stezie's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Crystal Story]

Some of NG's Finest - Still, room for improvement

This must be the finest flash reincarnation of an RPG I've seen for a long time, and it's so obvious to see all of the influences from the RPG world: gameplay from FF, dungeon theme from Summon Night, loot system from Borderlands, and the story. Yeah about that story...

I won't spend too long on what's great about the game, that won't lead to any improvment. And it's mighty obvious as well:
Beautiful aesthetics - graphics, animation, art style
Great Sounds - Music, and SFX
Perfectly Emulated Gameplay - Combat, Skill/Class System

First, however, let's tackle this story issue head on. This is a grindy game, no denying that. FF was grindy as well. The difference between these two games? FF made the player grind to get to the next story point. The story was a reward for the grinding alongside the character's development (both plot and skill). Overall, there's no point in having a grindy game with a grindy story with it, and three repetitive stories (counting sidequests) in a game of this calibre is inexcusable.

Next, let's tackle gameplay issues, the biggest being the skill/class system and how that hinders the character development.

Now it's great that there are so many skills available, and that the skills generally differ from character to character, but when broken down, all the classes are the same (except for healer). It's like, when you sat down and put pen to paper, you said, "each class will have: a basic special attack, a more advanced special, a single de/buff, a group de/buff, a single status attack, a group status attack, and a couple of devastating attacks to round them off". And that's how I viewed every class: as generally the same thing, and overall "meh". They're all the same thing, but with different animations, status effects etc. And of course, there's breaks from this mould. Like comparing Fighter Tristam to Rogue Kaeli: Tristam doesn't get any status or group attack spells. This sort of variance adds to defining characters, in the sense that all the characters must serve some special role in the party, but at the same time it detracts from the characters, since they all end up as pretty much the same thing by the end-game due to the level cap which forces taking up multiple classes. An idea on how to fix this problem would be to actually reward players for taking multiple classes. Like, skills for having AP allocated in both Fighter and Mage class.

And another point: redundant classes and skills. Sure, it's nice having, say, Phoebe as a dedicated healer. That was my plan from the get-go. However, her role as healer quickly diminished: no where in the early game did I really feel like the healer could truly do more than just potions. And with the pure abundance of money in this game, potions were NEVER a problem to obtain. And in the few cases where I felt a healer was needed (say, a devastating attack on all of my characters at once which would've needed a group heal), my healer had too low magic skill to realy help out - I knew the healer was redundant, but balanced strength and magic stats so that they were actually useful in combat. And in the off chance they were needed, I was punished for trying to make my characters all-round useful. This situational usefulness extends to pretty much many of the status effects of the game as well. Most of the time, the enemies I'd use status effects on were actually immune to them! Of course, there were exceptions, but it was so much easier whittling away bosses with just spells and attacks. One way to make these skills and classes more useful, is to simply up the ante on the effects. Poison is too slow to do lasting damage: make it stronger so I'm FORCED to heal the poisoned. The game's combat is too fast paced for slow de/buffs: make them truly noticeable and scary enough that I'd WANT to dispell them. And other ideas along this line.

I'm sure I had more I wanted to say, but my character limit is on the fritz here.
Overall: Amazing effort. I'm giving a ten, ignoring the gripes and issues just because this is simply truly a spectacular piece of work.

Lan14n responds:

Thanks. Story was a last minute thing I did lol. I decided to make it a joke, since there is no way I'm going to pull off a serious one. I am no writer, and English is one of my worst subjects.

[Warchar2 -DRAG and DROP]

A step up from the first, just not by much

Might I confess; I did play the first one, just never had the chance to review it, which is a shame considering I could have improved this greatly (excuse my ego). Then again, this is an obvious step up from the first but I still cannot find any remotely good points about this game.

My Criticisms:
Graphics - Always the first thing I notice when I view any flash. I realize that my next comment undermines the whole game's concept but please, bear with me: I dislike the fact that letters/characters are the focal graphic. They are plainly colored and I see no reason why you could not substitute the letters for simpler shapes like circles. Also, the middle of the checkered background was lost due to the the bad gradient effect.

Music - Sure the quality of audio is good, but what really annoys me about your choice of music is that is is WAY too high pitched, forcing me to mute the sound. Good to know, however, that there was a mute button. Unfortunately, being forced to mute music makes any game much less enjoyable. Also, before I muted the music, I noticed that it looped awfully, leaving a huge silent pause.

Gameplay - This is one of the most challenging games I have come across; not because of my lack of skill, but because the game is too flawed. It is simply too slow; it gets very boring, very quickly to sit and watch the 'A' close in on the worm, only for it to make a sharp turn in the other direction. Also, only one bullet is allowed on the screen at any given time. Another boring, time consuming element. Finally, there is only ONE life! Genius idea to give players only one life on an already boring game. Mind you, I only replayed it in order to find out what the other bonuses (like the undead and magnet) were, but I never reached a high enough level to unlock those. On a good note, I was extremely pleased to know that I had at least some control over the shooting.

