Writing and Translation (?)

[kartacha]

I'm 3 hours in, just had the outpost scene happen and I could say that confidently, this might be the worst intro to any of the three trilogies. It felt like half of the dialogue is pointless bickering between Sarah and Wendala. After two trilogies and a lot of stuff that they did together it feels like they should be over it already. Generally all but Luciana are unbearable right now. Luciana is bearable but not exactly the cool dude she was.
Also, it seems like the translation is not great, if Indy writes in French first. Or it is something else, I dunno. However, there are a lot of oddly written sentences grammar-wise and the overall dialogue construction is far below Laxius Force and even Laxius Power.
What happened?

[Merkades]

I agree. In the last year or so I have played The Book of Legends, Elendia Ceus, Forever Heroes and a few hours of Laxius Soul and outside of Elendia Ceus I kind of hate the characters. They spend so much time sniping each other. The Book of Legends and Forever Heroes were really bad at that, but the Wendy/Sarah stuff in the first few hours is pretty bad too.

Insofar as the second part, I would not be adverse to an additional English proofreader, but I read a lot of poorly translated stuff so I can live with it as is.

And since I am finally making a post, I may as well add two more things, one good one not so much.

First, I really feel that the strat guides should be complete instead of half done. I have more than a hundred games in my backlog, I don't know when or if I will have time to go back and play a 100+hour game a second time. So, since I want to do everything I am backlogging LS until the hidden rooms and quests get found and posted by some nice people.

Second, I live in Michigan in the US, the place I work at has ~300-400 people and one of them who I get a long with who also plays games knows of Aldorlea, and even registered and posted here years ago. Given the indie nature, and the location, the probability of these is not likely high.

Anyways, I do like your work as a whole, just wish the sniping was less prevalent.

[Indinera]

The "sniping" is part of the series.

The game was written directly in english and never "translated". To say it's not written better than Laxius Power and Force is a flat-out lie. I appreciate feedback, but I can do without baseless one.

If you don't like what the characters say, which is another thing entirely, well just play a game where you do. There are many other games on this website, some not even made by me (Gemelle for instance write very different characters with little sniping, such as When the Light Dies), some made by me where characters talk and behave differently, such as Odessa or Night of the Stars.

Anyways, I do like your work as a whole, just wish the sniping was less prevalent.

If you want it less prevalent, I suggest you pick Odessa, Little Hearts, Night of the Stars, A Plunge into Darkness, Opaline, Millennium of course if you haven't already, and all the Gemelle Games.

[kartacha]

Few things to note here:
- I never minded the sniping, I like it to some extent even. I just feel it is way overdone in the beginning on Laxius Soul. I cannot recall any stretch of the previous games that long where the main narrative focus when writing Sarah and Wendala was to show how much they dislike eachother. It even is the case that when Sarah meets one of her best friends that she did not have the chance to meet for months, it felt like the main thing she had to say to her is how much she dislikes Wendie
- I do not compare the beginning of Laxius Soul to other Aldorlea games but to the beginning of Laxius Power trilogy and the beginning of Laxius Force trilogy specifically
- As for the writing my sample size of Laxius Soul is these first 3 hours and I am comparing it to entire trilogies which might be a significant disfavour to LS. However, that is all the sample size I had and it was enough for me to make a statement
- When I was commenting on how I felt about the writing style of Laxius Soul and when I compared its intro to the other two Laxius trilogies, I meant that to be taken as separate point. If you took it otherwise, then it is my bad I did not explain it properly. I do not think the writing style of Soul is worse than Power. I cannot say if it is compared to Force though. Last played the trilogy like 7-8 years ago. I remember the strong points and it is not a good point of comparison. I meant that I did not appreciate the writing style as a separate thing. The comparison of the intros is strictly from the pespective of how they felt to me as a player.

How I see the comparison:
Since Laxius Soul is supposed to be 100+ hours long, it would not be a good idea to compare its first 3 hours to the first 3 hours of a much shorter games like Laxius Power and Force. I would say let's compare it to the first hour or an hour and a half of Power and the first two hours of Force. Your milage may vary but that is what I feel is relatively the same percentage.

