Monday 14 January, 2008

GAMEPLAY

Again, I was entertained without exactly being immersed. I think this is because the story simply doesn't really progress much over the course of a dungeon, in spite of the sizable amount of gameplay involved. I suppose I'm only really engrossed in an RPG when I play it for an unhealthy amount of time.

While the scenes did not break the game up as much as it did during the prologue, the first puzzle in this session (getting into a treasury past some guards) felt a bit tedious to me. There was no combat involved during it, and having to backtrack and circle around halls made the puzzle take up more time than its fairly low difficulty really merited.

I enjoyed being able to use characters with ranged weapons for the first time, though strategically this was probably a bad idea since enemies appear to target the player character and it's difficult to keep a distance while being pursued. At the end of what I realize now was the first boss battle, I was amused by the return of the usual victory music and poses from previous games. Given the lack of fanfare at defeating all other enemies up to that point, the scene devoted solely to telling me "CONGRATULATIONS!" seemed comical.

DESIGN

Character customization appears to play a major role in this game. Characters have the ability to access weapons or skills from a variety of classes, as opposed to being slotted into roles like "healer" or "swordsman" by the game. The price of the customization seems to be that you have to earn more attributes than usual. Equipment, spells, and extra commands for your allies' AI must be both purchased and licensed. The licensing system, however, applied to so many different abilities that earning any single license did not take very long, so victories are rewarded much more frequently than in games that rely more exclusively on level-ups.

The game does a good job portraying the environments during gameplay. The first city is full of people and large areas, and the plains feel expansive without artificial walls built into it. In the latter case, though, I often found that I had to attend to the map a bit more than I would have liked; just because the 'walls' weren't obvious didn't mean they didn't exist, so what looked like a straight path to an area might contain a number of obstacles like small ditches or plants that constituted walls on the map.

This is exactly what we're looking for in a game log. My only suggestion would be to explore more the "why" in your analysis of design decisions.

- Ian Rickard, your TA

(the following is included on all my first-round gradings, and should not be taken as any commentary on your writing.)

If you're interested, I'm happy to provide additional nit-picks of your writing. However as this course is not considered writing intensive, lapses in spelling and grammer of the type I would critique will not have any affect on your grade and so you really needn't worry about them. If you're interested in this type of feedback, email me at inio@soe and I'll provide it privately.