VXAce - Old Version not used anymore.

I'm not sure what the point of the "installer" is. All it does is extracting the game files into a folder. A zip file would have done the same thing, but without triggering Window Defender's alert about it being a potentially dangerous program that it doesn't recommend running. You might be turning off some players just from that.

The game's really loud! That was my very first impression when I opened it :p I'm not sure why there aren't any options to change that - doesn't VXAce come with those by default?

That box which explains the controls stays on the screen for a very short time - I've read that f5/f6 controls window size, tried to adjust it, and then it disappeared, not allowing me to read the rest of it. It should probably stay there until the player presses OK to proceed.
In MV there's this trick with using a transparent message window with no text, which is effectively invisible but allow you to wait for the player to confirm - maybe it'll work in VXAce too?
It's also strangely hard to read, with the text being considerably more pixelated than that in message boxes. Is it being stretched in-game? It would definitely help legibility to not stretch it and simply create the image with the exact same dimensions as it's meant to be shown in-game.

The story is rather intriguing, even if it's a bit generic. The protagonist's interaction with Kellan was nice, establishing their personalities while feeling rather realistic.
Though I'm not sure why he's the one following me to town and not the other way round when he's the one who know the way :p

These square borders in the grass look very unnatural, especially since they're much smoother everywhere else:


The pirate fight... looks a bit ridiculous:


Why are they 10 times taller than us? Their fists are larger than the protagonist!
I'm not sure what the reasoning behind using two completely different art styles for friendlies and enemies was, but for me it's really not working well.

I do like getting access to all the abilities of those experienced characters. I just wish I knew what they actually do - knowing that an ability changes a stats doesn't really help you decide if it's worth using it when you don't know what much is changes that stat by.
I ended up silencing the captain (he seems like the type to have some fancy abilities), then tried hitting them with lightning, which turned out to indeed be their weakness. I'm not sure why pirates always have to be weak to lightning, even when they're not wet at all, but I'm not complaining :p
I spent the rest of the fight just spamming lightning attacks and occasionally healing the protag.

That world map feels very large! I'm assuming it's still in-progress, but just in case it's not - I'd highly recommend doing something else for the plain areas, maybe covering them with question marks to note that we don't know what's in those faraway lands.


I'm not sure what am I meant to do with all that information at this moment. It's not like I can change to a different class. Or buy gear from a shop that would complement it. Or pick appropriate skills. Or team members.
I get that you wanted to put it somewhere, but the appropriate place would probably be at the point where it becomes useful. Maybe when another person joins the party, or you get to a town with some choices on what to buy. But putting it here when it isn't useful will probably just result in the player forgetting it by the time it is useful.
And while explaining things, it's probably a good idea to explain your abbreviations. I have some reasonable guesses as to what HIT and EVA are, but other people might not. And even I have no clue what CNT is. The only word it makes me think of is one that also has a U, but it's probably not that one :p

The save point in the first area is within range of a patrolling enemy. This lead to the rather funny situation where I saved just before getting attacked, so that anytime I loaded that save I'd immediately enter combat.
While this wasn't a problem here, you could easily imagine a situation where somebody doesn't have enough hp to survive that fight saving and effectively soft-locking themselves.
Save points probably shouldn't have enemies next to them.

While this wasn't as noticable in the pirate fight, with fewer enemies and party members, the bar filling up animation feels painfully slow. Waiting for enemy attack animations to play out is already often annoying in JRPGs, and adding a slow loading bar that you have to wait for before each turn definitely doesn't help.
It's generally a good idea to make your game as interesting as possible, and spending time waiting for a progress bar to fill up is really not that.
I'd personally change the time it takes to fully fill up to at most 30 frames, if not to 15. It shouldn't make it any harder to follow, since it's still stationary while an action is being performed, and would increase the amount of gameplay per second in those simple fights considerably.

After defeating the first enemy, I saw what I assumed was an NPC ahead and went to say hi. They did not like that :p
That bandit fight was rather brutal. Even if you are going for a difficult game, you probably don't want to front-load the difficulty this much. He deals ⅓ of the protag's health per attack, and sometimes attacks twice before the player's next move. While protag's regular attack deals ~8% of the bandit's health (I'm assuming he has around 100 hp).

This is also where I discovered that the special aura attack really doesn't do much when your health is low. I'm not sure how that "attack + health" scaling works, but clearly attack doesn't contribute much to it.
It's a rather strange choice to make the only proper tool for dealing damage require you to have high health. Usually games will try to help players who are not doing well (e.g. by with abilities that increase damage on low health), but yours is doing the opposite.
It's now a bad idea to have an ability like this, but to have it be your only ability, at the beginning of the game is incredibly punishing.

And for the record, I did choose "Normal". I'm somewhat curious how that bandit fight looks like of "Hard".

When I finally managed to defeat him (using one of the consumables from pirates), after a few seconds... he reappeared right in front of me and the fight started again. I don't think that's meant to happen (the slime enemy had a lot more time to respawn but never did).

This time I had SP saved up from the previous fight (I'm not sure why did it carry over now and not after the slime fight) and manage to start with it, but still lost. Then I figured I've probably played enough to write some rather lengthy feedback :p


Well, I hope you've found my ramblings here at least somewhat helpful.
Good luck with your project!

- One of the first things I did was open the Bestiary, just to see what it looked like, and I immediately begin hearing Star Ocean music, or so it seems. Consider replacing it with something else, as it pulled me right out of the game as soon as I heard it.

- Not sure why you changed the Equipment tab to just Armor. There's more to equip than simple armor.

- I've always maintained that VX Ace has a terrible character gen, and mixing the gen faces with RTP faces makes for clashing looks. I'd pick one or the other if possible.

- Another instance that pulled me out of the world is when Kellan mentioned how to "save your journey". That's not something you should ever have characters say in-universe. There are ways to get the point across to players without going meta.

- The text shown when moving into a new area is cool and all, but it feels unnecessary for simply going into an inn or a shop.

- The clock doesn't work right, or so it seems. Is it supposed to reset to noontime upon entering a town?

- The protagonist, despite apparently being nineteen according to the thread here, does not sound like he's nineteen. The whole thing with him laughing about Barbarosa's name made him sound like he was ten instead. His dialogue could use tweaking to sound less childish.

- On the battle screen, your party is literally standing on the battle background. You need to tweak where the characters stand.

- The protagonist has one of the slowest ATB gauges I've ever come across. Both Kellan and Jacob ran circles around him. I know they're much stronger, but damn.

- Speaking of strength, the protagonist feels super weak. Once alone, I could barely damage a simple spider. Couldn't bring myself to keep playing if it's going to be that slow going in battle.