[Full Spoiler Review] Ara...Fell o.0

[Rezilia]

This OP and thread have excessive spoilers. You have been warned.


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Okay, first off is the title. The question on my mind is, "Who is Ara?" ...since Ara Fell fell, instead of Ara falling. AKA why in the world is the continent called Ara Fell instead of Ara? The title would make much more sense if the continent was called Ara.

For those that say "Spoilers!" Um, it's an island in the sky, in an RPG game. It's obviously going to fall - I knew that from the moment the game started. The whole reason FF3 managed to pull it off was because it was stated (assumed) that the floating continent was all that was left of the world...while in Ara Fell, you know the rest of the world still exists (you can see it 24/7).


Next is the abandonment of game features. After the first part of the game, the apple thing gets abandoned. You only get to eat apples a few times, same thing with slashing bags a few times and spirit movement a few times - the game world is huge, but these features, while cute, are often abandoned in the wake of everything else.

There are only, what 8-10 books in the whole game? Even with elven books being in the dwarven village? Plus once you Z a book, you can't skip it.


You can't blow up large boulders, ever. I was thinking that it would be after the ending, or maybe even in New Game+, but no - once the game ends, it ENDS... Your progress isn't saved, and you can't go back anywhere again, which means you can't even access all those areas once you've finished the game...making them go unexplored.

Craftable equipment should be upgradable, and Essence needs to drop WAAAAY more often; I have like over 80 of every other material but less than 20 of Essence... What?


Bosses are much more challenging in the first half of the game than the second. Once you understand the game mechanics, you're pretty much immune to bosses even if you're underleveled.

Cup of Dreams should be much more expensive than Elixir.


How come the Goddess is never named?


My biggest disappointment was that the only plot path we could take was the "goody-two-shoes-crybaby" path. The moment we meet Nash, with the conversation that was had, I was hoping that would be a "tough plot decision" moment; instead, the heroine automatically believes the sorceress, while if she instead went with Nash she could have been a vampire and everything at the end, which would have been awesome - but no, she doesn't even give Nash the time of day, and just kills him because she was told to... It's ridiculous and really takes away the player's agency.

In addition to that, all of the potentialities for siding with the bounties was left out. I understand this was due to time constraints, but it would have made for some really fun optional content.


While I typically hate the whole Light = Good and Darkness = Evil narrative, it was pulled off reasonably in this game because the heroine only used the power of light due to circumstance... But once she started sprouting angel wings, praying, and "the power is inside of you", it went too far; I was half expecting it to be revealed that she was the Goddess's incarnation, and I am SO glad that was left out.

How come Baramon didn't have any sane followers, except for Miranda? All the vampires were all like "boohoo I'm immortal and can't stand it" other than the ones that willingly sacrificed themselves to became shadow mutants; you couldn't give him even one legitimately reasonable follower?


Bomb use shouldn't be prompted. We should be able to swim everywhere, everywhen. Spells need to have higher tiers, and the game should level-scale for players that want to max.

I'd really prefer it if there was the ability to leave members out of the party, or get the to join later on, so the player can choose to solo when they want difficulty or full party when they want things to go smoothly.


The game can definitely be seen as an unfinished product. It was definitely worth the price, but the fact that there's no actual ending (falling into the ocean is a cop-out, and doesn't resolve anything) and tons of exploration elements were missing, as well as hinted mechanics like alternate routes and the missing grenadier explosion ability, makes the experience feel lackluster at the end.

The worst part is that the ending is 100% a cliffhanger, but I doubt you'll ever make a sequel. Which makes things 50x worse, because I would totally buy that (I'm already hyped about Phoenotopia 2, and I'm going to throw all my monies at it, so you can tell I love indie sequels).


I will say that I loved the story, and the overwhelming amount of content FOR an RPGMaker game is something to applaud. The level progression was great too, and I never felt I had to grind.

Unfortunately, the lack of potential features isn't something one just dreams up - it's made completely apparent, mentioned time and time again, and the absence of those excessively hinted and hyped (in the game itself) features makes Jill a dull girl. :/

[PixyFreakingStix]

Thanks for the review! I'll make a few comments...

>The title would make much more sense if the continent was called Ara.

Ara Fell is like "Winterfell" in Game of Thrones. It's just part of the name.

>How come the Goddess is never named?

With the other gods all dead, she's just known as the goddess. I actually had people refer to her as the "nameless goddess" a few times, but these parts were cut.

