62 gold in the Pygmy village was pretty lame. Seeing it between the Charmstone and the Heartbox, I expected a ancient coin or something like that.
At least make it a bigger (more noticeable) amount of money.
The mouseblockpath in the Lavafield ruin's (leading to the 2nd purple key) could be split up in 2 or 3 segments. Let's just say that I was anything but feeling happy when I missed the timing on the very last grey tiles...
And then you even switch those grey tiles off again and keep me from a shortcut to the next room! Some german LP'ers has a term for this kind of unnecessary padding by a convoluted and longer than necessary path - "Wegverlängerungsspirale" (roughly translated as spiral path to prolong the (obligatory) route).
Minor criticism: Weights in the air should cast a shadow underneath to present the perspective better. I noticed this especially in the sunken section behind thr right of the 3 doors. (The chains connecting both to the same steel beam wasn't obvious to me at first).
Putting a lot of dead ends into a section where I can't use the Lion gene (to avoid random battles) seems like an evil intent by the developers.
Wait a minute! The Lion gene grants Max enough strength to lift the key while Bock couldn't. But Bock could lift those weights about which Max mentioned, they were too heavy to move
even while I had him using the Lion gene at that time ! Well, the key pedestal probably only checks for the Lion gene and not actual strength...
- If you speak again to Long Pygmy, he's called Chinese Pygmy instead.
- Party never actually splits up (proven by any cutscene of the main quest), so why force the player to swap the active party around to trigger character-specific side-quests? And why don't get all characters healed, if I rest at an inn or any other recovery point?
- In a similar vein: While I like the idea of using genes to customize Max' abilities, it's cumbersome to swap genes to interacte with certain obstacles (e.g. ?-blocks, Pygmy doors)
(Although that would make the Lava field's ruin pretty straightforward and boring - at least not outstanding)
I wouldn't mind so much if the change of genes was a lot quicker (maybe mapping it to the number keys). But around a dozen clicks per gene change is only annoying.
And after all, at least to me there is next to no feeling of acomplishment of overcoming those obstacles (and maybe it's not even intended). It's simply "Do you reckognize this kind of block and know its proper gene?" and then crawl through the menu to activate it.
- Any feedback on cooking? Amount of actual healing and status boosts are negligible and can on only be bought from the specific chef anyway.
Aside from making those items more effective, they should be more available - for example from the mole merchants. Another option would be to allow Priscilla to cook those items in ANY chef's kitchen (without the minigame, just providing the ingredients).
(On that regard, I'm very happy that ingredients can be bought from mole merchants, so one doesn't have to always go back to Xenobia after learning what they need next.)
Regarding the mole merchants: Why aren't all merchants updated, once you unlock the next "level" of moles (this would also fit with the moles appearing in more and more spots).
And regarding negligible things: While I very much like that even most bosses can be affected by "Burnt" and "Shocked", these debuffs get less useful as the game goes on because of the entirely fixed amount of damage they do - always 7 HP on every "tick", no more, no less.
With later enemies having more HP, I hopefully don't have to elaborate any more on the resulting problem...
Is Shabo supposed to be the black (or red) wizard of the party? Because after "Drain" he doesn't seem to learn any attack magic for a long time (even after his
transformation ).
And for being so luck-based, his "Pilfer"-move is pretty MP-pricey.
After saving Tanya and the princess I visited both of them before seeing the oracle - which told me to go to the princess. Duh!
And after acting so much like a generic villain, it was nice that Drancon had an actual bigger plan to go with. Just as well as being able to use all the other heroes for the fights with the dragons heads.
(Side note: Hawk-Man's "Sunflower"-skill says "Water attack + FROST vs all enemies", but only targets a single enemy with an ice gryphon - not very sunflower'y. The item has the same description, but I never used them so far. (EDIT: Ok, sunflowers lure the gryphon, just like those flowers for the coyotes.) And Bock has "Thunder Saber", but can't use it. EDIT The same is true for
Alien and Max with Bock's Gene.)
