Balmung Cycle Part I: The Messenger and the Heretic

Overall this was a pretty damn cool game. I've been anticipating this since the original code-off dbs so many years back (which I've personally drawn quite a bit of inspiration from), and what's come out definitely doesn't disappoint.

Dungeons/ Setting
Settings-wise, most dungeons were pretty standard-fare, in that you've got a forest, a cave, a mountain, a labyrinth-style manor, etc etc. Structure-wise though, I really liked Yggdrasil Springs (in that you spent the entire time running circles around the main structure that you were trying to get into). Atmosphere-wise, Forest of Noatun really put me on the edge with its dark and scary nature.

I liked that every dungeon had puzzles and tricks to them, and that map skills like Explosion and Illuminate kept coming into play, instead of being used just for the dungeon they were created for, and then forgotten the rest of the game. Map design was definitely top-notch, and introduced new gameplay mechanics every dungeon, so that's pretty impressive. My main gripes are with the frequency of battles. While its not overwhelming, I still felt like it could be toned down to something like 50-75% of what it is now.

Battles
Magi's done a pretty good job with modding the DBS here. Characters are all well-animated, and boast a large variety of battle options. Most of the enemies took quite a few turns to take down though, so I wasn't too pleased about that. This could be fixed by toning down the frequency of battles as mentioned above. In any case, while I was fighting every monster at the beginning, by the time I had reached Visgott, I was pretty much avoiding battles whenever I could, and only fighting the ones that I could likely take out in 2 or so full party turns.

A big gripe that I had with running away is the scarcity of Blinding Lights, and the fact that Blitz needed at least 1 Adrenaline to activate Escape. I would personally prefer that it cost 0 Ad, so I can use it on battle entry. The reason being that if I'm facing something I don't particularly want to fight, I'd like to just get out of there with minimal losses. If I have to wait for Blitz to get enough Ad to get out, chances are the enemies already lambasted my party, and at that point, I'd be apt to just suck it up and not run, so that I can get some exp/items in exchange for my party's wounds.

Overall, Alrick was the most useful for me for the bulk of the game, having more or less the only free multi-targetting attack option, as well as the better general purpose Adrenaline skills (particularly Search and Point-Blank Shot). I generally never used Skuld's Ad's, and Blitz's were mostly one-shots anyways. Skuld actually became kinda useless for me most of the time, since none of the Disrupt spells I tried were much use, and her Ad and physical attacks tend to be pretty weak. She eventually just became healer/ item manager in the late game. Speaking of late game, Elm actually ended up taking over Alrick's position as most useful, at least for the final battle. Specifically, her Ad ability: Ethos Shock, was what made the vast majority of boss battles involving her, easy. Outside of that, she's a fairly average character.

Item Collection and Management
This is a bit of a mixed bag for me. The good things I have to say: There were a pretty huge abundance of items to be found everywhere, and I usually wouldn't find myself in a position where I'm lacking certain item types, unless I've been really abusing their uses (see Blinding Lights comment above). It was pretty awesome finding all sorts of goodies from pots or world map "sparkles", and getting rare stuff from mini-games or secret areas. I also liked that there seems to be quite a bit of "item-foreshadowing", in that a lot of the weird stuff I'm finding now, probably isn't going to be of any use to me now, wherein it'll probably allow me to trade them in for something REALLY nice later on (at least, I'm hoping it will!)

Now the bad: I was pretty overwhelmed with all the items that were getting thrown at me. Part of this is because some items, I didn't know what they'd do, so I wondered whether I should hold onto them in case they were useful for whatever reason, or if I should sell or dispose of them somehow. This was actually a pretty big conflict for me, because a lot of NPC's in the game would trade random items for rare stuff, so I was always conflicted over whether I should sell a particular item, or hold onto it in case someone wants it. In the end, my inventory just got really cluttered with useless trinkets and equipment.

Another big thing, which also ties back to the battles and dungeon design: Odin's Triumph's, and how to get them. I know they're suppose to be an "optional" kinda thing, but when I hear about something like this, my first instinct is: "Okay, gotta clear out all enemies and get the sweet sweet goodies". This lasted all of two dungeons, after which I decided that it definitely wasn't worth the effort, considering I don't even know what these things are suppose to do. At one point, I was just getting into battles and using Blinding Lights to escape, just so that they'd be considered "defeated". Also, I tried to defeat everything in Noatun forest, but because of the way the dungeon works, I wasted a lot of time going around in circles and was probably just missing one enemy from my kill count by the time I made it to the exit, at the time of which I promptly exclaimed "Screw that", and left. I don't know what these Odin's Triumphs are suppose to do, but I'm hoping that they won't suddenly become vital at some point..

Duel System
Well, in all honesty, this seemed kinda tacked on. The mini-game itself is pretty well-designed and was cute (I'm a big Kirby fan and caught the reference immediately). It was also pretty funny watching the sprites fly back several yards from a particularly well-timed attack. But, its also pretty drawn out, and on the whole, seemingly unnecessary.

Story
I suppose my biggest gripe is that this game is as generic an rpg as they come. I don't remember when I stopped following the story, but the fact that it happened at all is already a red light. Thankfully, there's quite a bit of humor and playful jabs at the standard RPG formula, and a lot of the action cutscenes are well done. I had a good laugh over the sequence at the bottom of Phantasmagician Manor (and anyone who's played that far will know why). And like I've said, Magi's done a good job implementing the systems and gameplay mechanics, and everything flows well, so I'll still play it for that.

Congratulations on getting this out, and thanks a lot for sharing your product with us. Here's hoping that Part 2 eventually comes out too.