Red Hand Of Doom |Saif Ü Reviews|

[Saiffu 26]

 

Game Title: Red Hand of Doom

Author: Kaelan

 

Topic Link

 

Gameplay

 

Red Hand of Doom is a game wherein the mouse is more involved than the keyboard, basically a point and click game. It mimicks the gameplay of an MMORPG, wherein skills would be binded to hotkeys and such.

 

What I enjoyed on Red Hand of Doom is that you are given the opportunity to customize your character any way you like and I tell you that I truly enjoyed this feature of the game. From picking what class, picking what race, specific stats to raise, feats to learn and characteristics to choose. This feature makes you have full control over the growth of your character. A big thumbs up for that.

 

What I dislike is the difficulty and the lack of cutscenes in the game. Like directions on what to do and what quests to take. consequences if i do this and i do that. We do not have any information or any hint of at least the best choice to pick. On the other hand, the difficulty is absurd for the first boss of the game. Just one wrong choice and you'll definitely lose the battle.

 

The presence of a lot of bugs got me stop playing the game. The easy combat mode is rather buggy. You might want to take a look at the heal spell for the cleric, since whenever you hover your mouse there whenever you would want to use it, the game crashes. Similiar to the fear spell, I do not know but when I am about to cast fear, the game crashes again. This is on easy combat though, the bug I found on the normal mode is that if you have already casted fear on the opponent, once you try to cast it again, the game would crash. So fix every bug which is present as quick as possible because how are we going to go further through the game if there are a lot of bugs.

 

And the lack of details on some options, for example, Coup De Grace/bull rush, they suddenly popped out on the menu without any nice explanation whatsoever. What would be the advantage of using such and how to trigger/use it.

 

Overall, I still enjoyed the game and the battle system a lot but the bugs would definitely kill the mood. I did not only encounter bugs once, twice, thrice but at least 20x. Which is truly disappointing.

 

Story

 

The story is a bit confusing, what if the player did not read your history, lore and such on your thread. Then they would have a hard time understanding the game. And again, I have not ventured through the game much since the bugs have been slowing me down so that is all I have to say for now.

 

Resources Used

 

Everything which was used strayed far away from the default RTP style. This just shows how creative the creator of the game is and how he is willing to be different from the others. Everything used was neat and simple, Interfaces were very fancy and had me going. I was so amazed on how you were able to create such a game. Honestly, this is my first time seeing this type of game on RMVXA and I applaud you for that.

 

Music fitted well for this type of game and I could say that every piece of music was used right where they should be.

 

My only complaint would be that the sprites I guess do not show much detail and they are just accustomed to one move set as far as I have observed or is it just that I don't notice their other move sets at all.

 

Overall though, a big thumbs up for originality.

 

Overall

 

For the demo's current condition, I would give it a 5/10 as it is not that playable yet since a lot of bugs are still present and there may be rebalances which could still be made but the game has the potential to reach a 10/10.

 

In fact, you just showed all the game developers out there the potential which RMVXA could have. You proved to everyone out there that RMVXA is a powerful tool and could do such marvelous things. Good Job.

 

I hope you continue on developing the game as I would be waiting for it to be completed. Maybe once bugs has lessened, I might play it again. Again, good job, and happy game developing

Edited December 30, 2014 by Saif Ü

[Kaelan 25]

Thanks for the review! Most of the testing was in normal mode, so it seems I missed some bugs in Easy. I'll fix them right away!

 

For the story, you didn't miss much, the demo intentionally has very little story and no cutscenes. It's essentially the tutorial area before the story begins. In the final version, you'll discover everything mentioned in the game topic once you can reach the first town, which is right after the demo ends.

 

For the difficulty you said you had trouble with, who do you mean by the first boss in the demo? The undead in the crypt? Or the Ogre in the cave?

 

I'd love more thoughts on anything you found too difficult, I'm trying to make it hard but not unreasonable.

[Saiffu 26]

The ogre part would have just the right difficulty, but I think it had become harder because I could not use some of the status inflicting skills onto the ogre. The wizards and sorcerers/sorceress had just the right mana pool but the clerics had such a pityful amount. What I think is needed too are additional skills/options to restore mana pool as resting in camp takes too much time, an alternative maybe? And the shop with the weird looking lizard could offer potions/scrolls for medium and critical wounds. And also for the gems which are picked up on the treasure boxes, do they hold any important value? you may define it in the item description I also think the whole demo before the actual story contains too much battles, a lot of hard ones at that, I think the accuracy rate is too low at some times. Some suggestions, I find it weird that the fighter's and barbarian's are the ones which could learn Finesse Wielding, as their attributes scales on Strength mainly, while the Rogue's scale a lot on dexterity but does not have the right to learn Finesse Wielding right away, so I had to get a hybrid of fighter or barbarian. The range of the skills of spellcasters are a bit small? it's just one tile away, I bet spellcasters don't need to get that near to their comrades just to buff or heal them up, maybe widen the range a little bit? I also think 1-8 healing for the light wounds is strange, 3-8 would be better. just my opinion. That's all and I'll try to play the game again to find more bugs.

