MZ - Monstrodyssey

Water effect plugin: Tsukimi
CGMZ plugins: Casper Gaming
Factions and traits plugin: Winthrop Darkrites
Book and jump system plugins: Hakuen Studio
Fog of war plugin: Pheonix Kagedesu
Map projectiles plugin: Galv
SV Battlers: Aekashics Librarium http://www.akashics.moe, TheArtOfNemo https://theartofnemo.com/ and Tyler Warren

-I was greeted by the default title screen and music. Might want to change it to something more interesting?
-The sounds were really loud. I get that's a default thing for RPG Maker, but changing that is always great.
-The battle scene at the start was....interesting. Maybe add some more stuff to the map to make it seem more like a battle and less like a barnyard tumble? Iunno, but it's hard to take it seriously when they're fighting on the neon green fields of RTP hills. The idea is cool though.
-The character select scene can be streamlined a lot. Might want to look at some plugins/tutorials for that
-I really like the idea of the game. Kinda reminded me of Elden Ring. You really get right into the action, and you find a lot of cool stuff with varying degrees of usefulness.
-You start out with 2 useless moves right off the bat. (I chose the knight class, BTW) There's no one to protec or need to draw enemy attention.
-The friggen crows were the worst. Basic attacks deal no damage, except the blind move. Which, of course, tanks your hit rate. I just sat there spamming attack and hoping for the RNG to work out.
-I had a similar experience with the goblin troupe.
-The game could really benefit from on map encounters rather than random.
-The idea of having an underground area that you switch between is cool, but it was really confusing. Sometimes it felt like I was randomly switching between the two.
-When I finally found two weapons I could actually use, they were objectively worse than the starter one.
-The menu is okay, but make sure to remove the icon for the bestiary (or add icons for the others) and shorter the friendship etc button, because it looks really squished.

The opening battle was visually unappealing. It appeared to be taking place on a well mowed lawn. To have such a big expanse of greenery helped the sense that I was being given an out of context bit of lore which didn’t actually convey much of anything.

I was asked if I wanted to “look like this”. I said yes, and ended up with Alex whose face image and the clothes in it looked nothing like the image I had selected.

Again no context for the opening map. Okay, I get that Alex doesn’t know what’s going on, but just having him run around collecting chests didn’t help my sense of immersion into a new story. He just accepts that there are random chests giving stuff that’s not much use. I have never been a fan of invisible walls at the edges of maps. Again it breaks immersion. I prefer it when there are visible barriers to prevent me going somewhere, not some sort of cosmic “thou shalt not”. The exit is south, but the entrance to the next map is from the west. This looks odd.

I started off as a swordsman. No skills. Not funny when I met my first troop of 4 crows. I think you could usefully look at your RNG. It took me 17 turns to kill this lot due to misses and evasions, while I was taking a lot of damage over that time. I had to use my only potion. Not surprisingly the next troop of 4 goblins gave me game over as I couldn’t heal up again. One potion is a bit less than is needed. The encounter rate can be a bit punishing and assuming that the player will get to the chest with the next one is a bit optimistic. In all the battles with the goblins they dropped a potion just once.

I started again, this time as a knight. Now I do have skills – but as I’m solo at this stage they are of no use to me. My first troop this time is 3 goblins. I take no damage but I am constantly put “off balance”. Again the RNG needs attention. I was locked into this for 15 straight turns and the rest of the time it was about 50:50. This is not engaging. I was bored. Then it was the Wolfman who dealt over 400 damage. There goes my potion again. I got a wolf pelt. No indication what to do with it. Do I sell it? Keep it for a quest? Dunno. The same with the feathers. I think it would be helpful if this info were included in the item description.

Did the teleporting thing to different locations which works well. Encounters with the crows were consistently frustrating as I spent much of each battle blinded. As my HIT rate isn’t great to start with the extra debuff to that really added to the length of the battles. Their use of Eye Poke to inflict it was too frequent. I spent multiple turns blinded and missing.

Having cleaned out all that I could in this location I decided to stop. Battles were not engaging and given the often high encounter rate that was a serious problem.

A small matter of mapping. You can see from the mini screen shot that your cliffs have a blue corner instead of showing grass. Because those corners are transparent to allow you to put them on any terrain, they must be above the ground level, otherwise that transparent bit wipes out the ground tile.


Overall I feel that this game needs extra attention. RNG, skills which are either non-existent or irrelevant, encounter rate and drop rate could all usefully be reworked. Using default music and sound effects might be something you want to revisit.

I'm sorry that this is rather negative, but I thought that in the long run it is better to give an honest opinion.