PenguinPyromaniac's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Trail Of Pigs]

This game gave me some very, very strong feelings.

What I liked:
- This is a masterpiece of visual storytelling. The player is given no context, only a very urgent and dire circumstance, and is left to figure out what is happening on their own. There's just enough detail given that conclusions can easily be drawn, but still a strong sense of mystery.
- Outstanding aesthetics. The blend of cartoony and realistic art is startling. This game pull no punches with the sound effects and the kills. Especially the children crying and enemies wailing as they die. An absence of music makes the game particularly chilling and serious. This is way darker than most games rated "M" here.
-The sneaking is intense. It's a bit unpredictable and the stakes are extremely high. I had moments where I was freaking out even while unseen.
-A lot of difficult choices to be made, partly because of the small inventory space and high difficulty, partly because of the presence of children among the enemies.
-Game is intuitive enough to figure out as you go. Strength in simplicity.

What I believe should change:
-Tutorial. I skipped it.
-Shooting is not worth it. After the halfway point, It's almost never worth it to kill a guard and render an area virtually impassable with many alerted enemies. To say nothing of the extremely high chance of being chased down immediately, even if I retreat to an area with no enemies. Bullets also use up valuable inventory space. As it currently is, I only keep one bullet and chuck the rest because shooting gets me killed more often than not.
-Gun pigs are vastly overpowered. They can take most of the player's health from long range (sometimes off the screen). Because shooting is so loud, it's difficult to hit the same enemy twice without either getting shot back, or gutted by enemies alerted by the gunshot. And there are a *lot* of them. Taking the first shot is already a huge risk. Why a second one?
-The player's only option if discovered is exiting the area. If lots of knife enemies are around or a gun pig shows up during the chase, it's pretty much over. Getting spotted away from an exit area is going to kill or cripple the player because leaving the zone is that difficult.
-"Survival" sections are heavily RNG-based. The third zone I was unable to pass, because there was a gapless vertical wall of pigs with knives and guns, so sneaking wasn't an option and even careful sniping got me killed in short order. I quit at that point because the above complaints aren't something I can bypass with skill. All I could do is pray to the RNG to leave enough holes for me to sneak through without fighting.

Changes to address these:
-Proper tutorial.
-I would make shooting useful by allowing the player to shoot while discovered. That way it could be a last-ditch measure to stop charging knife pigs to cover an escape. That'd make it useful to actually keep bullets in the inventory outside of the "survive" sections. I understand the developer may want to encourage running when being chased, but I think using up inventory space and alerting even more enemies is enough a severe enough drawback that shooting remains balanced. This would also give the player an option besides simply making a beeline for the zone exit.
-I would change the gun pigs to die in one hit like everyone else, hit for a little under half the player's health (still very deadly, but not an insta-kill if already wounded), and reduce their range a little bit so they need to be visible on the screen to shoot.
-Guarantee at least one valid sneaking route during "survival" zones so the player isn't forced to murder their way through if the RNG is unkind. It can be kind of tight, but should be doable without perfect sneaking skills.

Additional suggestions:
-I think, instead of always simply collapsing, it would even be more shocking if wounded pigs sometimes crawled or struggled in silence at the end of their lives.
-As an anti-frustration feature, prevent the player from shooting if they're not aiming at an enemy. Bullets are highly limited and shooting is very likely to get the player killed. A missed shot is often a death sentence, especially against gun pigs.

Speculation on the game plot: (by no means authoritative)
Given the following:
-The enemies are not heavily armed (many unarmed pigs, many only with knives) and seem loosely organized.
-The enemies bring along their children and keep them close.
-The enemies recognize and *immediately* attack the player character on sight, or immediately alert someone who will. There is no questions about affiliation or taking prisoners, it's purely killing on sight. This is also despite the player character having no distinguishing characteristics other than a backpack.
-There are corpses in the forest, left to rot where they fell.
-Children and unarmed pigs do not charge the player, so this isn't like a zombie plague that makes people aggressive. I believe all the enemies are murdering entirely of their own volition.

My interpretation is this a Rwanda-like genocide. The enemies are for the most part decidedly not soldiers. They are civilians who are killing another ethnic group. That's why civilians are attacking other pigs without hesitation. The two player characters and the bodies they find while hunting are all part of the victimized ethnic group. I feel like that's pretty much the only realistic explanation for the situation. Again, all speculation, but I think the evidence is pretty strong here.