Edited December 31, 2014 by Saif Ü

[Kaelan 25]

Ahh, I think I see what the problem is. I think the biggest issue I might have is the tutorial not explaining things well enough.

 

Each caster class has a main stat that it uses, and that stat will determine both how hard your spells are to resist and how much SP you gain per level. Clerics and Wizards actually gain SP at the same rate, but Wizards cast spells with Intelligence while Clerics cast with Wisdom. If you had very low Wisdom, that would explain why your Cleric couldn't cast anything very well. If you have trouble healing, you could have a Cleric learn the Healing Domain at level 1, it grants access to healing spells 1 tier higher than they otherwise would be for your level.

 

The gems are to be sold for money, they don't have any other function on their own.

 

Accuracy is determined by your attack stat, which usually comes from Strength (for melee weapons) or Dexterity (ranged weapons and melee weapons with Weapon Finesse). You can increase it by having higher stats, using spells or abilities that increase those stats (like casting Bull's Strength on your Fighter, or using a Barbarian's Rage ability) or casting spells that increase attack directly, like a Cleric's Bless or a Bard's Inspire Courage. Some enemies also have abilities or properties that increase their evasion (concealment). You can either kill those with spells or find a way to reduce their evasion so you can hit them (Ghosts and Shadows lose their evasion when you hit them with Glitterdust or Faerie Fire, for example).

 

Spell ranges are different per spell. Most support and offensive spells have 3 ~ 8 tiles of range. Healing spells are intentionally all very short range and generally harder to cast in battle than other spells because Clerics are not meant to stay back and cure like White Mages. They're meant to fight on the front lines (they can wear heavy armor and their spells can't fail because of armor) and provide support. Healing is mostly a backup strategy for when things go wrong - you should try to prevent damage as much as you can before it happens.

 

The point about Weapon Finesse I agree with, it doesn't make sense that Rogues get it after Fighters. I'll change the requirements on that to 13 DEX instead.

[Saiffu 26]

I finally got far enough in the game, have beaten everything in the cave which had a lot of zombies except the boss. my only problem now is that the game won't accept how powerful I already am!!! HAHAHA. just kidding. The game cannot seem to compute the amount of damage I have stacked upon the buffs which I had made. See the screenshot below.

 

I prepared myself very well for the opponent which I am about to face, and so this happened

 

 

The error which appears now is the KDEA:StatCalc error. oh and I found another bug, the skill of the bard wherein competency is raised, it makes the game crash.

 

Another bug would be when the shrink person is used, and the duration ends, the character's sprite who had the buff would be 100% transparent.

 

I enjoyed the game so much and I have already used so much time just to determine the right combination of classes and I can say that I could even play this 24 hours straight. The game is very addictive, so please! fix the errors quickly

Edited January 1, 2015 by Saif Ü

[Kaelan 25]

Haha, good to see you're having fun with it. Looks like I at least did something right 

 

I fixed the Reduce Person and Inspire Competence bugs, but I'm not sure what's causing the other one. Can you send me the error log? There should be a text file called Errors.txt in your game folder.

Edited January 1, 2015 by Kaelan

[Saiffu 26]

Here you go

 

 

=================================================

KDEA :: Stat Calc:246:in `extra_reach': undefined method `-' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)

from KDEA :: Stat Calc:1735:in `attack_range'

from KDEA :: Stat Calc:1720:in `threat_range'

from KDEA :: Battle Scene:1056:in `get_threatened_tiles'

from KDEA :: Battle Scene:1012:in `threatened?'

from KDEA :: Battle Scene:878:in `block in is_flanked?'

from KDEA :: Battle Scene:877:in `each'

from KDEA :: Battle Scene:877:in `is_flanked?'

from KDEA :: Actions (General):2067:in `calc_attack'

from KDEA :: Actions (General):562:in `preview_full_atk'

from KDEA :: Action Manager:436:in `call'

from KDEA :: Action Manager:436:in `preview_action'

from KDEA :: Targeting:761:in `preview_action'

from KDEA :: Targeting:269:in `update_preview_window'

from KDEA :: Targeting:176:in `update'

from KDEA :: Window Manager:86:in `update'

from KDEA :: Battle Scene:205:in `update'

from Scene_Base:14:in `main'

from KDEA :: Tooltip Fix:27:in `main'

from SceneManager:23:in `run'

from Main:68:in `block in <main>'

from ACEZ :: F12 Reset Fix:50:in `call'

from ACEZ :: F12 Reset Fix:50:in `block in rgss_main'

=================================================

 

EDIT: I just found out it's not the buff's fault. it's on that stage itself. take a look.

Edited January 1, 2015 by Saif Ü

[Kaelan 25]

Looks like it was just part of the same bug with Reduce Person. It was permanently altering your stats in a way it wasn't supposed to, so it would crash any time the game tried to check your character's size.

 

Fixed and updated the download. If you want to keep playing on the same save, recast Reduce Person on any character you had cast it on before and the problem should go away.

Edited January 1, 2015 by Kaelan