Topic: Castlevania: Sonata in Red

[Larzuk]

If any of you are having trouble with rapidshare. We have a new mirror for the game. http://www.sendspace.com/file/o6rcvm

This game just gets better and better as you progress. Especially when the story really starts to develope. The story itself is what kept me on the edge of my seat wanting to know more!

[Marcus Hardle]

So...

No comments on the game so far? 

[Sonic_Reaper]

I only played about 20 minutes, however ... it's good!  I can really see you put a lot of work into map layout and construction.

I can't say I am a fan of the edited FFVI sprites.  Can you say overused?  Overall though, it definitely has me interested in playing more.

[Beowulf]

Dude!!! Great game man! I definitly loved the opening of the game and its great!

[Another Lone-wolf]

It's a pity that I can't open that page

[Larzuk]

In Reply To #20

Which page?

[Another Lone-wolf]

In Reply To #21

The download page,maybe I'm forbbiden to view that page...

[Another Lone-wolf]

I've download an RAR file from the Rapidshare,but the size of the file is only 6KB,and I can't open it...
Except Rapidshare,other links are unavailable to me.

[Larzuk]

In Reply To #23

Hmm all three pages work jsut fine for me. Maybe your not authorized on the sites?. That is strange..

[Another Lone-wolf]

In Reply To #24

Thanks,anyway.

[Mooning Freddy]

Ok, so I played the game up to Castlevania's entrance, and are at level 8 now. Few points I would like to make about the game so far:
Good Points-
1. The Graphics and music. They're good. And rather satisfying. The choice of music for each area is good. I like the areas you made before reaching the castle.
2. There are several ways to reach the castle, what is cool.
3. Quite a wide choice of items and equipment, what increases the RPG value of the game.
4. The orb system is in a single word- cool.
5. I like how you made obtainable abilities in the game. For now, I only saw two (jumping and moving rocks), but this gave me the feeling that you really did some efforts to make those little parallels to MetroVanias.
6. The breakable candles are a nice way to recover your hearts- and an original way to gain your money.
7. I like the Castle entrance area. It kicks ass in its similarity to that area in CV1 (and its remakes).
8. Allan is, overall, a cool character.

Points that require improvement-
1. The game could really use an area map. Too often I got lost in the areas while trying to find a particular place I missed. It doesn't have to be too complicated, a simple drawing of where the different areas are to each other would be enough.
2. What's that with only being able to gain 1 level per area? I know you're trying to take away the opportunity of players camping over a single area, gaining 999 lvls in one.
But that takes away all the fun of replaying an area. Once you gain a level in a certain area, you just avoid all the enemies because there is no more point of fighting them anymore.
3. And that brings me to the next problem- in each area, you have a certain number of battles to fight to gain a level. This means there is no real "experience" in the game. That's a problem, because you don't gain a different number of exp according to the strength or number of monsters you face. It doesn't matter if you fight a single skeleton, or three armor knights, you would gain the same number of "experience" (1 battle, to be exact). This motivates the player to avoid stronger enemies, beating weaker ones instead.
4. And then, there's this graphical thing I just find as lame: all the enemies in the game look the same outside of battle- like ghosts/phantoms. I just think it looks boring, at least have some alternatives to how they look like.
5. And the final thing, though I don't see this as a real problem... Some bosses in the game are just too powerful. I don't see a reason for me to use more than 1-2 potions per a boss battle. There must be some other way. I am at my maximal possible level as I fight this boss, have the best equipment available, powerful spells, and yet, it kicks my ass. That's absurd. 

[Marcus Hardle]

Thank you for the support Private Freddy. I really hope you enjoy it, like I said this game was made for people like you CV fans that would catch the references!

The path to the castle is more open, the castle however will be more linear somehow. For story purposes and such.

There's other abilities to get from relics, ranging from whip swinging, breathing underwater, super jump and killing the immortal red enemies.

I'm glad you liked the castle area. I even made a ghost jump from the water like a merman, also keep SOTN entrance in mind and you'll catch other secrets in the area.

Abouts the points that require improvement.

1- In the original idea the game was supposed to have a map. But I didn't knew how to do it when I started and I thought "ok I'll figure out later". When I did figure out a working way to do a map I was over 70% of the game done and the map system would require a lot of rework in the game and would delay it a lot. :/
2 & 3- Well there's always the drop items. That's a good reason to battle the other enemies. The system was created with a LOI type of game in mind, that would keep the challenge as it progressed. But there's also the orb system, fighting stronger enemies and the rare enemies (the black ghosts) grants you a lot of SP.
5 - The bosses where indeed made to be a little stronger. They can't just be a regular enemy with a lot of HP they needed to be a real menace. (unlike some cvs

[Larzuk]

In Reply To #26

Congrats on getting to the castle. The best part of the game is exploring what new area your about to reach and what enemies you will find there. Also the battles there are abit more balanced but there will still be that one or two that will be strong. Also you will be learning a lot while in the castle.

[Marcus Hardle]

In Reply To #25

If you're still having troubles with the download link, the file size is around 53Mb. If you have an msn or gmail I could send to you that way.

[Kale]

Why not upload to another site like MegaUpload or something.