I've been hit by the leave = loss bug. I joined wooguy78's game and it didn't begin for a while, so I clicked on leave. Immediately I hear this music play and it says "You lose". In the background is me with all my characters dead and at 0 hp.
I really want to see a sequel to this, with more songs providing more patterned entrances of the shapes. That's what the game needs, not power ups or more variety of enemies. More variety of works using the same method.
You're right jugglinguy. This isn't a game. This is art. Art you can't appreciate.
Yes. I disagree with you. This game was amazing. There was no chance to get tired of it because of how short and sweet it was. The shapes were simple and pretty and complemented the song well.
It's been 2 hours. Discrepancy between playing 2 clerics and playing one or, worse, none, is still too obvious in extreme. Therefore this game is both too disgustingly easy and too disgustingly hard at the same time, depending on whether you use 2 clerics or not. Imba.
I just love this game to bits, and getting crushed again and again in extreme mode is just breaking me into little pieces... (is emo, and I just made a three-way-pun)
Zakini - Yes.
Which means that you can't just waste those scrolls. In extreme mode, you absolutely have to fill up your inventory as much as possible, THEN use the scroll to unload all your items for cash.
After that you load up on nice items, get overconfident and unlucky, and lose to the boss you decide to fight on that level. *cries*
I've gone mad playing this game... I wanted to do it more discreetly and more constructively, but... I've gone absolutely mad *cries*
Sigh. I just wish there were more ways to get farther in the game other than 2clerics2rangers in the dungeons and 2clerics2beserkers in survival.
The skill involved here - the squeezing of every bit of advantage from every tactical situation by buying the right equipment, fighting the right enemies, placing characters in the correct position etc. has all been usurped by the contingent need to picked the right characters in the first place.
Garin, you don't have to make everyone happy. You certainly don't have to make people like me happy. But when you have players who have been playing extreme mode for hours and hours and hours to get in touch with the map, when they say it's really imbalanced maybe you could try to understand them better than just lump those players with everyone else and say that you can't make everyone happy.
"I can’t make everyone happy. The difficulty settings are there so you can tune the difficulty to the level you enjoy. If you find Extreme too difficult to be fun, you should play on Standard."
Garin, I hate to say this but there's a difference between proper balancing and changing things to please. Just tweaking the % of monster stats in each mode is not the same as balancing the game in various difficulty modes! Of course, you can easily make 10 different modes with different percentages. Call the 200% stats impossible, the 190% very very extreme 180% very extreme 170% extreme etc. but that is not balancing, that is just laziness!
Talking about design... I'm very sure it is awful design to be able to get a sidequest to "kill all monsters in the level"... in extreme mode on stage 1! That has to be the most impossible sidequest ever. There is no way to beat the boss level in the early stages. Unintended flaws in the design that stems from the balance!
So... please, Garin, work on the balance for extreme mode. I've gotten so used to extreme mode in the original. I love the difficulty, and I've played the extree mode for nearly the entire day now, but it is so imbalanced currently that I'm on the verge of giving up (no, actually, I refuse to give up!)
When you eventually do balancing for the game, please, get people to help you playtest in extreme mode... please! =(
Another further disappointment was of course not seeing upgradable active skills. That could have been a very wise design consideration, or whatever. I just know that seeing 25 levels of passives to upgrade and nothing of the sort for actives made me utterly disappointed =(
In fact, I think the idea of two 25 max level passives so horible!
Imagine: first few levels, get the skills that you require. After that, maximizing your character gets stuck right there with only adding points to passive - for the next 50 levels! Talk about a retirement plan...
Sure, it's just a small incentive for grinding and grinding, but honestly who plays this just to grind? I can't even get past level 10 in extreme mode! (call me a noob people, but if you can beat say maybe 5 boss levels in a row in extreme, whether you're in hardcore mode or not, I'll worship you)
Expanding the skill system slightly was the obvious step to do in the sequel, but I am not sure if you nailed it down the way it should. I don't feel a sense of progress or excitement as I improve some of those skills. For example, Cleric's passives are so horrid. In extreme mode, you have so much trouble in the early game and that the rate which the Mage's passives improves makes it almost nearly useless!
I think it's just a comlete excuse to tag all the difficulty to the word 'extreme'. Just because the mode is tagged as 'extreme mode' doesn't mean it necessarily has to be as hard as it is currently, or that it necessarily has to be hard the way it currently is.
The sheer difficulty of extreme mode now is making it impossible for a party without a cleric to go far, for example. It's rendering Barbarian's 2nd skill (-50% damage resistance on self) too risky to use, since maybe 90% or more of the battles available on each level have ranged enemies!
Hi Garin... Please balance the game with extreme mode in mind =(
One thing you can do is to tweak the loot system... getting light armor when I have no mages for 50% of my equipment is just disheartening, especially if I get a light armor drop in this scenario from a boss fight (which currently require so much preparation to even stand a slight possibility of beatening in extreme).
 "Talesworth Arena: Death Watch"){kind=icon}
 "Protector: Reclaiming the Throne"){kind=icon}
 "Kongai"){kind=icon}
 "Music Catch"){kind=icon}
 "Monsters' Den: Book of Dread"){kind=icon}
 "SHIFT 2"){kind=icon}
 "Platform Racing 2"){kind=icon}