u/isaac3000

Hello all! I am so happy and excited to have finally created my very first super boss with its own battle gimmick. It is able to enter the Spirit Realm, during which it is immune to all damage and states while being able to cast unique states on your party. The idea is you switch from offense to defense while battling it.

I love superbosses in RPGs and those who enjoy the battles in Expiation, can now try their skills out against this one.

It appears after the 6th and final story boss has been defeated, as an optional fight.

I have beaten it on all 3 difficulties, with merciless being truly a challenge.

If you want to try out your luck agaist it, maybe want to tackle a new challenge this Sunday evening, feel free!

I'd love some feedback!

Have a good one!

Download link: Expiation - Demo version 3.5 Final by isaac3000

An example!

Hey it's finally done, I was working on this game for over a year, took me 145 hours more or less (but 10 of those are maybe idle time). I have some opinions on this one.

First I want to say that I am a huge Fire Emblem fan and I want to the r into SMT and Persona and my understanding is that this game is a soft crossover between FE and Persona (even though it was marketed as SMT), maybe they went the Persona way sometime during development?

So the good and the bad:

Mostly likeable characters! In an RPG I need story and characters over gameplay and I believe TMSFE mostly got them right, my favorites are Kiria, Mamori and Maiko. Eli comes close as well,her being biracial had some interesting layers! Mamori is a cutie pie and I love how rational she thinks, Kiria has the best image and interesting character traits, she is level headed yet can be fun to hang around and of course she won't hesitate to help in need. Maiko is just amazing, even her over the top mannerisms were funny to me and I am still curious what her age is because yes Ms. Maiko I really need to know.

The others from the main cast are ok, Itsuki is basic anime protagonist which is something I am not really fond of. Tsubasa is nice, that's all I got from her. She cares about others but being nice is not a personality trait. Touma is just there? I feel like the game didn't know what to do with him during the main story? Yashiro is meh, again too many anime traits for my liking. I really enjoy japanese RPGS but the tropes have started to annoy me over the last few years, hence I am not watching that medium anymore besides one anime I have nostalgia for (Sailor Moon). If Tiki says Onichan one more time in that cutesy voice I will shut down the software that keeps her alive ugh. Same with Itsuki, basic anime protagonist who for some reason is liked by everyone but so much even that he just becomes the president? Sorry what? But besides that he was a nice guy, like Tsubasa, but this isn't a personality trait but he is nice to be around at least.

The gameplay was good, I loved doing sessions to farm persona, items and yen faster! And I didn't mind not being able to fast forward them because I saw people saying how this is terrible on Wii U and that Encore fixes this, and while it's true it's better to have a FF button, I really didn't mind them.

Edit: Something I forgot to mention I enjoyed the skill inheritance system and it was interesting to decide what skills to keep but it was weird that skills exists that remove seal for example. Why? If I can have only 8 skills I certainly won't waste a slot with that move, especially since we have items that do the job. I feel like skills like that are ok to have in rpgs that teach you new skills with each level up, but when I can carry only 8 or so I doubt anyone used them?

But I was addicted to the inheritance system I even grinded some carnages to +4 or +9 even, this loop was very addicting and I hope to see it on more games!

Not being able to switch out Itsuki was limiting at times but I know NG+ let's you do this. The areas I got to explore were ok, I loved the final area as it gave me more FE vibes but having a dungeon that was a TV studio (with the known trope that it's a maze which was true xd) or a shopping Mall was something different for me as my RPGs are always set in medieval times. This might have been my first modern times rpg to be honest!

The side quests were fun to do, I think I got them all besides the 2 NG+ exclusives though I wish there was a way to track them and the conditions without having to run back to the requestor. I enjoyed the side stories as well and how they basically showed us the progression of the characters, not so much with Yashiro's though until the 3rd one.

Something that was off to me was the lack of sound effects? One of Tsubasa's SP skills has Caeda strike the enemy many times and very fast and there just isn't any sound effect? Or it's very faint? Or some of the duo skills lack that umf I wish they had (compare to Golden Sun for example on GBA not DS, where most spells and attacks have that bam bam bam effect which is just satisfying!)

Speaking of duo arts my favorite was Kiria's and Tsubasa's which was also my first one I unlocked and it set the bar too high for the others maybe. I almost never skipped that one! Prisu give it to me! Though I never got 2 of them in a row and I never got more than 13 sessions, so how am I supposed to get more? All my characters had high maxed out luck? A feature locked behind NG+ maybe?

The main story was... Ok? It was too episodic for my liking until the second half (maybe less?) when they found the dragon stone. The beginning was: mirage controls showbiz guy, we defeat the mirage, everyone is happy, tune in for the next episode. And until they started talking about Gharnef I had no idea what this game was building towards. It's not bad to go the episodic format but I need my cohesive story in an RPG so that left a sour taste to me. The ending after the final battle was nice though I wish the Mirages would have said their good byes to everyone and not just Itsuki, what was the deal with that?

Something I think was weird is how many items exist twice? I think the idea was that some originate from the human world and some from the Idolasphere (cool name by the way, as a Greek guy I immediately got the meaning) but they do exactly the same? And while on paper this is something I haven't seen done by other RPGs, essential this means you have a huge list of items to scroll through to find the one you want, though thankfully the item amount was not as big as other RPGs tend to have, I think my own rpg maker game rivals this one in item amount.