Overall, great game. Left one hell of an impression on me. I give it 4.5/5 because I while feel some aspects of the difficulty are justified, others, like the ones I listed, seem out of the player's reasonable control.

Stopsignal responds:

Oh god, thank you so much!! Just making the whole game is worth it with even only one of these kind of reviews :)

Your comments are on point. The tutorial sucks- gotta learn the hard way. Looots of people hated the walls of text, hahahah.
Shooting is only worth it on boss levels or if you are on the edge of the levels. The simple fact is that the level is too cramped to be able to shoot without being heard. I actually think i would not change anything about the shooting itself: I'd change the levels. They need to be bigger, the enemies and camps more scattered, so you could more easily scout around. Maybe even give the player binoculars, for the full "STALKER-y" experience.
With the gun pigs, it depends. There are two kinds- one dows die in one shot, then the bigger ones (with a red, shaking eye on top at all times) do tank one shot. They get severely slowed down, however. Cover is absolutely needed when fighting them.
Also, survival zones aren't really that rng based! They got some, to give variety, but you will, %90 of the time, need to shoot to distract or kill to pass. When i do this game over again (i'm thinking of doing it from scratch, but more professional-like) i don't know exactly what i'll do with these. Will probably change the design quite a bunch!

As for your interpretation, man, i just love it. I personally won't tell much because i think it's highly personal and people will all see it in different ways, and i don't want to influence people.
But your interpretation just makes the whole violence feel even more dirty, so i like it!

Thank you so much for the review!!! It made my day when i read it! <3

[Neon Rhythm]

The good:
* Art and music are perfect.
* Writing is silly, but in a good way. I enjoyed it.
* I found the control scheme fairly easy to get used to and a nice twist.
* With one exception, music syncs fantastically with attacks and necessary movements and it's gorgeous to see in action.

Stuff to improve:
* No tutorial. I know the small robot throws out a couple of softballs first, but then it escalates quickly. This is probably why other reviews complain about the control scheme, since the player is just thrown into the deep end.
* Visual hitbox guide for notes is *extremely* small relative to the speed of the balls and is useless when the screen gets busy. If the music sync wasn't perfect most of the time, this game would become an exercise in frustration.
* Orchid's attacks decouple from the song's rhythm about a minute in. I can dodge her attacks nearly perfectly until that point, then she spams absurdly fast while the music shreds away in blissful ignorance of whatever she is doing. This makes passing the stage difficult to impossible for me, personally. I have no idea how anyone else manages it.
* Getting hit seems to stun the player character, and it also makes a loud sound that can easily throw off a groove or briefly obscure the music (and since this game is hearing reliant, that's a problem). This makes it fairly easy for a single mistake to snowball during an intense sequence. Game would be greatly improved by making mistakes less disruptive to a player's flow.
* Feels somewhat like a demo, given how barebones the plot, writing, etc are. To put it a better way, this game is short and sweet, but you could easily expand this into a full game and it would be AWESOME. Just saying.

Figburn responds:

thank you for the feedback! we’ll definitely take it into consideration as we add more and tweak things about the game

[The Awakening RPG]

So, I found this a very interesting game. On the surface, it appears to be a quality but typical action RPG- you have a mana bar and you trade attacks and spells with randomly-encountered monsters in 1 on 1 combat. You do lots of sidequests and kill lots of monsters to get lots of stats and loot.

However, I think the highlight of your game and its major innovation is the combat system. While I'm pretty sure it's not totally groundbreaking, your combat system really does feel like a refreshing change of pace. It's simple, effective and looks totally sweet.

