MZ - Llewl and the Lyre of Two Worlds

+ Extremely pretty title screen - Nowis337 did a great job. Really love the snow effect + the music is very soothing.

+ Oh wow you actually have keyboard rebinding in MZ!! Oh, and gamepad rebinding too. You’re really thinking ahead here.

+ I do like that MZ games tend to come with an autosave function.

+ These overworld sprites and the tilesets are pristine. Kind of remind me of golden era JRPGs. Interesting that they’re also used for combat – very Chrono Trigger of you.

+ I also like how each gal has special situation sprites (eg. sitting down, hugging, etc.)

+ It’s always interesting whenever a tutorial has these effects where they darken parts of the screen to emphasize different UI elements in combat.

+ Oooh! Very good to hear the majority of sound effects aren’t the RTP. I heard Sword2 or something in a cutscene, but that can be easily fixed.

+ Dang, Grandpa is a badass! Oh. Oh he got burned in a full screen CG.

+ I do like that when Hans says the village was burned to the ground, we actually do get to see it, complete with people actually fighting each other. Helps provide context.

+ Big props to giving our heroes a motive at the start, even if it is just “Rescue Llewl”.

+ Big fan of the snow field theme, it and the gorgeous tileset really does set up the appropriate mood.

+ You can jump and swim in this!? Pretty sick! Also, I like how trying to jump next to an inaccessible space hobbles your character. As well as how you skip bodies of water if your jump goes over them. Really good small detail, I can see speedrunners really enjoying this.

+ Very cool how your character turns semi-translucent when under a bridge. Curious how you did that.

+ This combat system is pretty sick once you understand how it works. The positioning mechanic is incredibly interesting because it forces you to think about the environment instead of just smacking the enemy to death and calling it a day.

The thing I liked the most was how the ice bird boss had the panels light up with little angry icons to show you its attack range when it swoops. That’s cool.

However...

= I do think it’s odd that the text boxes are so big yet there’s barely enough text in them most of the time. I think it’d be better to have smaller text boxes that float over the characters’ heads.

= Oh… Llewl is a person…?

= I can see the Chrono Trigger influence from a mile away with that soundfont. Very cheeky.

= This entire opening sequence is quite different from how it was when Nolan first covered it. I remember it starting out with the village immediately getting attacked, not with Sarah having a girl chat in the cave with Llewl. So that’s interesting.

= I think it would benefit you if you removed the strange “click to proceed” function that happens on the equipment menu. Have the cursor appear directly on the equip slots.

= The gameplay change with throwing the snowballs at the bird is… interesting. Not good or bad. Just kinda weird. I don’t get the point of having it. Maybe put in a mechanical reason for hitting the bird before a timer runs out so it’s weaker in the boss fight, or if you mess it up and let it go for too long, Hans gets hurt going into the boss fight.

- For as much as I appreciate that (most of) the SFX is custom, the actual SFX used is a bit weak. Like when Sarah hits enemies with physical attacks, the animation is too slow and the SFX doesn’t feel crunchy or loud enough for it to feel satisfying. It feels like taking a bite from an apple than crushing something. (Which combined with the RTP sound effects other attacks use makes it feel weird. I hope you fix this.)

- Many of the animations, in fact, feel too slow. Hans uses Chicken Song and his little SFX plays out before the effect is even half over. Sarah uses Light Shot and it has to wait for the entire animation to play with that sparkly effect.

The slowness builds up after a while with all of the enemies you can run into, and it made combat feel unsatisfying.

- My biggest issue with this combat system, other than the slowness, is that it feels unbalanced. The automatic shield system makes fights with normal enemies very easy, especially with how it regenerates after each fight – which combined with Sarah’s healing skill, makes even bosses easy.

It’s an attempt to make it more interesting + give the player a safety net, but I feel it balances itself way too far into the “cushioned play room” direction.

- It feels off that Hans starts off with Backstab to move characters forward, yet he needs to level up to get Chicken Song which does the reverse. You want the player to start off with all of the basic tools to understand how your system works.

- It's strange how you have tooltips yet you don't actually describe what the states do/mean. Like what does Iced mean?

- Likewise, I don't understand what the Moghunter Combo HUD display is for. Even during the times where attacks did combo into each other, the damage displayed/healed wasn't accurate in the slightest.

- Stat-wise, all of the enemies take way too long to kill. Generally speaking, you want your starter enemies to die in like, 1-2 hits without any fancy set-up. The boss in particular felt like a grueling damage sponge, since you already figure out how to deal with him: Sacred Fire + Backstab/Chicken Song and the occasional heal and Light Shot.

It felt like his fight went on for like, four turns longer than it should have. Ditto for the normal enemies. (Shoutout to hitting the beginner Snowball enemy four times with the regular attack just to kill it.)

- Typos:
* “What are you standing there for silly” is missing a comma after ‘for’.
* “Don’t worry; Sarah I’ll protect you!” should be “Don’t worry Sarah, I’ll protect you!”
* “I thought you were the guardian Sarah.” should be “I thought you were the Guardian, Sarah!?” since he’s also… you know, in the talons of a giant ice bird!? I also don’t think he’d be so casual while in this situation. This sequence is also missing a period when he gets to “Just sayin’”.

- In fact, that entire sequence with the bird boss had the weakest writing. I didn’t find “The Blade” joke to be funny, and it didn’t have the correct emotion for what’s happening? Dude was literally strung up by a giant ice bird a few minutes earlier, and he’s quipping like this is a Marvel movie. Didn’t like that.

- (!!) The game seems to be a bit resource intensive for my (admittedly bad) laptop.

Llewl is the game that's gotten the closest to replicating the quintessential "golden era JRPG" out of most of the games I've played - it has the style, the interesting mechanics and it doesn't waste your time too much. (I hope you keep streamlining the rest of the game so it stays character focused instead of throwing loredumps at the player.)

The jumping and swimming and even the snowball throwing makes the game feel alive in a way a lot of RPG Maker games don't even try, which is fascinating. The combat is also pretty cool with its position-based attacks.

But as it is? It doesn't feel like it's there. The shield mechanics complicate the game by making it too easy if you have them but potentially super punishing if you don't, the attack animations are slow enough to make combat feel like a drag, and fighting the actual enemies themselves takes forever because they all have inflated HP values - especially the boss.

It feels like it hasn't hit that perfect middle ground yet. That said, the fact you've gotten this close is exciting. I'd love to see where you go from here.