Your opinion about Jerrat?Jerrat is great. He's so determined to avenge his family and I don't even want to try to imagine what he must feel. But he's also a good person, and from the start I knew that he would find a way to punish the villain other than killing him. He's not a coldblooded murderer.
Your opinion about Aaydan?I loved the way that Aayden started to feel responsible for Jerrat and always tried to get him out of the swamp that his thoughts were. At the end I think this aspect went a little short. I was hoping that they would eventually reveal their mutual sympathy to each other and develop a deep friendship.
I also liked the way Aayden tried to grab Eloabeth's attention, always doubtful about himself and thinking she could never be interested in someone like him. See how wrong he was! Women do like the shy kind of guys!
Your opinion about Eloabeth?She was my power house in this game. Her Sleep spell was the most valuable feature of all! And when Sleep didn't work, Forked Lightning was THE thing. It shocked quite reliably AND did great damage.
What I hardly ever made use of were the spells that needed combination (like something that will only have an effect when the character is wet), simply because I couldn't memorize all that stuff, lol.
Also, later in the game at higher levels she (as well as the other charas) hardly got new spells anymore, which I found a pity. At the beginning they all gained so many, sometimes even two new skills at a new level, and then ... nothing anymore.
Your opinion about Rowath?He was useful because he hit twice. He also had some pretty good skills. Other than that he wasn't too important for me. He wasn't someone I cared for too much.
Your opinion about Grawin?Grawin was the typical nasty guy who changed his opinion a lot over the game. I can't say much about his fighting abilities as I didn't use him all that much. When I had all the characters (at least I THINK I got them all, lol), I found others much more useful. Jerrat had to stay in the party because of his healing spells, Eloabeth for her precious spells, Feniel with his stunning weapon, and for the remaining two spots I preferred to switch between Aayden (I never had to care about his health, plus he's so fast), Boulder (thanks to his skills that could paralyze, cripple or cause bleeding) and Rowath. Asterie and Grawin were the ones I used least. (Asterie had that Dream Whip, but paralyzing didn't even work a single time for me, and the the other properties of that weapon also hardly ever had an effect, so she wasn't very useful.)
Your opinion about the story and dialogs?The game started out by almost making me cry and I was hooked.
The dialogs were fluent (imo opinion, as much as I can judge as a non native speaker) and not too long. I liked the cut scenes between single members of the party (like when Aayden told his story on the ship).
Your opinion about the monsters?They were very diverse (as usual) and I liked the artworks.
Your opinion about the battles?Battles were quite long, each one took several rounds to take all the enemies down. But all in all they were very well balanced. I hate having to go and rest after just a handful of fights or having to spend a fortune on restoratives. In fact, I didn't have to use any for the most part of the game.
Restoring some HP when guarding is a great feature and helped a lot and Eloabeth's skill to restore her own MP was awesome.
Also, I liked watching the battles. They were fast, with well chosen animations; there was always a lot going on.
It was great to see the enemies' health bars too.
However, in the last quarter of the game battles became much, much harder all of a sudden. I spent a lot of time at Nalisa Shrine, hunting ghosts down to level up, and I increased all characters' levels by 4 or 5. Then I went on, thinking that I was well prepared, yet at the Dennick Woods fighting became really frustrating and as of this point it stayed like that, which curbed my excitement quite a lot.
Your opinion about the game's title screen and music?It's cool that all the characters that you find appear on the title screen by and by.
As for the music - can't tell, I had it turned off all the time so I could hear other music while playing.
What was your favorite moment and why?Jerrat coming home, finding his family dead. It was such a tragic moment that very much appealed to me.
What's the game's best/strongest sides?I definitely liked that all the areas were rather small. No huge dungeons where you easily get lost. Rather small towns that don't take too long to explore. That was very nice for a change. You could proceed to new places faster, of which there were plenty, so the game has a nice length too.
I loved reading the characters' thoughts. It was a gread addition and one gets to know the personalities of the charas better that way, including the way they feel.
I liked the diagonal walking. However, I greatly disliked a side effect that it brought: Usually when changing direction you just have to hit the next arrow key whithout having to let go of the other one first. Here obviously this is what makes them walk diagonally though. Now, when trying to walk against every spot of a wall in order to find secret rooms or other hidden stuff, no diagonal step is possible, thus nothing happens when you just hit another arrow key unless you let go of the previous one first. This made exploring very annoying for me.
Another thing that I liked a lot was that there were several places where invisible monsters (which is what I played with) were exchanged for visible ones. That was a nice change here and there.
Have you played other Aldorlea "collaboration" games (Sylia, Opaline, Onyx, Undefeated) and if so, how does this one compare?I think it only makes sense to compare with Undefeated, and this one is definitely better, mostly because it's much better balanced. Also, I liked the characters much more.
There's a few things I'd like to add.
- During the first 3/4 of the game I just loved and thoroughly enjoyed it, every single bit. I found it the best game I've played since TBOL. I didn't play all games that came out since, but none of those I did hooked me as much as this one. So first and foremost: congratulations on this great piece of work!!!
Yet, as mentioned before, during the last part my excitement was toned down quite a bit because the difficulty level changed so abruptly. What made it even more annoying was that at the end the really difficult (visible) monsters respawned for the most part. - It's cool on the one hand that the power of the spells is related to the characters' stats. But just reading the calculation actually doesn't point out very well how good a spell really is. I don't know by heart all the stats of my charas, so it's just guesswork for the most part and a matter of trial and error. Or maybe it's easier when you have a Master degree in math.
- It's a bit the same with status explanations. It would have been great if they were available at the menu all the time. I read that tutorial both times it showed up, but didn't memorize everything. Unless one takes notes (which I was just too lazy to do) it's a bit difficult to remember everything.
- I totally missed that "Wow" effect that you sometimes get when finding a special piece of equipment, when you try it out or read its properties, and it's really a great improvement. Every new weapon I got naturally was a little better than the one before, but simply just that, a little better. Other than Feniel's weapon that could stun there was nothing really special. Not even in secret rooms I found something outstanding. There were mostly just items that I never really needed anyway.
However, something that I liked a lot in this game (for a change, compared to others) was that every character had their own weaopon that only they could bear.
Despite the points of criticism I listed (and I'm generally quite a critical person, so ...) this is a great game and VERY recommendable! I hope to see more collabs from you two!