The Spirit of Darkness

[kingray100]

All great questions! Below are my replies. Let me know if you have any further questions or comments.

"I just got done with the Namarra town events, with the whole sneaking scene and backstory dump. I was told to go to Antilles but, I can't seem to find it. I feel like I've been everywhere, and the one place in the snowy region won't let me enter(I figured that was Antilles since that was the only town I haven't entered yet.) So where exactly is Antilles?"

Antiles is the huge town located to the west and north of Messina and Gilead (straight north of Zion). If you are still having trouble, check out the world map either in this thread or in the instruction manual. I put the world map in there for this very reason, so it wouldn't be a complete mystery where things are located.

"Some other trivial questions about design. Are most of the houses in this game purely for decoration? I've gone inside these houses expecting some secret treasure or some secret side quest. But instead I get nothing. Am I missing something?"

Most of the houses are purely decoration, unless they contain a character needed for a quest. I could have placed random treasures in there, but I chose not to focus on those things.

"Are there no items hidden within the background of the game(like barrels, drawers,etc)?"

Not really, as I chose not to focus on loot and things like that. This would be a good suggestion for improvements. However I will say that there are several hidden quests that allow you to find each characters ultimate weapon (and thus ultimate skill). When you get closed to the end of the game, start exploring and checking out old areas. You can always ask for hints, too ;).

"Were the towns meant to be next to impossible to navigate due to the tight corridors filled with mindless NPCs (and extremely large population of stray animals) that block my path constantly? Lol."

Not really. I never had a problem with this, but perhaps I could remove some of the NPCs. The "busyness" of the town was meant to convey a more real-life feel.

"Are the enemies meant to hit so hard all the time? I feel like every encounter I have is like a mini-boss fight. I've grinded a bit and still these regular enemies are hitting me for like 600+ damage, usually with some debilitating status effect that needs to be taken care of. I have the best gear I can get via the stores that are accessible."

I tried to progressively upgrade the enemies in an appropriate manner to the level of gameplay. I have a hard time with this, because being the game creator, the game is somewhat easy for me. It's hard to know how other people interact with the enemies. The goal was to produce a battle system similar to FFX, where you are trying to find each enemy's weakness and exploit it using different characters. At the same time, some characters are more defensive, and can be used to battle status effects and other ailments. As long as you have the best equipment, and are fighting enemies regularly, you should be fine. I would recommend leveling up a little bit if things become too challenging. Also, accessories are extremely important for combating side effects, giving positive side effects, and boosting stats. Perhaps you can try to use them more effectively. It should also be noted that there is a "master of the forge" located in Zion (see map), and he can forge more powerful items towards the end of the game. I hope this helps!

"Is Titus supposed to be lackluster for the first part of the game? He seems like the most generic type of soldier, with no special abilities other than having a particular skill that does bonus damage to reptiles or beasts. His basic attack is extremely weak, and considering most enemies have like around 1k HP at this point, spending 8-9 turns basic attacking with him would be super long, boring, and dangerous considering the enemies do 4-5x that much damage in every move they have. Not to mention Titus is made more useless by the fact he can't attack flying enemies. I assume he becomes less useless later? I honestly wish I could switch him out for his sidekicks lol."

Titus is actually one of the most powerful characters in the game, second only to Adana or Rhea when everything is maxed out. In terms of edges, he is unmatched. If you have been keeping up with buying his weapons and maximizing his strength via accessories, he should be consistently doing the most physical damage through physical attacks. You should be getting close to the point where he learns a skill called "aerial strike", which allows him to attack flying creatures. He also gains other skills that allow him to attack other creatures with added bonuses. In every dungeon, many of the enemies you fight will be able to be hit by one of his special attacks. I would suggest looking for more opportunities to use them.

I hope this is helpful! I'm glad you are taking the time to play the game, and I hope it has been enjoyable thus far!

Thanks for replying! Your response has been very helpful, considering that this is an old project of yours lol. I'm not savvy when it comes to the quoting function in these threads, so I will quote in my old school fashion.

"Titus is actually one of the most powerful characters in the game, second only to Adana or Rhea when everything is maxed out. In terms of edges, he is unmatched. If you have been keeping up with buying his weapons and maximizing his strength via accessories, he should be consistently doing the most physical damage through physical attacks. "

I'm sure that is the case towards the end, no doubt. He just seems like he'd be some regular foot soldier who escorts the main party somewhere it terms of strength. Right now, I think even my healer Aziza hits harder than Titus many times, which is sad.(She has the Whale Whisker I believe, which is a strong weapon!) I currently have Titus' strongest weapon atm which is like the Falchon weapon. Aziza is only 2 ATK less than Titus. Did I miss a weapon??
As for edges, I will be honest. I don't have too much experience using them and figuring out the details of them. I like to save up edges for bosses in particular. So I will take your word for it. As for the most consistent physical damage, its definitely Daniel. He's super fast, and his attacks hit hard, plus he has some useful debuffs(which I'm not sure really affect many bosses). Feels like Daniel is the Main character in this story lol.

"The goal was to produce a battle system similar to FFX, where you are trying to find each enemy's weakness and exploit it using different characters"

Ya, that's really a cool idea. It's just that the enemies don't really tell me what they are weak against. Aside from undead being weak vs fire, everything else I kind of just guess. There isn't a tutorial about how characters work or what their strong points are, or whether Crimson would maybe hit this certain enemy harder with his attack, etc.

"I never had a problem with this, but perhaps I could remove some of the NPCs. The "busyness" of the town was meant to convey a more real-life feel."

Really? If so, that's impressive. Especially in Namarra, it was horrible when I was walking on the rooftops lol. There was this guy who was walking on one of the beams I was trying to cross and I had to push him from one side to the other slowly, just to find out it was the wrong way lol. Or in the one town, I think Kingston, where I went to the right of town by the fountain, and it was completely blocked off to the right of the fountain by 2 NPCs looking at it, and the left had like 3 NPCs shuffling around blocking portions of the path I have to take. Once you get past them, there is like a path with flowers lining a walkway on the left side of the town. You can't walk on the flowers here for some reason. But the pathway is only 1 square big. So I'm forced to try to push some flower girl to the other side of the walkway just to make it to the other side of town. I usually map out walk routes my NPCs take so they never get in the way. Or I at least make sure there's plenty of room to move around otherwise. It's not that big of a deal, but I figured you would want as much feedback on even trivial things as possible. As a game creator myself, I know things like this would pique my interest as well.



One last question: I went to that underground place under the library. I loved the atmosphere and it seemed a little scary at first. At the end, I fought the one zombie boss guy. He seemed manageable but then he had this like edge ability or something where he would attack a person 5 times. His attacks did like 600+ damage each hit. Is that supposed to be an auto kill move or something? It seemed excessive. (The armor Titus was wearing was I believe like Iron armor, which seems to be like the best armor at the moment. The armor is kind of vague in regards to what it's best at. The stat changes are seemingly minimal and often have down sides many times. Since Titus can wear a large variety of armor, I don't understand if my armor is optimal. They are rarely a straight upgrade from the previous armor I had.)



But otherwise, it's a very interesting game. My favorite team is Adana, which nukes everything with her drain ability, Daniel, who is just the best at everything physical, and Zeth, for his powerful buffs and spells. And they just drag Titus along because they have to lol. I do switch out Daniel for Leon if I'm fighting undead, like the ghost ship I'm grinding in(just got adaj stone thing). But I definitely miss how fast Daniel is, compared to slow Leon lol. Interesting dynamics!