How to Improve:
Concerning Graphics
- Even though this would require a name change, please replace the characters with a more simple graphic. The characters are just too much of an eyesore.
- Redo the background gradient to something darker, like the pause menu, which allows the whole checker pattern to be seen clearly.

Concerning Audio/Music
- Fix up the music looping so that it loops smoothly
- Even though the music suits the game completely (simple and slow), it is way too high pitched

Concerning Gameplay
- Allow more bullets. Perhaps integrate this as a bonus/upgrade.
- More lives.
- Increase speed

Overall
With the lack of proper reviews on Newgrounds, I understand that it can be difficult to obtain valuable criticism. I've realized you've dished out this game relatively quickly, so I would suggest slowing down to achieve perfection.

MajorMilizii responds:

Thanks for your time and for your review.
One moment - did you try do drag worms at theirs heads (I think it's make the game more breathtaking)?

[Blue Ball V2]

Who knew that bouncing balls could be so much fun?

Opening Comment
After completing this game, I decided to play your first (which would be pointless to review considering that this is V2), and must I say; what an improvement this is!

The Good:
Art - It's good to know that your art style has greatly improved; from bland and generic to cute and dynamic! I also love the graphics of the ball hitting the walls, floor and ceiling as well as all of the game over graphics; they enhance the cuteness of your art style and make the game all the more fun to play. Unfortunately, the stat box retained that generic look from your first game. For any other installments, do your best to keep the same art style for as much of the game as possible. Also, I appreciated the simple background; early in the game, I thought it was bland, but later, I realized that a complex background would clutter up the screen.
Gameplay - Bounce around, collect gems, avoid bombs, find powerups. All those are boring on their own, but together and with the ability to upgrade stats, which is uncommon for a game like this.
Difficulty - The difficulty curve in this game was excellently created. The inclusion of the stat upgrades ensured that the game was never unbalanced but at the same time, the difficulty scaled at a reasonable rate.
Music - Fun, simple and repetitive. I love a game with music that wholly complements it.

My criticisms
Sound Effects - Each of the sound effects, on their own, are perfectly fine. However, with as many as ten bombs going off at once, the sound heavily convoluted the nice music, making it inaudible in later stages. I would like to see mute buttons for both music and sound effects in later additions.
Instructions - Or more precisely, the lack of. Although any gamer could have easily worked out the arrow key movements and other miscellaneous buttons, I would have liked to see a page detailing the powerups which I still cannot figure out.

Concluding Comment
The point of a second version is to clean up the first. And I hope that the third can clean up the second.

silverwar responds:

thanks fot the review its helpfull.
dunno if im going to work on V3 lot of school work :(

[Ant Trail]

Don't expect this review to be nice

Snake clones never cease to amaze me, they seem to be the classic starting game for people new to flash and this one, like all the others, isn't very good.

My criticisms:
Choice of font - The font just isn't reasonable considering that this game has no references to the medieval or grunge (that's just my interpretation of the font). A plain simple font, even though it would've gone unnoticed, would have been more appropriate for this game.
Shoddy rendition of Snake - Snake actually made vague sense; eat pellets and grow longer. Ant Trail doesn't; eat leaves and get more ants. Also, the boulders were a challenging addition to what would have been an unchallenging game but the added an element of luck which is simple not good for a game you have described as "skill".
Lack of sound and music: Sounds and music are an integral part of the whole gameplay experience and without them, the game is extremely boring. Simply put, music would have made a boring game slightly less boring. However, if you do choose to put music in later submissions, please make reasonable decisions; trance and electronic music, no matter how enticing, don't work for every style of game.

Overall: Congratulations on having a crack at the flash world. Note where you went wrong and use these criticisms to create more and better quality games.

stefisdeadgood responds:

Thanks for your review. :)

I do admit that snake is a very generic first game but there is a reason for that. The tutorials are very easy to find.

I started off with the very basic one. Draw this, draw that, copy this code. After doing this I realised it was just rubbish so set about actually having a go at learning ActionScript 3.0 unlike most of the "shoddy renditions of snake" out there.

Font - I just liked it, simple as that.

Ants - Again, thought it'd be more fun than two different coloured squares.

Boulders - This was more to give me a challenge. I'd never programmed anything before this so I tried to figure out what bit of code did what and make it do something different. I listed it as skill mainly because that's where the collect section was. Collecting food being the main aim of the game. :)

Sound - I realised by the time I'd finished writing the game that it's just snake so it wasn't worth spending any more time learning how to put sound to it, which would also mean learning how to mute the sound. I refuse to write a game without a mute button!

Again thank you for your review, it wasn't as bad as you made it out to be. :P

[Rocket Car 2]

it's about time!

i played this on your host site long before here and was hoping for months now for this to be on newgrounds as it would do insanely well! stunning visuals and classic gameplay! also, the bosses were rather amazing (i didn't think that bosses in rocket car were possible)!! Anyways, brilliant game and hope that number three comes out soon!

CorkySurprise responds:

Thanks for the review!