The battle with Drancon on the other hand was really lame after this setup. First, informing the player to get everything ready, just to have been stripped of accessories just like every other Drancon battle (mind you, I don't remember if accessories were explicitly mentioned).
And that fight with Drancon was just that - like any other fight before, banning of items and accessories, but still no real challenge.
Even with this being not the final battle of the game, that was very disappointing.
"Hey, Priscilla, that was the 4th chef you learned recipes from" - " Oh, indeed it was." - "Yeah, Chameleon will
welcome you." ...
[Chameleon's note] "Sry, will be back some uncertain time in the future. (trololol)"
Sry for being sarcastic, but the Ice Castle was a pinnacle of creativity regarding gameplay. Always having to go back and forth between opposite ends of corridors to activate a switch that clears the way on the other end. Very entertaining. [/sarcasm]
Fear the mighty beaver! [/sarcasm] ...floating with bunny ears [/sarcasm]
Information from Drancon's background story - greetings from "Final Fantasy IV" *sigh*
1st shooting section between stars: The right edge is a (almost) totally safe spot. It's also the best spot to shot the enemy ships fom because they pause there for a few moments but rarely seem to shot from there. Unexpectedly trivial compared to all the other mini games (although those were just so by requiring so much dexterity).
During the 2nd phase, I noticed nothing of regenerating shields! That phase was just as easy but still somewhat infuriating to me, because there was no indicator for confirmed hits on the giant enemy - no blinking after being hit neither an lifebar or something like that. So for a while I thought I had to do something special. This notion was supported by the big missiles fired occasionally, which stood out to me because of their color.
I thought, maybe I have to reflect them back at the enemy. But it was in vain, because there was no rythm to the missiles appearance, there was no spot on the grid to actually hit the missile with my laser AND THE MISSILE WAS A ONE-HIT KILL TO ME! So I had to do the whole section again, including the non-skippable cut-scene with the non-skippable explanation about the minigame.
After trying to simply shoot the UFO in general and staying out of it's reach (peace of cake since it doens't move itself) I finally noticed what a lame fight that actually was.
Yeah, Mega Man-style boss rematches! EDIT: And as weak as the original bosses, so maybe inspired by Lavos' shell from Chrono Trigger. EDIT²: Ok, so there IS a twist! EDIT³: But still no real challenge.
(And the enemies here drop potions. POTIONS! What a joke...)
The music during the first Biomeka fight was actually a nice change and then the usual boss theme returned for the 2nd pahse.
Where's the first one from?
(And Biomeka is only worth 12 GP??? What a cheap boss!
)
"And that's how
Samus Max destroyed yet another planet."
I actually expected the reborn Drancon or maybe his brother to become the final member of the party but a random alien works too, I guess. Especially with the expectation to be able to reuse the Royal Knights! Kinda neat idea, actually.
But it feels lazy that there is no skill trivia for all knights.
Why do I suddenly have to use SHIFT for the Scanning minigame when ENTER was perfectly fine for the same kind of game to fix the spaceship? I'm using Windows and having to press SHIFT reapetdly will trigger a pop-up asking to enable SHIFT LOCK. And no, I don't want to deactivate that behaviour!
At least the time is lenient so far (4 knights scanned). EDIT: Ok, managed them all with only one retry for the 7th knight.
The cuty army was worth more than Biomeka.
Genie summoning: Talk about ear-grating music!
Pepe powers up - with whiskers.
Lost Unicorn woods: Note much of hints there to me, except a confirmation sound AFTER taking a right turn. Couldn't have told that from ending back the start when taking a wrong turn (or from Max spelling it out).
Oh, another mouse-path. At least not as long, but still denying any shortcut on the way back.
Side-note: Traps like moving flames should stop while the message boxes of the Lucky Sword or Handbag are displayed. Otherwise one may very well get caught in the trap with no chance to evade.