>but no, she doesn't even give Nash the time of day, and just kills him because she was told to... It's ridiculous and really takes away the player's agency.

Well, a few things on this. One, understand that a branching story is a -massive- undertaking that is just not feasible for me making a game myself. But also, Ara Fell is a chracter driven story. The player is directing Lita, more than controlling her.

Remember that Seri Kesu is the one that saved them and Nash was the one that sent people to kidnap her, possibly killing her father and the elder in the process.

If this was a game in which you created your own character, I'd agree that depriving the player of this agency would be a serious flaw, but Lita is Lita, and you're watching her story unfold.

She'd never side with the vampires.

>you couldn't give him even one legitimately reasonable follower?

Baramon is the oldest living thing on Ara Fell (older than any of the elves) and has spent most of it in torment. He is not interested in having sane followers. Baramon's magic manipulates minds and having an army of drones is much more appealing to him.

>We should be able to swim everywhere, everywhen.

I agree, but implementing this wasn't feasible. I limited the number of places you could enter the water so that the player wasn't tempted to fruitlessly explore every single body of water in the game.

>but the fact that there's no actual ending (falling into the ocean is a cop-out, and doesn't resolve anything)

Well, you can say what you want about the ending, but everything in the story was certainly resolved.

>tons of exploration elements were missing,

How do you mean?

>as well as hinted mechanics like alternate routes

Was this hinted at? If you're just referring to the open world nature of the game, there are certainly lots of alternate routes to get to different places. Are you just saying you wanted more of them?

>the missing grenadier explosion ability,

Not sure what you're referring to here. The dwarven grenadier? They were missing an ability?

>The worst part is that the ending is 100% a cliffhanger, but I doubt you'll ever make a sequel. Which makes things 50x worse,

No, but you may be pleased to know we're currently working on an epilogue for it.

> it's made completely apparent, mentioned time and time again, and the absence of those excessively hinted and hyped (in the game itself) features makes Jill a dull girl. :/

I'm just not quite sure what you're referring to here. Just more apples, bags to open and more alternate paths?

Please don't take all these comments to anything other than what they are; trying to understand your criticism.

[Rezilia]

Sorry, I was sleepy when I posted so I didn't go into too much detail xD

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If that's the case, why is it not called Arafell? o.0 I understand naming it that way, but usually - like with Winterfell - it's made into a compound instead of two separate words.

I was half thinking you'd say it was the name of the Goddess, or else someone named Ara was the first person to fall off of the continent, so they named it after her. xD


By alternate routes, I meant alternate story routes. The game seems like it really should have had atleast 2 routes, possibly 3. In fact, I've already thought up an alternate narrative. 0.0


Grenadier Explosion - I'm referring to an ability of the player that's an upgrade of the bomb, which would be used on these structures:

http://i.imgur.com/ZFL66ev.png


The no-swimming argument makes no sense to me. Most places you can swim in let you leave the water anywhere you want, and bodies of water that shouldn't be accessed until later can be avoided by changing the ground level or putting a gate up.


I'm glad to hear you're making an epilogue! ^^ I do hope it's part of the game itself, and that you change the ending to allow us to keep exploring the game and save it if finished, rather than kicking us out, when you implement it.


As per the hyped things, I'm referring to the Grenadier Explosion (hinted by the many times the dwarves made use of it themselves, and which could have been given to Lita by the dwarven lady that opened the path to Eldrinor), the alternate story route by giving Nash a chance (stated multiple times in his dialogue, "it could have been different"), and all the tiny side stories/quests with the bounties and such.



Something I forgot to add in the OP:

Lita seems to be bipolar. On one hand, she's a rambunctious adventuress that loves slaying ghosts and winning competitions, while on the other hand she's a crybaby romantic that "wasn't cut out for this" who shuns the very sense of adventure her other personality bathes in. These are two greatly contrasting personalities, one of them that gets excited in the face of adversity and the other that reacts to adversity by crying... In. Every. Single. Dialogue. Panel.

It's just highly inconsistent. o.0

[PixyFreakingStix]

>If that's the case, why is it not called Arafell? o.0 I understand naming it that way, but usually - like with Winterfell - it's made into a compound instead of two separate words.

Just a stylistic choice. I'm not sure there's any reason to see one as better than the other. Incidentally, there's a place called "Arafel" in some fantasy series that I didn't know about until well after I started working on this game.

>By alternate routes, I meant alternate story routes.

