To illustrate why it's an insanely bad idea to put an artist in charge of writing the story and designing the gameplay.
This is a gorgeous game. It had everything working for it to be a contender for best rpg of the year. Every single character is beautifully animated, awesomely researched, and have interesting models (except for some). The background music ranges from meh to good reaching out really good. Every single foe, every single monster not only is superbly animated and drawn, but has a heavy mythos drawn from it, and the best thing is that it doesn't draw from the common sources (aka, european or japanese mythos), you see south american culture, asiatic (not just china), african, even hawaiian. The themes underlying the game are really interesting as well, such as the wheel of reincarnation, the guilt people must endure and so on. There are genuinely good moments within this game and really good ideas, but those were
How did this become such a disappointing crash?!
In every single aspect that isn't the artwork and the research behind the characters, the game isn't just a trainwreck, it's a cluster of trainwrecks that were bringing fuel, radioactive material and orphans for adoption. Playing this game, the most common reaction I had was... 'Why?!'
Why, for example, put a valkyrie profile style rpg and mix it with platforming? Sure, new gameplay, yes. But the platforming is bad, not awful, but unresponsive controls, lagging commands and wonky platforming make everything a chore.
Why to even bother to have a rpg-style if literally most if not all your boss combats will be just a 2D platformer battle? All of them are just 'stage one, you hit the boss in rpg-fashion, stage two, hit the boss in a platforming environment till it stops and go back to step one'. Why bother making good formations with people of different styles (trappers, hitters, healers) if it's just a matter of dodging platformer-style? Why not just go full Metroidvania? Why have the last boss being just a simple counter-button extravaganza?
Why have a main character so unlikeable that you end up siding with the 'villain'?
The biggest problem with the story is both the pacing and organization to the point where this feels like a jrpg on crack. Want a flawed main character that learns from her mistakes? Ajna is too much of an insufferable stubborn and arrogant genkigirl and learns her lesson at 70% of the game, which is far too late for any sympathy. And worse, when it happens, it's such a 180° turn into a calm wise woman that it feels as if her character was replaced. Her friends instantly forgive her because she 'wasn't herself', even though it was her own decision to ignore the monks and charge into the temple AGAIN, which results in a temple destroyed, thousands of suffering refugees and a colleague sacrificing himself to stop her. Oh, and the game conveninetly forgets that the first time she ignored her friends and invited disaster, the group nearly split itself apart.
Want a 'journey of the hero' story? The village is literally wiped out by the time Ajna goes for a walk and talks to her father. I heard about blitzkrieg but that's ridiculous! Oh and the DiscOneFinalBoss dies literally three dungeons after the start of the game. Meaning any anger and focus on villain that leads to development ends up on the shoulders of an unseen deity that never shows up until the end. You can have a game without a present 'villain', such as Chrono Trigger, but you need heavy character development... which doesn't happen. Because Ajna is too one dimensional as a character (good-willed hothead) and there are 20 characters and everything is rushed.
The worst part is, there are several really good moments and good decisions, such as Killing off Dhar for real. The amount of work the sprites, voice acting and so on must have cost a chunk of resources, and sending it away definitively for the sake of the story is ballsy to say the least. Also Ajna suffering the consequences of her actions is really good, but too late and not in a good manner. The cast is colorful and very interesting, the themes of living in an imperfect world and changing within first in order to change things in a bigger scope is rarely done in rpgs, but it's as if they chose literally the worst combination of elements to make a rpg! The best thing to do to at least soften the blow would be basically joining the first and second 'visits' to the lair of Kala together, meaning, making her visit the other kingdoms first, turning Ravannavar into the reason why Ajra turns real berserk and kills Dhar and then, from the middle of the game onwards, slowly make her see reason instead of doing a 180°.
But again, you need a writer to do that.
The perfect game...
To illustrate why it's an insanely bad idea to put an artist in charge of writing the story and designing the gameplay.
This is a gorgeous game. It had everything working for it to be a contender for best rpg of the year. Every single character is beautifully animated, awesomely researched, and have interesting models (except for some). The background music ranges from meh to good reaching out really good. Every single foe, every single monster not only is superbly animated and drawn, but has a heavy mythos drawn from it, and the best thing is that it doesn't draw from the common sources (aka, european or japanese mythos), you see south american culture, asiatic (not just china), african, even hawaiian. The themes underlying the game are really interesting as well, such as the wheel of reincarnation, the guilt people must endure and so on. There are genuinely good moments within this game and really good ideas, but those were
How did this become such a disappointing crash?!
In every single aspect that isn't the artwork and the research behind the characters, the game isn't just a trainwreck, it's a cluster of trainwrecks that were bringing fuel, radioactive material and orphans for adoption. Playing this game, the most common reaction I had was... 'Why?!'
Why, for example, put a valkyrie profile style rpg and mix it with platforming? Sure, new gameplay, yes. But the platforming is bad, not awful, but unresponsive controls, lagging commands and wonky platforming make everything a chore.
Why to even bother to have a rpg-style if literally most if not all your boss combats will be just a 2D platformer battle? All of them are just 'stage one, you hit the boss in rpg-fashion, stage two, hit the boss in a platforming environment till it stops and go back to step one'. Why bother making good formations with people of different styles (trappers, hitters, healers) if it's just a matter of dodging platformer-style? Why not just go full Metroidvania? Why have the last boss being just a simple counter-button extravaganza?
Why have a main character so unlikeable that you end up siding with the 'villain'?
The biggest problem with the story is both the pacing and organization to the point where this feels like a jrpg on crack. Want a flawed main character that learns from her mistakes? Ajna is too much of an insufferable stubborn and arrogant genkigirl and learns her lesson at 70% of the game, which is far too late for any sympathy. And worse, when it happens, it's such a 180° turn into a calm wise woman that it feels as if her character was replaced. Her friends instantly forgive her because she 'wasn't herself', even though it was her own decision to ignore the monks and charge into the temple AGAIN, which results in a temple destroyed, thousands of suffering refugees and a colleague sacrificing himself to stop her. Oh, and the game conveninetly forgets that the first time she ignored her friends and invited disaster, the group nearly split itself apart.
Want a 'journey of the hero' story? The village is literally wiped out by the time Ajna goes for a walk and talks to her father. I heard about blitzkrieg but that's ridiculous! Oh and the DiscOneFinalBoss dies literally three dungeons after the start of the game. Meaning any anger and focus on villain that leads to development ends up on the shoulders of an unseen deity that never shows up until the end. You can have a game without a present 'villain', such as Chrono Trigger, but you need heavy character development... which doesn't happen. Because Ajna is too one dimensional as a character (good-willed hothead) and there are 20 characters and everything is rushed. The worst part is, there are several really good moments and good decisions, such as Killing off Dhar for real. The amount of work the sprites, voice acting and so on must have cost a chunk of resources, and sending it away definitively for the sake of the story is ballsy to say the least. Also Ajna suffering the consequences of her actions is really good, but too late and not in a good manner. The cast is colorful and very interesting, the themes of living in an imperfect world and changing within first in order to change things in a bigger scope is rarely done in rpgs, but it's as if they chose literally the worst combination of elements to make a rpg! The best thing to do to at least soften the blow would be basically joining the first and second 'visits' to the lair of Kala together, meaning, making her visit the other kingdoms first, turning Ravannavar into the reason why Ajra turns real berserk and kills Dhar and then, from the middle of the game onwards, slowly make her see reason instead of doing a 180°. But again, you need a writer to do that.