==Strong Points==
-Attack animations are really really, cool. Caleb and the protagonist look *good* in fights. In particular when the protagonist opposes an enemy attack with his own attack for a "clash" and when Caleb blows shit up with the power of his MIND.
-Enemies have original-looking designs, good looking and have a decent variety of abilities, so major props. Animation in general is smooth and I did not experience any lag at all.
-The essence of the combat system is very good. Seems solid and just challenging enough. I have excellent reflexes and could dodge 10 or so attacks in a row, but the game was sufficiently forgiving that that wasn't necessary, and also did punish me as it should when I goofed a series of attacks. While the details need a lot more polishing (see below in "needs improvement"), I think you have fundamentally solid and accessible fights in your game.
-All of the visuals are very good, striking a balance of complexity without looking amateur or overdone. You mentioned you used a mouse to pull it off, not a tablet, which, as an avid tablet user, I actually find really impressive.
-Good music. It's a short game (so far), so I hope there's a lot more background/fight music if you do decide to expand it.
-Appearance customization at character creation is a bit overwhelming, but I like the effort went into it. You could include "pre-set" appearance combos for anyone who just wants to get straight to the action.
-Writing is pretty good. I got a kick out of how a lot of NPCs get all huffy when you offer to help them, and really a lot of the sidequests and conversations are either funny or informative without seeming goofy or forced. The setting and lore seems reasonably fleshed out, although, in my personal opinion, the obviously-from-the-lord-of-the-ring elements you borrowed feel awkward and unnecessary and it would probably be best if you redid the mythology to be wholly original. Protagonist has just enough snark in him to be relatable, which I like. But I felt Caleb came off as too dry and stoic and could have used a bit more emotion in his choice of words when it sounded like he was trying to be excited or upset, although maybe stoic is what you intended, so either way.
-Quest direction arrows are a fantastic help, although inconsistent, as some sidequests do not have arrows or only have arrows some of the time.

==Needs improvement==
-Spells seem very tacked-on and mindless to use. Honestly, I feel like spellcasting should be more interactive or at least there should be risks/tactics the player should account for to properly use spells, not as simply an instant "cripple my enemy" button. If that's not possible, then nerf spells- the game doesn't particularly benefit from them, I feel. One suggestion is to give spells a condition that needs to be fulfilled to execute the spell. Examples include a casting time during which you are vulnerable to interruption and have to dodge all attacks, the need to mash keys, quick-time prompts, or some other brief minigame (during which you may still have to dodge attacks that may interrupt casting). It would also add variety and make combat about more than reflexes.

-Caleb, while he looks good fighting, is not particularly fun to play. Going to be honest here, his spells, particularly dementia, are frequently an instant "I win" button, and his normal combat abilities are very lacking, as he is slow to dodge, slow to charge, and his attacks are very easily interrupted. While those first two are justifiable and can be worked around, the interruptible attacks make him nearly useless in a heated battle. I feel Caleb should have something similar to the Protagonist's "clashing" animation when he uses an attack at the same time that an enemy uses a magic blast (i.e. the ghoul's normal attack) or when they use a casted special spell. This would not only look cool, but give him some niche in normal combat, as he'd be better at defending himself against spellcasters.

-Limit Breaks are similarly usually "I win" buttons. I suggest that the more powerful limit breaks take more limit than usual to fill up, or else, as with Spells, incorporate some element of skill to successfully use the more powerful ones.

-Counters are redundant. I think you're already aware of that, so I'll just make a suggestion- have only some monsters' special attacks be counterable, such as the Gronak's rock spike attack or mages' spellcasting. Adds a little more thinking to combat as the player must decide whether to be on the safe side and dodge/attack or use the more damaging but riskier counter.

-Balance is an issue, on the easy side. It is far too easy and fast to grind the Protagonist up to insane heights, where he can probably mindlessly trade most opponents blow for blow, win handily, and use Heal to cover up whatever he loses (for free, no less). It takes skill and tactics out of the equation when stats drop like candy, and also makes later random encounters way too brief and unsatisfying when they die in one hit or you can get away with endlessly slashing away at them due to your absurd Agility. Perhaps you could have some enemies, like bosses, scale with the player (but don't over do it), and definitely make high stats either less powerful or harder to get.
-However, I should note that I played on Normal Mode. I suppose Hard Mode should fix some of these complaints if it doesn't already.

-Same as above goes for money. It is perhaps a bit too easy to amass Pix by fishing, and Heal means you rarely if ever have to use Potions.

-Game is too short. I think you know how to fix this ;)

