茨心 -Thornheart- (RMVXA, demo build 20140705)

[TranceHime]

茨心 -Thornheart-

Thornheart is a turn-based RPG featuring an incredibly gratuitous revenge story. It focuses on the princess of a prosperous nation named Karuria and her older sister/guardian who are driven out of their home after the dastardly plot of another nation - Kryton - to assassinate their parents takes place in the dead of night. After escaping, the pair - princess Argenta and her sister Mu - decide they must exact revenge and go on a long journey to discover the real motives behind the plot, to seek aid for their revenge, and also to clear their name. Travel through many lands and gain the trust of people the world over so that revenge can be exacted on Kryton.

Characters

Argenta the Hunter Princess
Argenta is the heiress to the Karurian throne. All rulers of Karuria are expected to be first-class hunters, and Argenta is no exception - though one would suppose she is still training hard to get to that stage. She is a straightforward, passionate girl who can get rather nosy. She also has a bit of a kleptomaniac streak going on for her, which sometimes has to be curbed by her sister, Mu. She loves Mu as a sister but as the journey goes on, she finds herself feeling more and more attracted to her.

Mu the Asura
Mu, who is Argenta's sister, was born with a mark on her back that Argenta lacks, but their mother does not. This mark is that of the Asura - a lineage of warriors who are said to tap into demonic powers sealed within their blood. In order to fully utilize the power of the Asura, one must be fully devoid of emotions, including those of love. However, Mu had been taking care of Argenta and protecting her since she was very young. They grew up close together and Mu has found herself to be infatuated with the young princess. She tries very hard to try to come to terms with her emotions and keeps her love strictly on a family-basis, though this is starting to get incredibly difficult. For now, she tries to serve as Argenta's guide into the outside world, for she is more familiar as she has been going outside a lot more than her younger sister, due to the latter's obligations as the Hunter Princess of Karuria.

Supporting characters coming soon.


System

Battle System

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Thornheart uses a typical turn-based, speed-based battling system. The box beneath 'Act' represents the icon of the action the player has chosen for a character, and the box below that one represents a cycling list of icons of buffs/debuffs currently placed on the character. Be forewarned as for a good majority of the game your battling cast is limited to Argenta and Mu. Other supporting characters who can join the two sisters are 100% optional and can be missed. However, if you can get them to join you, it will help greatly in the segment they are particularly involved in.

Tempering System

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Certain equipment (but not all equipment) have five slots available for you to place certain ores, materials, and other objects that attach properties to them, which in turn grant useful properties to your characters. You can freely mix and match materials as you see fit in the menu. Materials can usually be dropped or stolen from enemies, or bought from certain NPCs. Sometimes, equipment that is tempered with these materials can be much stronger than equipment that does not have such tempering capabilities but has higher values.

Boost System

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With 'Boost,' you can allocate 'BP' or 'Boost Points' to certain parameters to increase some of the statistics of your characters. You can tailor them further to their strengths or you can focus on their weaknesses; it is up to you to decide how you wish to customize your fighters. Some parameters may increase stats at the cost of others as well. 'BP' is accrued via levelling up, so the higher your level is, the more BP you have to play with. Temporary fighting members also can be customized in this way!

Skill Learning System

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Skills are not learned in the traditional level up method. Instead, you must gain 'AP' by continuously fighting enemies. With your gained AP you can opt to learn skills in your character's skill sets. Argenta and Mu each have two unique skill "trees" to learn skills in, and some skills can only be unlocked by learning certain skills before them as prerequisites. The sets are:

Argenta:

• Rose Edge - The hunting techniques that Karurian queens should know. Mostly physical skills and passives.
• Enchant - The spiritual and magical techniques that Argenta should know. Includes magical skills of both offensive and supportive varieties.

Mu:

• Queen's Art - The defensive and protective techniques taught to the Guardians of the Queen and the Princess, the Queen's Armor. Built for survivability and protection.
• Asura Law - The fierce ways and path of Asura which allows Mu to tap into her demonic strength. Mostly offensive skills and passives.

Promotional Content

Demo Footage (warning: loud keyboard sounds)


Thornheart Demo (build 20140705) - 243 MB
Link here

Doesn't include the RMVXA RTP, download it yourself

Had to release a new build for the DL because the older one was really buggy. Poke me if you want a link to what was changed.

