Good point! I need to work more on that don't I... It is supposed to be Articuno: kind and brave, Zapdos: quick tempered and proud, Moltres: lazy and laid back. Just because he's a fire type doesn't mean he has to have a "fiery" attitude I figured. I guess they need more back story? More depth and all that.

Lol Wooper is supposed to be weak and a pain in battle. He died quite a few times in my game.

You can do pixel versions of my pics? I'd like to see that. It sounds hard.

Thanks again for your help!