- Laxius Power - the beginning we had a little tutorial area, met with Random, Lucy, Sarah and Coryool gradually. We had a taste of our first town, world map expoloration, even secret zones and items with one in particular having a secret that was about to be included to the game in a later version (in what version of LP I had). Then we got to help kill a werewolf and save a village/a hamlet or whatever and witnessed a meeting of a secret order
- Laxius Force - we had a spelunking intro with 3 entirely new characters. Met a what it seems like unkillable boss with them. Then we switched to the main characters, they helped us catch up. Saw the ruins of Metrolia which I though was highly impactful from a narrative perspective if you are a fan of the series, comparable to the ruins of Tristram in Diablo II. You could find your first hidden character. Had a taste of some other extra locations if you wanted and finally reached your first village
- Laxius Soul -

Spoiler: show

We saw Yveen get messed up. Lucy found out that something went wrong with the temple destruction business. You got your first tutorial area. She met with her friends. They head to their first village and then after that had their first proper area before things went south in the outpost.

Writing those 3 down like that I feel they are not that different except LS is a bit more linear and slow paced even relative to entire game length. The main difference to me was that I felt that the charcters in LS are totally absorbed by their daily drama and they were barely even paying attention to the adventure they are setting on (except Lucy that is, of course). It might be that ignorance and vanity are getting to them, of course, they did a lot of stuff for Deport and it is only natural that they got very prideful. I will play and see. But I would have appreciated the most sane one (Lucy) to have played the role of a reality check more harshly.

In Discord Indy said he thought the comment is hateful, not a useful criticism and that it was trying to persuade people not to play the game.
Hopefully breaking it down like that addresses the not useful and strictly hateful part. It still might be insensitve though. Sorry for that. Always been cut ouf of a rough cloth.
As for trying to persuade people not to play it, this one is factually incorrect. I never said anything like that. I myself am playing the game and will continue to play it. How am I to say to someone that they should not if I am. People seing that certain noone in a forum does not like a certain aspect or a part of the game might push them not to buy it, okay. If that is how much it will take someone to not play a certain game, then I bet they could find other reasons not to. It is not on me to ensure people are buying the game anyway, regardless of whether I consider myself a fan or not. I was jut sharing my opinion in the hope of dialogue with other fans of the Laxius series.

[Indinera]

In Discord Indy said he thought the comment is hateful

I haven't used this word a single time.

As for trying to persuade people not to play it, this one is factually incorrect.

I didn't say that either. I said however that it implies the game is bad (or starts bad), and that the consequence is that it won't help convincing people to play it. Which is factually correct.

It is not on me to ensure people are buying the game anyway

It's not on you either to spread wrong/false information like "the writing is less good than in LP/F".
What you think of Wendie/Sarah's relationship is up to you, and I have no problem with that.
I do think harsh statement like "the worst intro" is unhelpful, extreme, and doesn't show much respect for my work.

It even is the case that when Sarah meets one of her best friends that she did not have the chance to meet for months, it felt like the main thing she had to say to her is how much she dislikes Wendie

I don't think that's true. Most of what she says is not related to Wendie. She's impatient to show Luci their house, she's impatient to see what she has become, she asks about her boyfriend etc.

[Myst_]

Hello everyone. I go by Myst, and I was the first person to clear Laxius Soul.

I don't really agree with OP's remarks. I firmly believe LS' introduction serves to highlight all the development the main cast has had since the end of LF3. Wendie and Sarah's animosity continues to grow, but it doesn't feel unnatural. Luciana, now assuming the demeanor and role of a queen, seems to have matured considerably, which is something I sort of guessed would happen prior to delving into LS. Whether OP's points stem from a refusal of change or not, I don't really know, but it's something I'm personally welcoming a lot, especially knowing what happens later on in the game.

Looking back at the opening of LS after seeing some of the later events and endings, they make perfect sense, and I can't wait to see how the main cast further evolves in LS2 and 3. As for OP, seeing how cryptic the opening was, and how the characters interacted with each other, it's really surprising to me how they didn't decide to keep an open mind and wait until seeing what happens next before hopping on forums to vent. With only three hours of play time on a pretty massive game, it's a bit of a stretch to insinuate this is the worst of the franchise.

When it comes to writing, I really don't know what you're talking about. Indy's writing style is much more refined compared to what it was like in LF and LP, and to say that those are better in terms of that has me lost for words. Laxius has a very distinct style of writing and storytelling that, while chaotic and messy in its early days, has come a long way and is now far more refined and enjoyable. I'm a writer and English teacher, and the only issues I see lie with proofreading. I can't acknowledge this as a serious problem as portrayed by you because work on LS is not over yet. There is still a lot of bug fixing and proofreading -with help from the community- being done as I write this. Had v1.0 been the last of it, my stance would've been a little different, but because it's not, this point is moot in my books. I highly recommend you have a look over the LS channels in the Discord server to see how far progress has come in terms of further refining LS.

