The Valley of Ashe

I had to choose something to improve but level design isn't fair. This looks really good. The graphics remind me so much of a chrono trigger or later ft. Very true to the style.

I assume this is just an actual play through which makes reviewing it tough because you're basically showing the most boring parts in the game.

It looks incredible tho!

Games like this rest entirely on their stories and while I get where you're going with this, in fact I got where you were going with this after the second dialog, this is a too hamfisted to do what you want it to do. I'm relatively sure I align with you politically but even for me this seems like too much on so many levels it seems hard to give a specific instance where you went wrong.

given that this site is called 'roast my game' I'm just going to say, keep the engine, keep the combat, rewrite every single line of dialog.

So, to start, I am actually enjoying myself with this game to some extent. The story is certainly passable, I'm current at the second town, suspecting rather strongly that something big is about to happen, but it hasn't happened yet. I do take a minor amount of issues with some of the writing, for example, the hunting session doesn't really feel like much of a hunting session, and if the random encounter is meant to serve as this, I feel as though the game should probably alert you to when you've accomplished the task, or is it just filler? That was something I felt could be addressed. Additionally, when the two mercenaries showed up, one of them wasn't visible, this deeply confused me, as he was standing in the doorway so I couldn't tell he was there. I'd suggest fixing that so others don't go 'huh? Who is this guy talking- oh there he is.'

I selected mechanics for a few reasons. Chiefly when I hear complaints about the RPG Maker engines, it's that all the games tend to be carbon copies in the mechanics department, as well as graphics, with no variance. What I'm doing with my own project is trying to add something that brings something else to the gameplay (and makes fighting less about grinding, more about actual survival). Not necessary here, but it's something to consider, 'what do I bring that is different?' This is more of a general game development sense rather than strictly related to your game, as I enjoyed the gameplay, though it IS the first MV game I've played, so future games would make me bored if the story didn't hold up.

Additionally, running back to town gets rather tiring, especially with the random encounters stressing me out as I run to refill my MP in the inn again and again. A way to refresh the MP bar would be a godsend. I like the fact there is sprinting, so a snail's pace doesn't utterly drive me insane.

Entering the cave area to get supplies, I did actually get pretty banged up, (the blacksmith guy died), so I was a bit concerned for a little about the strength of the monsters compared to the ones outside, but after a little it got easier to handle.

Graphics are undoubtedly defaults, but I have no issues with that, as long as the story and mechanics are decent, which they pretty much are.

Really there is little I could describe as poor quality or not well done, the one thing I found puzzling was the King just went 'hey you're invited' with little to no ceremony. A courier / messenger with fan fare or something seems more appropriate, considering the King is sending a message. It could be that the King made a humble stroll, but I don't imagine that's the case.

Overall, you got something good going for ya, keep up the good work, I will let you know if I discover any more things on my journey in The Valley of Ashe. It was a fun little hour of my time.

The mapping looks great utilizing the default RTP of RPGMaker. I'm biased, though, I like the graphics from the RTP :)

Story seemed extremely cliched so far. It wouldn't be enough to pull me into the game at this point. I would continue just to explore the world though (I like doing that). I have several RPGMaker titles for the exploration. Their story lines are just to drab. If you have the story line (or dialogue) laid out, I would consider taking another pass or two much like a novelist does during their writing process. Breath of Fire took me a while to get into the story since it started out so darn slow :)
Take that with a grain of salt since I haven't seen the rest of the game. Perhaps you have some great plot twists along the way.

EDIT: I don't see a way to edit posts.

I just noticed the Demo download button. I'll give this a try. My quick analysis was based on your video.

The game looks nice and the graphics complement eachother but on the other side of the coin while i can see the pokemon games were a source of inspiration it's too similar. In my opinnion you should think of something to improve the old skeleton.

Wow, what a beautiful game! The artwork here is just gorgeous. The game really brought me back to playing Secret of Mana as a child.

My only criticism so far, would be that I got into a LOT of battles in that first hunting bit. While it might be necessary to get a lot of those fighting bits in, I did very quickly find myself sighing and then just button bashing to get through them. I imagine as I continue to play that will pass though, and there battles will become more challenging.

I'm going to keep this game on my PC, and look forward to playing more, thank you :)

*opens up game*

Oh hey, big screen. And right away, the game makes great use of it. The full parallax mapping for the town and outdoor areas, the full custom lighting for the indoor areas, the full custom battle sprites (which did lead to some goofy poses, I noticed)... It looks so professional.

So far my only real criticism is probably just due to complacency on my part. When I first entered combat, I saw an ATB system. I immediately thought of Yanfly's ATB plugin, something I'm using in a project of my own. *Cue enemies getting multiple turns on me as I just stood there browsing the combat menu, something Yanfly's ATB never allowed*. Immediately, I start spamming the attack command to keep up. I would suggest you either slow your enemies down slightly to give players time to browse their options, or put in a tutorial on that. Then again, I seem to be the only one so far to mention that, so you do you.