==Minor gripes and minor suggestions==
-Game could use town maps, or perhaps even dungeon maps.
-The crafting system feels tacked-on. It doesn't do anything too special and to me feels like just a way to get even more free consumables out of dungeon loot. I will say however, from a lore standpoint, it is an interesting that mushrooms and butterflies are the primary crafting ingredients, not crafting items you see often in a game or fantasy story, if ever.
-There is a game-ending bug where a 130-HP gronak in the dark caves freezes the game.
-During the Golden Demon fight, I was actually winning, which is surely not what you intended. Make him a lot harder to even scratch, because up until he basically ran like a bitch, I really think I could have taken him down to 0 HP if he had not ran. Yes, all 2500 of his HP was my bitch, because I dodge like a pro.
-Subjectively, the whole "chasing after ancient crystals of power with a super-powerful dark mage pursuing you all the way" plot sounds to me like fairly standard fantasy fare, although you have given yourself a lot of room for some devastating plot twists, which I hope you'll use. Fortunately, Caleb and the Protagonist definitely do not come off as your stereotypical RPG heroes, so I still feel your story comes off as acceptably original, although there is room for improvement.
-You could give randomized variety in normal attack animations as the character progresses through the game to capitalize on how awesome combat already looks. For instance, not only can the protagonist 1) dash forward and slash as he already does, he can also 2) dart behind someone and backstab 3) perform a heavy jumping slash or 4) lead with a kick and swipe, etc. Then Caleb can not only 1) make a magical explosion but 2) bombard an enemy with a few quick magical bolts 3) pummel someone with a magic punch 4) telekinetically crush enemies, etc. It could be purely cosmetic or have some gameplay implications, but you could make combat look even better!

Overall, I'd say this game merits a 4/5. It's short, rough and has many fixes that need to be made, but as a start of a longer game, it looks EXTREMELY promising, and I do not say that lightly.

RockLou responds:

Wow, where to even start with the response? :P

I agree with almost everything you say. Some things, like the spells and some combat elements remained unchanged simply because... I'm so damn tired of this game. If it felt more urgent I'd change it. But speaking of spells, they actually used to have a small task for you before you executed them, like press the correct buttons in order. And depending on how you performed, they would either take more or less damage. A but like Final Fantasy 10 Limit Breaks if you've ever played that.
I know it's a bit unbalanced. It was hard for me to choose how to go about the whole thing... because I want the 10 year olds as well as the 20 year olds to be able to pick this up and play easily. So I figured I'd make it rather easy to amass Pix, and stats. For those who care and have time on their hands, they CAN easily become unstoppable juggernaughts. But I think most people won't do that, they'll simply speed through the story.
I thought Caleb would be an interesting character in combat. It was a bit of a risk giving him a delay like he has, but it's about mastering your timing battle. Plus like you say, he's got some kickass spells to balance him out a little bit. And yes, the aim was to make Caleb a stoic, hardened guy.
There are pre-set outfits in the game. There is also a randomize button, so you CAN fast-forward to the action if you want to.
The game-breaking Gornak irritates me to no end. It happened to me once, just once. I can't make it happen again, and I have no idea what the cause could be...
The Golden Demon battle may seem like you're winning, I can understand that. The trigger that makes him flee is to make him reach 2100 HP. I considered making his HP even higher, but it seemed unecessary. I was hoping he seemed like a scary enough foe as it is.
And I DO agree that the 'chasing crystals' story is cliché and boring and I was very conscious of it while making the game. However, I needed something like that to bring the story forward and like you say, I had some interesting ideas to spice the story up... you know, for the part of the story that isn't there yet. :P

Anyways, thank you so much for such an in-depth review! You're awesome.

[Royal Warfare]

==Review==
Strengths-
-Love the animations, art direction, the general aesthetics.
-The new pause button is a godsend, since losing men because you couldn't micromanage fast enough was irritating.
-Enemies are neat, fun to kill and generally die in droves even when you lose. Very satisfying.
-Dialogue was funny and thankfully usually only showed up at the beginning or end of every level, so as to not break the flow of gameplay. The story was good too, if not spectacular. I think some more banter between marcus/taggart/aldric/other officers would have been nice.
-Gameplay is engaging and offers quite a few options and tactics.

Weaknesses-
-Some levels have fast/ranged enemies move in from odd angles without warning, or have powerful enemies teleport in. When a bunch of ghosts plow out of left field into a caster/archer pile, it's pretty much completely over. Same goes for vampires constantly summoned out of nowhere. While it is possible to deal with it with proper strategy, I feel cheated when the only way I can defend against a surprise attack is replaying a level, after my otherwise solid strategy was destroyed by a random surprise. Either the player needs to be given some sort of warning beforehand to actually react to an ambush before it slaughters all mages and priests, or or you make “ambush”-type waves less powerful. I should add that Seekers are slow-moving and not very strong, so they're fine- my beef is mostly with vampires, and ghosts that do this.
-It feels like there is a lack of enemy diversity. Armored skeletons die almost as fast as normal skeletons, plague zombies died just as fast as regular zombies, etc. It felt like 80% of enemies fell into four categories- annoying ranged jerks (all archers and casters), cannon fodder melee (all zombies, skeletons, hounds, darth slayers), tough melee (vampires, trolls, ogres, darth warriors, undead lords), and oh-god-don't-let-that-get-near-me (bombers, ghosts).
-I really hate levels where enemies hit your casters with arrow volleys, since it was basically down to luck whether a random priest or mage bites the dust and there's not much you can do about it. I think they should fire on your warriors instead or be unable to outright kill casters at full health.
-Mobs of cannon fodder zombies/skeletons/hounds alone are very straightforward to take out, and it actually doesn't really change things if shamans and skeleton archers show up too, since they also die very fast. Tying this back to the enemy diversity issue, in a sequel, I'd like more enemy types, with special abilities that require special tactics to deal with.
-Swordsmasters are not worth using. See below.

