A Reflection

Holy shit! It's an entry!

Seriously, this is just a reflection I had posted elsewhere. I figure it would make for a good read, so I'll make it an entry.

It's been a while since this was finished now. I look back on it now and I can't help but shake my head at all the mistakes I made.

First and foremost was...the writing. People have said that the dialogue was terrible and the characters were too samey. While I don't agree about the characters, I can see the point about the dialogue. This has been plaguing me for years now. I try to write my best, but it never turns out to be good enough. However with each attempt, I learn what NOT to do. Of course, that doesn't really tell me what I should do. It's kind of like process of elimination, heh. It's strange though. No one said much about Angelic Awakening's writing, so I must have done something right there. Maybe it was a fluke, haha.

Secondly, the menu was pretty badly designed, though it served it's function well enough. The worst thing about it was that it was map based. The numbers in the main menu were also out of control and I could never pinpoint the issue. Luckily I've improved my abilities since then. So map based menus are a thing of the past now. Here's hoping I'll do better.

Third was the battle system. I felt that I managed to create something fun enough, but there were many balancing issues, especially with spells and items. Spells could wipe out your party in an instant. On the flipside, items may have been TOO useful. As Nessiah demonstrated. Farming for zelum was easy enough with Gems of weakness. On top of that Outburst Crystals and Burst Gems ensured that you would always have special attacks ready in record time. I suppose in a way, this kind of balances out the cheapness of enemies, but I don't like it.

Lastly was field movement. The way I handled this was to just delegate field stuff to four tools. Nearly all the field challenges involved these tools. But the method for handling them was pretty clunky. GZ from GW mentioned that it was annoying to have to press a key to switch your current tool, and in retrospect, I agree with him. The system was only an annoying aesthetic.

I was actually going to create a big patch for the game that would've had a new menu, a load of edits and fixes and a new skill learning system. But in the end, I grew tired of dealing with the game and decided to focus my improvement efforts on SEB2.

Despite it's problems though, I think I managed to find that some people enjoyed SEB1 for what it was, merely an rpg condensed into a single location.

The other day Neok mentioned that games like Summon Night: Twin Age and Luminous Arc reminded him of the style of my games. It was actually a surprise to me. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? No matter though. That's just my style. Some people enjoy it so it's not like it's an astronomical failure. Not to mention I enjoy working this way.

Getting back to my main points. I plan to try and address SEB1's major faults in SEB2. Especially in the areas of battle and field movement. Writing is not my strong suit, but it's not in me to delegate that kind of thing to someone else, so I'll just do my best to characterize better and avoid dialogue pitfalls.

All in all, SEB1 was a good learning experience and I hope to do better with the sequel.