[VySaika]

Seems cool. I am happy to play RPGmaker type things when the demo is out~

[Dark Holy Elf]

Seems cool. I am happy to play RPGmaker type things when the demo is out~

[Luther Lansfeld]

Sounds awesome.

[TranceHime]

Hey guys, sorry about the delay, I decided I'd release a less buggy and slightly rebalanced version of the demo to you guys first. The link's in the OP post.

[074]

First run of the demo complete.  I suppose I will ramble a bit on things I've noticed.

As pointed out in chat earlier, if it hasn't been fixed, the moneybarrel in the first room does not run out.  Ever.  (If this was fixed, ignore it)

Pilfer rates on bosses feel a bit...low.  Even with all three manuals, I would have to spend the majority of the bossfight literally having Argenta pilfer to try and get the item in question while Mu...does nothing.  Literally.

Actually, pilfer rates in general are a bit low.  I can go through entire dungeons using nothing but pilfer and get, maybe, one thing?  Given, most of these are Temper items so that's not as bad to miss out on.  (It does get weird though)

In general, I feel like the ability gain is a bit too fast.  Presuming this demo is around 60% of the game's length, I've already gotten the PCs to fill out their relevant skillsets.  Not sure if it's that AP gain should be toned down, abilities should be made a bit more expensive, or the game's not balanced around Brave Blade strats.


Now, the two major PCs (because there's only one temp for a very short while, it seems?)

Argenta:  Okay, earlygame with her was interesting because I didn't discover the prerequisites for her healing for a while.  Which is...immensely powerful off of an extremely deep pool that regenerates.  Haven't seen it not be a fullheal.  Another point is that daggers are easily the "encouraged" weapon for her throughout the game: first the Gust Edge from Pixies, then the Shadow Fang, then when that starts wearing out its welcome, you get the Assassin's Dagger, which easily lasts for the rest of the game (Land a status, you're easily doing 2000 a hit with it).  Spirit of Hawk and Sixth Sense are amazing passives, the former doubling her effectiveness with knives and the latter giving her hilarious antiphysical traits.

Sleepy Smoke singlehandedly slaughters standard enemies--and is notably plus on TP against 3+ enemies, and even her ultimate spell isn't much of a drain on MP (Soul Burn->Star Catalyst ~= 15 MP.  Out of 600 by my end run.)

I'll be trying a Bow Argenta next time around.  Wind Walk found use against Maia, but for the most part the only magic I needed to use out of her was the healing--status->assassin dagger often led to sufficient damage by lategame.


Mu: Hooooly hell.  I went with a claw build with her.  Claw build did not disappoint.  By the time I unlocked her third-tier claw skills, I was ready to lay massive hell upon the enemy: TP does not go away between battles, so she can literally sit on max TP all day long and nuke with Demon Frenzy.  Against bosses, if she needs more damage, then Burst Claw->Demon Frenzy or Force Fist->Demon Frenzy will often do 6-10k damage or so.  She can burn through most bosses in 3-4 turns, and the only reason I don't let her is because I wanted to steal more awesome shit off of them before murdering them.  And I have yet to see a boss (maybe Cerise or whatever her name was) that will live through a Quelling Claw (or once it's available, a Quelling Claw->Demon Frenzy combo at the relevant health levels.  The latter amounts to about 13,000 damage minimum by endgame).  She had a bit of problem with dying compared to Argenta, lacking the crazy evasion tricks, but she murdered the living hell out of anything that let her.

Due to low player usage, I'll be trying another run with a tank-build Mu to see how she pans out.


Other things to address:

the Bahamut fight is bugged to be infinitely repeatable.  Whenever you reenter the bottom floor, the event repeats, making the two chests down there inaccessible.  Damn you chests.

Maia is...uniquely WTF as far as fights here go.  Wind Walk can shut down most of her offense--if she lets you get it off.  High speed+random doubleturning+Arrow Rain being a near MT OHKO+crippling status tends to let her go first and shut down any attempts.  A very out-of-depth fight that I haven't seen an equivalent of elsewhere in the game.

Seiryu's lightning status hell move lacks a move description when he uses it.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Played the first bit. The only real thing I noticed is there is a bit of exposition in the intro that feels a little forced.

"Wait, Kryton? Isn't that the neighboring nation that has been trying to get at us for the past few months now?" feels like a line that two people who knew about this enemy country would never utter. I'd probably try to be less specific at the beginning about who these people are and slip it into some town dialogue (if you have that, I mean).