I'd give this game a 9/10, but you're responding to individual feedback and patching extensively, which is a huge gamer-turn-on for me. 10/10 for that alone.

The balance is a bit rough around the edges, yes, but Royal Warfare has heart and brains. And it also looks good. With massive magic explosions that kill tons of annoying enemy archers. Ohyes. I spent lord knows how long on this game and I'll gladly spend more.

==Walkthrough==
Note- I'm writing this with consideration to later levels. For earlier levels, you'll just have to use what you have or field a decent balance of all classes.

Swordsman- Decent fighter in early waves. Maybe hire some at the start, but don't buy any in later waves, as they're not powerful enough to deal with later waves. Upgrade to knight ASAP.
Swordmaster- I don't like swordmasters. Thanks to their pitiful armor, they die very fast compared to knights and sometimes even compared to swordsmen. The ability to distract enemies without dying is the only thing that really matters with warriors. True, swordmasters are better than knights in everything than durability, but when ogres, trolls, vampires, ghosts, i.e. actual melee threats show up, they go splat way too fast to make themselves useful.
Knight- Best warrior, hands down. Can survive most melee threats pretty much forever if you have at least one healer per two knights, and you don't need many knights either (3-4 at the very most). Taunt is an absolute lifesaver if ambushes reach your casters/archers and mass stun is good for increasing survivability. However, knights deal very low damage for their cost and are slow as hell, so you have to keep a very tight leash on their position so that enemies don't get past.

Archer- Archers are considerably weaker than their upgrades, but their one key feature is Slow. It buys you a lot of time for mages and other archers to soften up enemies. So it's worth having at least one even on later waves.
Sniper- Snipers are good for quickly removing weaker ranged/caster/bomber enemies, thanks to their superior movement, rate of fire (therefore reaction time) and range than crossbowmen.
Crossbowman- However, I prefer crossbowmen. They just seem to hit harder overall, especially against armored enemies, and are much more durable, so in a pinch you can use them as a second line to defend against ambushes.

Blue Mage- Flash and Ice are both very powerful abilities, but have long cool down times, so they are more conveniences than something to base strategy on. Upgrade ASAP.
Red Mage- The splash damage is not very strong, but you'll definitely notice the difference against large mobs. It's best you only have one red mage on the team or really space them out, since groups of red mages have a nasty tendency to simultaneously use Meteor on the same target,which wastes the second one as the first has already killed everything it hit. But Meteor can be a real lifesaver once your warriors have enemies clumped up.
Black Mage-They destroy pretty much whatever they hit. Curse is a worthy substitute for splash damage (the damage dealth is great but temporary, alas). Mind control unfortunately seems more of a cute trick than a game-changer, though.

Rogue- Rogues will be slaughtered instantly by anything that can fight decently, and both of their abilities are fairly useless. I'd say skip rogues if they aren't given to you. Assassins are far better.
Assassin- A general purpose fighter. He can back up front-liners via Backstab, can raid/distract ranged enemies (provided he has backup) and can lead melee enemies on hilarious wild goose chases.
Spies- Dubious value. They are certainly not strong enough to fight off tougher ranged waves, and Diversion sometimes catches only some enemies out of a group. And although spies move fast, sometimes it's simply not fast enough, because enemy casters on the other side of the map don't need long to mess you up. Your archers are a much more permanent and fast-reacting solution to enemy caster problems. I'd only use spies in maps where your enemies only come from a few directions, so spies don't have to go cross-country.