I'd be happy what you thought of LS once you're done with it, or at least made a good bit of progress on it, rather than only scratch the surface and try your hardest to only zero in on the bad, a lot of which isn't there.

[Seraphus]

Hello everyone, I'm Seraphus (same as on the discord), and whilst I haven't finished the game yet, I'm the one managing the discord's list of secrets and a google drive with every missable detail the game has. In short: I'd say I'm the person the most involved in seeing every line of dialogue the game has.

I wasn't going to post initially because I wasn't sure if I wanted to stoke the fire or not, but Myst's post convinced my to share my own feelings too.

The opening of the game felt perfect to me. Myst and I were on stream with each other through Discord while playing through it, and I don't think I've ever enjoyed a game more than this one in that moment. It was amazing to play through the shocking twists you get to see from the get-go, especially so with a friend. Just for a simple matter of fact: We found the first secret room together and I don't think we spent a second not talking excitedly until we did so. It truly was awesome.

So really, I don't understand the criticism being given. I can understand some people might not enjoy the development we see in the characters, but they are 4 years older than when LF3 ended. People mature, and I feel LS reflects that wonderfully. I won't delve into the details as that would spoil certain things, but the dynamics we see are properly explained throughout the intro and we get to see what insecurities the heroes are dealing with (or avoiding) right away. It's anyone's right to disapprove of change, of course, but I'll admit it saddens me that that's not what's happening here. I just see criticism over an opinion, in no way constructive.

As for language... I will toot my degree for a moment... Both me and my sister have been playing Laxius Soul ever since release, both of us have a degree (a minor for me, a master's for her) in English linguistics, semantics, proficiency and literature. Neither of us agrees.
There is no one playing Laxius Soul (I assume) that thinks the language is perfect, and Indy least of all thinks so. He is very aware that he is not native and he has always been completely open to feedback and help with certain sentences or such. The bugreports thread on here and in the Discord are places where he openly accepts feedback on anything we consider a bug or a typo or a bad sentence, and he's changed a fair few bits already to accommodate feedback.

However, saying that the level of writing displayed here is "below LF or even Laxius Power" earnestly made me disregard this post as a plain troll initially. It is outright not true. Not even remotely. To anyone reading this (rather sad) exchange, it is blatantly not true. I am genuinely sorry that you feel this way, if you really do, but from an objective point of view, the writing quality in LS is very good.

For the intro, I will try and just give my own opinion, I am not going to try and debunk yours since your opinion is perfectly valid when it comes to purely subjective things:
I loved the intro in the sense that it built up from 0 to 100, then calmed down and gave you the current time and place. You start out in the hills, meet up with you know who, can do the first sidequest/first 2 optional bosses, go to Azan, do Guild quests... I'm really not sure how this isn't just as good as LF or LP's intro. If anything, I find LP's intro significantly worse.

Everyone's opinion is obviously welcome, but I do think we can agree to keep it more constructive and certainly more objective at times. I'm not going to speak for Indy here, but he has shown himself to be more than open to constructive feedback on all points raised (refer to the Discord); a rare thing from a game developer, really. Keep it constructive, and who knows, the things you might dislike can only get better.

[kartacha]

Hey, thanks for the answers all. I will directly adress only one bit:

rather than only scratch the surface and try your hardest to only zero in on the bad

That is really not the point of my comment. I have a lot of thoughts about these first 3 hours - some of them positive, some not so much and the point of this comment was not to review the game or even preview it in any capacity. I was just sharing my initial thoughts on an element that I felt is severely lacking.

Reading your comments I get the overall notion that you all agree that the writing in LS is better than LP and LF. I have not played those games in the last 8 years and I've changed in that time so my feelings about them might not be based on my reality now but my reality back then. I have only my memories and individual YT videos to judge those games on. It might be the case that I completely overestimated their level or writing due to my fond memories about them.

I've no degrees to back my claims and I myself am not a native English speaker as well. I based what I said on my initial feelings about the writing. I never thought about sending you a PM, Indy, I never felt I need or could advise you. Nor I was trying to send a serious feedback that would help you better the intro or whatever. Just shared my feelings about the game as a consumer of it. What random readers will take from it and your answers is up to them.

[lilac123]

First, I really feel that the strat guides should be complete instead of half done. I have more than a hundred games in my backlog, I don't know when or if I will have time to go back and play a 100+hour game a second time. So, since I want to do everything I am backlogging LS until the hidden rooms and quests get found and posted by some nice people.