I love the portraits and enemy designs though! And the battle system seems fun.

[VySaika]

Working my way through this, in the mine now.

I love the character customization options/skill learning stuff, and the battles go by fast without feeling like they're too easy. Most things are threatening if you let them get turns, as the game tends towards high damage or status flinging enemies that die in 1-3 turns of attacks instead of super thick enemies that try to whittle down your resources. I generally approve of this style.

The writing is....uh....awkward at the best of times, downright confusing at the worst(why is there some plot about people blaming Argenta and Mu for the attack on their own home castle? Made doubly confusing by the fact that not one of the NPCs so far actually blames them for it and just accepts that Kryton did it. Why was that even something that came up? I don't get it.) but that's the only downside to one of the best gameplay offerings I've seen from an RPGmaker game yet.

Planning to finish up the demo next week at some point, and will cheerfully replay with different builds when the full version comes out~ (This time I'm using Daggers/heavy mage focus for Argenta and spear/heavy tank focus for Mu.)

EDIT: Also, dunno if you've changed stuff since nama's feedback, but I had no problems with getting pilfer to steal things. Bosses take forever, sure, but on randoms I'll usually get something every 2-3 swings with pilfer, which is fine for a steal rate. It does mean I'm deliberately prolonging fights instead of slamming out Star spells to just murder things, but eh, stealing is fun. Bosses, though....yeah, I've done stuff like "get first item on first try! take 15+ turns to get the second item, Mu spends back half of fight sandbagging so I don't kill the boss before I get the steal." Which since bosses can be pretty damaging, means I go through alot of potions.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Also playing this, two hours in, just got through the Cestuswood. Notes so far...

-I do have to second Gate/Ciato that some of the early writing is awkward or poorly explained. I actually think this improved notably in the second hour (e.g. the interaction with Sonya felt more natural than the interaction with Neumann) but first impressions are of course important, and if I were to recommend one change to the game at this point it would be to try to clean up the dialog/plot a bit early. I won't talk much about plot past this, I am primarily a gameplay critic.

-Build notes so far... for Argenta, I initially started by happily magic'ing things until I stumbled on a good bow in the frost palace and decided to try out Twin Strafing, and holy crap that move is really good especially with all the passives/etc. Argenta can get to make her damage rock. And she provides the healing of course, Heal now notably outperforms Potions and Hi-Potions are rare/expensive so that is pretty great. I don't bother with stealing, which says nothing about the game's stealing and everything about me as a player. For Mu, playing around with swords mostly (since Nama did claws) and the main shining move there is the multitarget lightning one since it's my only lightning move in the game. But since Argenta has taken over the best singletarget damage I've also invested in her tanking role. War Cry / Guard / Sacrifice / defend spam = wow okay that's some badass tanking.

-Speaking of War Cry, it's really, really good early. I got it almost immediately and not only does it buff the party's damage a lot, it makes most randoms until the Venne Mire region tink and greatly reduces all physical randoms thereafter. It's become more sane since but it's still a really, overpoweringly good skill early. You might want to up its cost some?

-The earlygame, except maaybe the escape sequence at the very start, I found very easy once I got a handle on the system. I'm actually okay with this, the game seemed to be letting me find time to figure out all the systems (in particular, I didn't notice Boost for a while, and it's kind of very important! I've invested primarily in HP because the results are very visible and useful.). There are a lot of systems to figure out early (skill learning and that... and tempering? I've still been ignoring tempering) so a softball area is fine, for all that my enjoyment of that section was relatively lower. That speaks to my biases in games. I wouldn't say the game has yet become hard (I haven't game overed) but randoms deserve a bit more thought.

-I've enjoyed the two main bosses so far pretty well, they make decent use of the system. The mage boss' mid-HP counter in particular was a very rude surprise and I had to scramble a bit in that fight using defend commands, healing, etc., to stay afloat. Also I like that boss theme, dunno if it's RMVXA default or what but it reminds me of Mana Khemia boss music and is something I dig.

-Things I like aesthetically: I come at this being intimately familiar with RMVX's RTP so obviously I recognise a lot of it... what jumped out at me as "I wish I could put this in my game but am probably too lazy to do so" are a few of the animated NPC sprites and the roofs which actually look like normal roofs which you can walk behind. No idea if those are standard in Ace, but if they aren't it just looks all the cooler that you added them in. I like the enemy designs too.