Priest- Nothing special. They are cheap and still heal well, so you can keep them alongside clerics and monks.
Cleric- Two regular priests can heal faster than his regular heal, for the same or lower price. However, Mass heal makes the cleric superior in missions where you are given or end up with a large number (4+) of front line troops. Resurrection will come in handy for saving your ass last-minute, but it's best not to rely on it.
Monk-Still very good healers and have very handy buffs. Their abilities are short-ranged. This means your frontliners have to be close to your monks, which is not always possible, but at least your support ranged troops will always benefit from the buffs. Use monks over clerics if you only have a few frontline troops.

Tl;dr- Swordsmen in early waves are okay, but you'll want knights eventually. Skip swordmasters. For archers, I'd prefer crossbowmen with a single archer for support, but snipers are great too. Red mages, black mages and multiple blue mages are about the same in usefulness. Same goes for priests/clerics/monks. Rogues stink, spies are situational, assassins are general purpose.

How to kill bad guys- I usually like to put more of my budget towards priests and knights, and less on archers, thieves and mages. I keep my knights VERY CLOSE to the archer/mage pile. Use Hold Ground liberally. Not only does this force ranged attackers to come to me to shoot at my warriors, so that my own ranged attackers can intercept them, but it also lets priests and monks use their buffs more efficiently. And also, if ambushers or seekers spill into my caster/archer pile, I can have the knights use Taunt to pull them off right away.

Assassins and rogues should never be the first to charge into enemy lines, as they can't handle being surrounded anywhere as well as warrior classes can. Have them move in after the warriors have distracted the bulk of a wave. If you insist on using spies, have them sit not too far from the edges or from the center of the map, for maximum flexibility.

Typically, your biggest problem is always going to be dealing with groups of powerful enemies, so abilities that debuff or defend against only a single opponent are not very useful. Also, having too many tier 1 units on the battlefield is a very bad idea, since most healing can only be done on an individual basis (meaning you can only have so much total healing going on) and it leaves you much less time to react if one unit is under attack and rapidly losing health.

Ranged enemies- simple, have your archers/mages dogpile them. If you're worried about your mages being shot (I rarely found this a problem), send crossbowmen and snipers. Spies work too, but only if the enemies are coming from only a few directions- on maps where enemies come from all borders of the map, your spies are probably not going to get there by the time the ranged enemies have done their damage. My track record with rogues/assassins is that either assassins end up running into a ton of melee enemies and have to run away, or they get their asses kicked by ranged enemies who are tougher than they are- again, just shoot the bastards already.

Tough melee enemies- It is possible to micromanage assassins to run around and force slow melee enemies to chase them. You can use rogues too, but rogues will die almost immediately if you make a mistake.

Summoners- For best results, have all your ranged guys hit them at once. If there are multiple summoners, have your warriors and thieves distract one or two while your ranged guys quickly kill another. Although they hit decently hard in melee, it at least keeps them from summoning skeletons at you.

My opinion of an ideal army would be 4 knights (tanking), 2 crossbowmen (killing ranged enemies), 1 archer (for his Slow ability), 1 red mage, 2 black mages, 2 monks, 1 cleric (because of Resurrection), and 1 assassin (for playing wild goose chase with slower enemies).

The most important upgrades to get first are all defense upgrades for warriors and thieves, magic upgrades for mages and priests, and unlocking all abilities rather than upgrading a few.

There aren't too many level-specific strategies I can think of. Just keep your melee close to your casters, use archers instead of thieves to kill ranged enemies, and .You may sometimes have to split your melee group in two, but still, don't keep them too far from your support troops.

platonskedow responds:

Great review! Always interesting to get a new point of view. Thanks to the player's feedback I know most of the weaknesses of the game. Some things I already changed, some are in my TODO list, and some will be changed in the next parts - for example, tuning the stats of a single unit will cause to replay each level several times where it appears.

Btw looks like you found a few working strategies. Try to find out all of them! Some needs more micromanagement, some less. Also, there are lots of units combinations. For example, a simple combination of a swordmaster, a monk (both abilities) and a priest (enchant weapon) can eliminate any threat. Crossbowman's break armor, critical hit and sniper's weak spot and headshot are also well combined - I usually use them together for a maximum damage. Thieves needs a buff, yes, but they are not as useless as you think: poison ability needs some micromanagement, and it can deal a good damage for armored enemies, especially at earlier waves. They are cheap, and are good at distracting enemies.

[Forbidden Arms]

Aesthetics are a very strong point- music, graphics, cutcenes and the really colorful upgrade names and descriptions really come together for a polished experience. The enemy animations are absolutely awesome, especially the way the spider ninjas fall when you cut their lines, the cutscenes, while occasionally repetitive, are a great way to introduce new gameplay elements/enemies, and the whole thing oozed of cool.

