Audience Reaction:
Fenix Blade Demo 1 made a sufficiently large splash when it first went out the door. Looking back on the occasion, I have no idea why anyone gave it more than a passing glance. It was ugly, cumbersone, and lacked many gameplay elements that would be required to keep a gamer's interest for more than five minutes. Still, I guess it was a good start, and I suppose people took note of that. So, when Demo 2 was released, people were chomping at the bit. I figured it would garner a lukewarm reception given the length of time between releases, and some of the (supposedly) questionable gameplay decisions I made.
I was completely, utterly, and totally wrong.
If I'm to believe what I'm hearing from the general public, apparently I did something right. The positive reviews continue to roll in, and despite the fact that my email address is only mentioned in the documentation provided with Demo 2, I still receive several emails a day concerning the demo. I take this as a good sign, as people are too often quick to criticize, slow to praise. And believe me, the second I goof up my inbox is filled with screaming emails going straight for my throat.
Not everything was nifty and sweet in good ol' Solancia. There were several things that rubbed the general public the wrong way, or at the very least a small group of inordinately vocal people. In general, there were only three aspects of Demo 2 people expressed issues with, those being random combat, lengthy conversations, and combat difficulty. I'll address those in separate paragraphs in just a bit. For the record, I don't count hardware incompatibilities in the list because hardware manufacturers can bite my ass. There's no escuse for offloading card responsibilities on the CPU, regardless of what Creative might think about their bottom line. I have to at least partially blame MS for going along with the industry-wide farce that has crippled modems and sound cards for years.
/end_rant
FB is, as I mentioned several pages ago, a game the places great importance upon exploration and characterization. Good characterization doesn't come about through chance. Mario, for example, is about as one dimensional as it gets as far as game characters go (pun not intended). I use him as an example because everyone and their mom knows who Mario is. Crono, from the oh-so-popular Chrono Trigger, is another prime example of a character who is stunted by lack of dialogue. Well, we know he's a natural with that oversized Ginsu he totes at his side, and he has an inherent disrespect for authority figures, but what else? Perhaps he's a bad example due to the fact that his silence serves a different purpose from a design standpoint, but before we head off down a tangent or two... back to the issue at hand.
So, we're left with several options. We can either half-arse the whole scenario and try to fake a complex character while keeping the dialogue sparse, or we can dive off the deep end and load the player up with details. I chose the latter, and as the vehicles for the characterizations I chose reactions to events, dialogue between characters, and comments on world objects. Many of these events are strictly optional, rewarding inquisitive players with greater knowledge of the characters than a player who simply goes from point A to point B without stopping to smell the flowers, so to speak. I've made an effort to keep the required dialogue down to what I feel is a reasonable level, but there will always be people who just want twitchy action-fests, so I had to draw the line at some point.
Next we enter the wonderful world of random encounters. This has recently evolved into a hotly-debated issue, and as one might imagine I deserve some say in the matter. My opinion on random encounters is as such: As long as they are not too frequent, and of relatively short duration, it won't bother me one bit. Xenogears, for example, is famous for forcing the player into a random encounter every other step, which began to irritate me after about the first ten hours or so. Everything in moderation, I say. Random encounters wouldn't be so annoying if they weren't ABUSED by developers.
Let's take a moment to look at a popular alternative: having possible encounters on-screen. Games such as Chrono Trigger and Earthbound have enemies roaming around on the main screen, and contact with them initiates a battle. This allows, in some instances, characters to avoid battles entirely. From a design standpoint this is a bit of a nightmare, as you never know how developed a party of characters is by the time they reach a certain point in the game. There's also the issue of animating the enemies and providing AI to chase, or detect the character(s). If you're working on a 2D game without rendered models, animating the enemies may be add a significant amount of work to your project, hence the lower total number of unique enemies in CT as opposed to, say, FF6. I personally do not have time to animate enemies on-screen, so there's a definite plus for random encounters.
Regardless, I have yet to come across anyone who flat out said they wouldn't play FB because it had random encounters, and most people who initially had reservations about playing Demo 2 admitted that the random encounters didn't bother them. Several people expressed disdain for the high level of difficulty while in battle, but the fact that the demo comes with a very effective DIFFICULTY setting basically makes this a non-issue. It also helps if you utilize your charms and skill effectively... learn to PLAY the game or DIE.
Other than those issues, overall reaction to the demo was fabulous. I'm truly honored to know my work is being enjoyed by so many people across the world... there's definitely tremendous encouragement to complete the work.
Next: The Way I See It