Ahh, I see. Ara Fell's story really is quite complicated already (which isn't to say it's good or bad; just complicated from a narrative standpoint) and I branching stories would require the main story to be watered down considerably, or probably adding another 2 years of work to the game if I wanted to do it right.

I'd actually love to do that, but it's just not realistic.

>Grenadier Explosion - I'm referring to an ability of the player that's an upgrade of the bomb, which would be used on these structures:

It seems not totally fair to call this a "missing" mechanic, or unfinished. I never intended to add something like this to the game.

>The no-swimming argument makes no sense to me. Most places you can swim in let you leave the water anywhere you want,

Because of the way the code for this works, you can't enter the water at any point, even though you can exit it at any point. What you're actually doing is entering a "ship" vehicle that has Lita's graphics attached to it, and the sparkles are the events that allow you to enter a this "ship."

>I'm glad to hear you're making an epilogue! ^^ I do hope it's part of the game itself, and that you change the ending to allow us to keep exploring the game and save it if finished, rather than kicking us out, when you implement it.

It will! At the end of the game, the epilogue will begin after the normal ending. But you'll also be able to enter it using a secret code that will be in the game's readme and the announcement for the epilogue.

What you'll be able to explore in the epilogue will be pretty limited, but I think you'll find it satisfying.

>These are two greatly contrasting personalities, one of them that gets excited in the face of adversity and the other that reacts to adversity by crying... In. Every. Single. Dialogue. Panel.

Hmm. I think you might want to revisit the game with a less cynical viewpoint in the future...

Lita does love adventure. And what she finds out is that adventure isn't all fun and games. It's hard work, and people are depending on you. People get hurt. People die. Lita enters the story naively wanting to go out to see the world, not realizing the danger and hardships that are there.

Imagine soldiers wanting to go off to fight in World War I, as a more extreme example. They thought war was glorious. It was easy to recruit armies during that time period because people had a romantic, naive view of war. Nations couldn't wait to test out their new weapons like machine guns and tanks.

Then the reality hit them.

Lita's story is like that. Calling her a crybaby in every panel isn't fair, but I didn't shy away from exploring the emotional aspect of this, and I think that was the right way to go.

An adventurous person doesn't fail to react to the near death of a loved one. An adventurous person doesn't ignore the implications of what would happen if they fail.

I'm sorry the scenes with Adrian and Asari and Lita's father aren't to your liking, but I think it paints Lita is a believable, genuine character with a mix of emotions, just like everyone else.

[Rezilia]

> branching stories would require the main story to be watered down considerably, or probably adding another 2 years of work to the game if I wanted to do it right. I'd actually love to do that, but it's just not realistic.

:P

> It seems not totally fair to call this a "missing" mechanic, or unfinished. I never intended to add something like this to the game.

Dang, those boulders and stuff always just stuck out so much that I thought I'd blow them up later. xD

Well, if you ever do decide to expand the game, you now have a new idea. :P

> Because of the way the code for this works, you can't enter the water at any point, even though you can exit it at any point. What you're actually doing is entering a "ship" vehicle that has Lita's graphics attached to it, and the sparkles are the events that allow you to enter a this "ship."

No, I get that. I'm just wondering why you didn't have invisible events along the whole coast of each body of water. It would have put in more events, but overall shouldn't have taken too long.

> I'm sorry the scenes with Adrian and Asari and Lita's father aren't to your liking, but I think it paints Lita is a believable, genuine character with a mix of emotions, just like everyone else.

I'm actually quite glad she had a range of emotions. I just don't think they were executed properly.

She cries TOO much, then she says she loves slaying ghosts while earlier she says she hates having to deal with them, then she goes pretty much berserk when faced with giant chickens instead of laughing at their existence.

Having a spectrum of emotions is good, but there are often points where each emotion goes too far. A "normal" person wouldn't be bouncing in every emotional direction; they might break down sometimes, or get angry sometimes, or get excited sometimes, but their "disposition" will remain consistent overall. Their disposition is their emotional core, and Lita's emotions don't seem to have a core, so I can never understand what her disposition is.

As for the Great War reference, you make a good point, but don't forget that those nations' idealism stretched even further, to the point they believed it would be a War To End All Wars. Ironically, it's what damned the world into a period of war that has yet to end, with each minor side effect spiraling into the next major conflict.

[✈️dvt is teh n008135t]

Wow this review's negatives are not very well thought out lol

[chill out]

Is seven year old review

[frizzeledham]

Bro was expecting AAA polish out of a $15 indie game.