Gameplay- Forbidden Arms has somewhat of an underwhelming start, in that the early game is actually harder than the late game (I played on the Hero difficulty), as high combos are hard to rack up until you upgrade Combo Chain, healing yourself is hard, and upgrading is slow at first, with new skills/upgrade areas revealing themselves way faster than you can fill up levels.

The game picks up fast after the first area. Soul Orbs flow like, well, blood in area 2 onwards, and the many upgrades available were mostly filled out by the time I fought the area 3 boss, with only a minimum of backtracking.
The boss battles were a bit on the easy side (I played on Hero difficulty), but I enjoyed them for the most part. The lategame is an absolute blast, with a ton of awesome tricks at your disposal and slashing/stabbing the crap out of dozens of ninjas at once.

Overall, gameplay is quite good. All upgrades and abilities were fairly well-balanced, and the difficulty curve was fairly smooth. The sheer quantity and aggressiveness of ninjas later on meant that reflexes and careful tactics were a moot point, since you can't see attacks coming with so many enemies around crowding the screen, which forced me to instead invest in good crowd control techniques and hope for the best. Fortunately kicking the shit out of so many ninjas was so fun I'll give that a pass :) Running out of BP is fortunately not a problem after some bloodlust aura upgrades, because it would have been frustrating as hell, as maintaining high BP is absolutely crucial to doing anything at all. The relics were an interesting addition, but I only used the Soul Heal, as I didn't want to bog down gameplay with the breaking relics and the other ones didn't seem as useful.

Other Things- I enjoyed the plot, but most of the exposition was crammed into the second half of the game, leaving the first half feeling a bit dry. Game performance was good- those 20+ ninjas flying about at once produced minimal graphical lag, so kudos for that. However, sometimes while I was in the middle of spamming clicks for a chain, there was some oddness to using Soul Tempest (would sometimes not activate), jumping (I absolutely could not jump until the chain of attacks was over) and blink shift (would only teleport partway to the cursor). Not a big deal, but it bugged me sometimes.

What I would change- 1) Endless Mode apparently does not let you keep the Soul Orbs you gain, making a valiant 400-kill streak I made in the beginning of the game feel like a wasted effort. It should let me those soul orbs even if you die, or if that might be excessive, a fraction of those soul orbs. 2) I barely used the Brandish Arts, aside from the Lunar Pounce (which is good for clearing out a small area around you when recovering from a hit in mid-air). I believe this is because most of them don't get a mention in the tutorial and you can get along just fine without using any of them. You should add a brief in-combat introduction window to them like the Oversoul techniques have when they are introduced to encourage using the other brandish arts. 3) More enemy diversity. There seem to be 3 types of ninja- swordsman, shuriken and spider. And all could be fairly easily dealt with by spamming forward-charging slashes and Soul Tempest. Maybe an occasional armored/shielded enemies you have to flank/attack from above, or other kensai you have to dodge out of the way of now and then and can only hit while they are recovering from an attack, etc- something to encourage more strategy (but only a few special enemies on screen at a time, as lots of them would get annoying fast). 4) As noted above, improve the responsiveness of some techniques. Specifically, maybe make using jumping and soul tempest take priority over continuing normal combos? Or something like that.

Overall, a lot of effort went into this thing, I had a lot of fun, and most of my criticisms are pretty quibbling. I'd say that's the mark of a pretty damn good game. If you're thinking about a sequel, I'd say hell yes ^^

vipervgames responds:

whoa. i am blown by the review. thank you for this.
a bit of history of the game:
Forbidden arms was created 4 years ago at my foolish attempt to create a game with all of the ideas i have in mind. unfortunately, my ambitious noobness made me fail countless times. i can't remember how many times i went back on this game and abandoned it again and again. It was sadly made in AS2, so that further limits me.

So after years have passed and I was a better programmer and artist, i decided to finish the game. i had to slice the content to 30% of the original idea just to finish it, leaving only 3 kinds of enemies. But thank Odin I did finish it, eventually.

Thank you for your accurate view on the game. I love how you discovered one of the ways to finish the game by soul tempest build.

The endless mode was for the purpose of getting medals, however. And if i allow farming, everyone would probably do that and get bored on the game later on.

Thank you so much for this. You inspire me.