Either way, you clearly put a lot of work into this demo alone, so I would gladly invest in the full game when it's released.

Part 1 of 2
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Starting up the demo, first thing's first: The "of" is placed such that your eye isn't drawn to it but in fact AWAY from it, since the bottom line of "valley" matches up pretty well with the flourish of the bottom of the A in "Ashe", *and* the word "of" is also a few font sizes smaller; English-speaking people default to read from left to right, top to bottom, which doesn't help it here. There's also a lot of blank space; I'd increase the dimensions to be at least twice the size it is proportionally, and increase the fontsize of and reposition the "of" to be between "The Valley" and "Ashe", moving "The Valley" to the left to be in front of more of the background art as well.

Second issue is the audio starts off EXTREMELY LOUD, and there's no Title Menu options where you can alter the sound volume. RPG Maker games by default always jack the sounds up to 100% and they come across very loud on most setups that can be used to watch Youtube at 10% sound mixer, 50% speakers, and 10% Youtube volume, to where even adjusting them to 10% output in the sound mixer with speakers at 50% has them still being too loud.

Starting the game proper, beautiful background music (but too loud, as above), but the typefont used has a few letters with small blobs that jut out and draw the eye to them, like on the bottom of the "e", and the shape of the "g"'s tail is too sharp, as well; additionally, the font isn't aligned properly horizontally, such that some letters hang below others, and it actually disturbs reading flow, and, frankly, looks a bit amateurish. The font style otherwise is pretty good, like a combination of cursive and blocktype fonts to evoke fantastical elements. The clacking sound when type scrolls onto the screen also is annoying in general, as well; it's too harsh a note to repeat as rapidly as the text scrolls onto the screen. Maybe something a little softer?

First image appeared, and the art is gorgeous. The story is interesting, but the way it's written needs work; At first you write that "Navi escapes with his life. The Horde followed" and continued on to talk about the humans for a bit, but then you suddenly mention that "Not all of the Horde followed Navi" without indicating so beforehand, nor with a, "However,"; and "Slowly, the monster attacks increase" without really indicating that attacks from the monsters were ongoing during this period, either.

Into the first scene of the in-game artwork, and it's gorgeous. A++ effort, here. Love the character design; The kid looks way too old in his bust shot compared to his little shrimpy model, though; or is it that you're still working on transitioning from the chibi models to the larger ones? Story pacing issues still here, though. The red-head twintail says "We'll make the monsters pay!" before saying "What happened?", for example; the question should have come first, followed by the explanation, then her exclamation. The 'cutscene' with the father shows him alone in the mines when you'd just said there were "so. many. undead."; maybe put a bunch of the enemy model you used to attack him and have the son kill crowding the mines behind him, so it actually visually represents that. In that scene as well, the kid says "come on, lets go home, dad." but in the next few lines when it transitions back, he talks about how his mum had already died and "now with my father dead..." but nothing there implied his father dying, only that he was attacked and left badly wounded; show us that, maybe just a short scene transition to him standing at a pair of graves sobbing, with one old (grass in front) and one new (recently disturbed earth)? Pacing issues in the story are the biggest issue I'm seeing all around, here. The core of what the story is, is decent, but just the how of the telling is the problem, if you get what I'm saying.

Second scene, Valen just suddenly in the forest immediately when he just said he's going to it. A: if the Elven Forest is a place players can go to, show Valen travelling to it on the map, perhaps? B: He shouldn't just "be there" in the middle of the forest in front of the elf as soon as the scene begins, regardless. If there was another scene with other characters before this, temporal pacing could be held, wherein we see that scene and the time passing seeing that can be used to infer travel time; Same with if he was another character entirely, because we haven't tagged them as a character of interest and their direct movements as important to the story until that point.

I know it is in beta, but the midget knights killed my immersion.

Cool game with great potential! Check mine too
https://roastmygame.com/game/the-fixies-cinema

The Graphics are pretty good but i think the UI needs a little bit more work

The only thing I didn't like is that some of the sprites change into others during battle, and some adults are still in chibi.

Very good art, and a nice game with a cool story!

Nice game i liked a lot but some sprites changes into the battles nice story

The art, scenery, and level designs are really good and intresting. The beginning is a little slow though and all the info dumped on the player at once is a little overwhelming.

The story telling system was good enough to have some promises. But as far as I played the game, there was hardly any challenges to overcome. If there would be some challenges for the protagonist, the game would be more interesting.
Otherwise art work, story and theme seems quite good. best of luck.