My biggest disappointment was the lack of fire emblem characters, I understand they took only from Shadow Dragon and Awakening which saved the series back then, but they could have more unique FE characters in side quests. Why was the ultimate mirage that had Iori spell bound a Carietta and not Hilda from FE4 or Sonia from FE7? Why was the boss gauntlet in Illusory Dohlr the same 4 bosses and not other mirages? They could have used Zephiel, Walhard, Julius and Valter, just to name a few. Minor nit-pick I know.

Now the terrible...

Notice how there wasn't anything perfect mentioned? The game was doing a good job but nothing to stand out but the terrible points oh god....

Barry or Barrie I don't even know, I think I was never more embarrassed looking at my screen than when this guy was shown. He was all the terrible Japanese tropes in one character and I wish I could fire him. How could anyone be so annoying and yet still loved and respected by other people? Itsuki becoming president is super tame compared to whatever Barry is supposed to be. Try to find one positive thing about this guy, because I tried and I had to vomit thinking about him so much. To the point I never activated his session skill because seeing him running around as a dog was too much, no just... no.

Edit: What I think the game wanted to hint towards is that he is the guy who lost his mirage, became depressed because of that, maybe was blaming himself for it, pulled himself away from the showbiz spotlight and remained hidden training others, gained weight etc. This would have been the perfect opportunity to show the darker side of the showbiz and people's mental state as it's not all bright spotlight and roses, people deal with deep inner thoughts! And I believe this would have been an interesting if not the most interesting storyline in the game without becoming too angsty. But by the time the game wanted to show any of this, if at all, I was so mentally checked out, I didn't really care to understand him in a deeper level.

The savage mirages! This is something I discussed over at the rpg maker subreddit as well, because we are very careful when it comes to game balance for the games we make and unanimously the vote was that the savage system is terrible. Nice on paper but executed terribly.

The idea of stronger enemies keeping you on track is amazing to me but they lost the ball when they made them exceptionally stronger. Getting into a fight with a savage enemy group meant instant game over unless I was lucky enough to escape (smoke machines were limited to carry if not mistaken, like 5-6?). Considering this game lacks an auto save function, many times had I lost progress because I hadn't saved while exploring the dungeon and this was so annoying! And it's not that I was stupid and bumped into them, sometimes traps activate where 3 mirages spawn around you and it could include a savage as well. Not sure if I could have avoided these with Kiria's ability but these were so frustrating! Come to think of it, it's safe to assume my gameplay time might be even higher than it was due to these savages haha!

Edit: Something I totally forgot to mention but I think is important, savage enemies are not rewarding? At least to me? They give you more exp and yen but they don't drop performa at all, even sessions only give yen, granted you can get rich that way, but why engage with the system if the reward is not interesting? Imagine if you could unlock higher leveled carnages earlier, that would have been awesome! They do drop mostly 2 and I saw once or twice 3 detritus but then the dlc exists where they drop 11 per battle making them obsolete in the main game.

My solution eventually was to farm the dlc dungeon for detritus and grinded Itsuki to 999 strength and 300+ speed and he was one shotting everything, even the final boss. It took the fun out of the gameplay but not by much, I was just grinding to unlock all the carnages anyway so it was nice to make it a safe process.

What was funny was that the savage enemies go up to 96, if you become 95 they don't upgrade to 99 variants because they made it so they have to be 6 levels higher and since 99 would be less than that it kinda stops there, maybe to have a way for the player to be stronger? But this was dumb to me, either commit to the idea of reform it. But the savage enemies were a nice gameplay idea I know I need to avoid for my games I make, so thanks for the lecture I guess?

All in all a very enjoyable game that shouldn't take me so long to finish but I didn't mind the time I spent with it at all. I know it's a way to get into the more darker and serious SMT and Persona games and since I bought many of them but haven't started yet I am excited to do so, when my backlog allows for it of course XD

Thanks for reading up to this point, I hope I didn't insult aspects of the game you happen to enjoy that I didn't but hey this makes opinions and reviews interesting so feel free to let me know what you think!

In case you are also experiencing a heat wave where you live, stay cool, out of the sun and keep playing games 😄

Update: I added some edits with points I wanted to mention but had forgotten about.

Fun fact: According to the TLA map, Kalt Island is a continent.

Visible next enemy targets, useful or is it taking away the surprise factor?

So I was watching the reaction compilation on YouTube and this was funny with the subtitles:

EXPIATION: Aurelia - Character Battle Insight

Working with MV on N. Switch means limited options and no plug ins. This is my solution to a world map in Expiation: Vanguards;

Version 3.5 of Expiation adds the Revenant Superboss!

I finished the game on Wii U, the good the bad and the terrible (review)

A feature I am very proud of in Mercenaries Dungeon: Group Assault!

Skill to summon your companion dog (name still TBA) in battle.

Where can I find some old rpg maker games which aren't online anymore?

Can anyone share Among the Stars and/or Zendir 3?

I am working on a dungeon crawler for fun, i have the enemies gain buffs depending on time and mood. This should make the player to absolutely embark to the dungeon on easier days but prepare themselves for dangerous days. Here you can see the stat deviations of one of the earliest enemies in game.

I think that tree is a bottom

One step closer to an interconnected saga of games: Code Transfer MV to VX Ace