Couldn't agree more about the guide. I really regret buying it. There was a note about the guide that didn't mention secret rooms and side quests, so i should know better and simply don't buy it... But this doesn't change the fact that a guide should be, like you said, complete.

[Seraphus]

First, I really feel that the strat guides should be complete instead of half done. I have more than a hundred games in my backlog, I don't know when or if I will have time to go back and play a 100+hour game a second time. So, since I want to do everything I am backlogging LS until the hidden rooms and quests get found and posted by some nice people.

Couldn't agree more about the guide. I really regret buying it. There was a note about the guide that didn't mention secret rooms and side quests, so i should know better and simply don't buy it... But this doesn't change the fact that a guide should be, like you said, complete.

For what it's worth, as someone who spends a lot of time finding all secrets and sharing them with others, I couldn't agree less. The fact nobody has all the answers is very charming to me. It makes my digging and helping worthwhile. Otherwise some guy with 0 hours in the game could just give all the answers I worked so hard to find.

[lilac123]

First, I really feel that the strat guides should be complete instead of half done. I have more than a hundred games in my backlog, I don't know when or if I will have time to go back and play a 100+hour game a second time. So, since I want to do everything I am backlogging LS until the hidden rooms and quests get found and posted by some nice people.

Couldn't agree more about the guide. I really regret buying it. There was a note about the guide that didn't mention secret rooms and side quests, so i should know better and simply don't buy it... But this doesn't change the fact that a guide should be, like you said, complete.

For what it's worth, as someone who spends a lot of time finding all secrets and sharing them with others, I couldn't agree less. The fact nobody has all the answers is very charming to me. It makes my digging and helping worthwhile. Otherwise some guy with 0 hours in the game could just give all the answers I worked so hard to find.

I'm not gonna reply any further, but let me tell you this: i'm very grateful to you, as i'm sure all the other members are, for helping us out, but the fact that someone who had the guide ( a complete one ), could come here and start spilling all the beans, and, i don't know, stealing your thunder, isn't a valid argument for selling an incomplete guide.

[D-Squall]

I'm 3 hours in, just had the outpost scene happen and I could say that confidently, this might be the worst intro to any of the three trilogies. It felt like half of the dialogue is pointless bickering between Sarah and Wendala. After two trilogies and a lot of stuff that they did together it feels like they should be over it already. Generally all but Luciana are unbearable right now. Luciana is bearable but not exactly the cool dude she was.
Also, it seems like the translation is not great, if Indy writes in French first. Or it is something else, I dunno. However, there are a lot of oddly written sentences grammar-wise and the overall dialogue construction is far below Laxius Force and even Laxius Power.
What happened?

I felt the same(about some dialogues, no grammar related), I mean... I like the game, I like the series and characters, but the rudeness and aggressiveness of some charaters are all over the place and overly exagerated. In the beginning, Random and Sarah were needlesly rude to Wendala and most of their dialogues were needless fights. I know it's part of their personality, but Random is acting like he doesn't respect Wendala, as if she was never a valuable member of the original Laxius Force and he treats her as if he didn't called her to go to space to fight the Grand Commendanter with him. Sarah too, she treats Wendie like shit and I know they had a rivalry of ages, but damn, did something happen in these months between Force and Soul so she could hate Wendie so much? In Laxius Force, even though they bickered sometimes, they were never needlesly rude to each other like that, it felt so out of character. Luci is the wise of the party as always, but it seems she lost her spark from Laxius Force, that I can understand since the focus of the game is not much on her but on Sarah. I can't say anything about the english in this game as english is not my mother language and I make atrocious typos and grammar mistakes all the time.

[DragoonHP]

Sarah too, she treats Wendie like shit and I know they had a rivalry of ages, but damn, did something happen in these months between Force and Soul so she could hate Wendie so much?

I believe it wasn't months, but years.
And yeah, something clearly happened. Sarah grew to resent Wendala more and more because she wanted Wendala out of Random and her life but Random refuses to let her go.
Since Sarah is so devoted to Random, she doesn't get amgry at him and funnels all her anger towards the only outlet, Wendala.
If you actually read the bickering between Sarah and Wendala, there is one constant thread; Sarah wants Wendala gone and Random doesn't.

[Indinera]

I'd like to point out the Sarah/Wendie relationship is a tiny part of the game.
They aren't even together most of the times.

[Tomas]

I will not go into the discussion whether to like or not like the dialogues, as everyone has different tastes.
I would like to emphasize two things, though:
1. Sarah has always been a bit jealous of Wendie, and it is only worse as she grows older.
2. The LS demo is long enough (as far as I know) to see more then enough of the dialogues.