-One small thing that feels missing from the game is an options menu. It's not a big deal I suppose, but I remember going to look for "can I turn on auto-run" and finding no such option, or any other (and some others would be nice for some players, like the ability to customise music/SFX volumes).

-The Lucky Coin is kind of an odd design choice. If memory serves it was somewhere very missable, and serves a ridiculously important purpose of doubling your gold intake. That's a huge effect on the entire game. Not sure what to recommend there, but the resulting effect (of some players having way, way more money than others) doesn't strike me as desirable.

-One other thing I'm not a big fan of is how the skill tree is kind of a secret. On the one hand it means you can "discover" things and that's kind of fun in its own way. On the other hand it's disappointing to fish around in skills thinking "well I hope this leads to something good" and not have it happen, and rewards players who just guide dangit. It annoys me less here than it did in Grandia 2 (maybe because I'm just exploring the trees of two PCs instead of a bunch of eggs and skill books, and the unlock progression at least feels kind of logical) but it's still not really my cup of tea. Also some important skills can be missed this way! Argenta's healing comes to mind, the skill that unlocks it isn't terribly intuitive and I only got as early as I did because I had heard she had it and went fishing for it. This could probably be fixed by having some sort of guide for the system outside the game (like how the FF5 manual lists the abilities from each job), having hints inside the game, or if you're up for a bit of coding, listing what each skill will lead to when you are choosing whether to learn it. You are also of course free to ignore this advice and say "Elfboy you smell, you are supposed to enjoy the discovery of the skill tree you loser" and that would be a fair response too.

I'm enjoying it!

[VySaika]

Into the Obligatory Sewer Dungeon now.

Spears are interesting as a weapon choice for Mu. She is well behind Argenta on ST damage(Multistar is kinda nuts) but Sepher Point is re-goddamm-diculous as a MT attack. MT OHKOs most random setups when I twink her for attack power/agi, then I swap back to defensive gear for bosses and let her tank. Mu is pretty awesome.

Pilfer was really accurate early but now I'm seeing the problems Nama mentioned. It's successfully stealing so rarely that I'm getting to the point where I don't want to bother except against bosses. Which is sad because there is alot of cool shit to steal.

I see an arena with shiny things. Time to grind away on it to get enough AT to buy shiny things? Maybe. We'll see.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Currently in the Tulfas desert. Five hours in now. I did the first two arena sequences and lost to the third fight of the Hard one, which seeing as I had to hack through a durable fight just to get there. I liked the fourth-wall winking about saving there. Game remains a good time, blah blah blah please don't take any criticisms as an implication otherwise.

-I've mostly switched Mu over from swords to spears now. Swords were just kinda underwhelming me, their selling point seemed to be added status but it's not reliable enough. Maybe there's some cancel abuse you can do, but eh, once spears got the MT I've mostly switched over to that. Argenta's still the offensive star (oh man Twin Strafing off 41 crit), Mu more about Warcry and defensive skills for me.

-Resources in this game seem very generous to me. I've never once run out of MP (though have used Argenta's MP self-healer a few times) and there are MP healing items if I do. TP just... I tend to hover near 100 unless I start spamming Weapon Precision -> TP-consuming tech or something like that, again never run out of that. I'm not sure this is a complaint as such, because MP at least could become an issue if you do things inefficiently... though TP does feel mostly pointless at the moment? I pretty much just ignore TP costs.

-The boss of the sewers had an unusally sad music. Maybe this is forshadowing for some plot for that character but it seemed an odd fit for the actual fight.

-Someone in Set's Tower (may have been the boss, or a random right after, I didn't notice when it appeared, sorry) inflicted some MDef Down status which never went away after battle nor seemed healable. Going to an inn fixed it up, but that was weird.

-Apparently Nama already mentioned this, but Maia is nasssty. I can't say I disapprove of a hard fight, of course. Might want to keep tabs on how other players deal with this one.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Finished the demo! Fun game, I love the skill learning and stat boosting system! The two PC dynamic is pretty fun, although I felt like Bow Argenta kind of owned Claw Mu after a while and was clearly the dominant character in the game. The dialogue could use some cleaning up because sometimes the language was a bit awkward. I also periodically got confused by what I was supposed to do next -- wasn't sure if I was supposed to go to the Factory or do the orb sidequest (which I wasn't sure if it was a sidequest... I ended up not doing it because of that difficult boss.)

Also, when I used Vulcan Storm with Argenta she gains like 5x the AP of Mu.